Brian McKeever adds another Paralympic gold medal to legendary cross-country career
CBC
Brian McKeever is still making it look easy.
The 42-year-old Canadian won gold in the men's visually impaired 20-kilometre cross-country event on Monday at the Beijing Paralympics, blowing away the rest of the field.
It's McKeever's 14th career Paralympic title, and his 18th total medal across six Games dating back to Salt Lake City in 2002.
Led by guide Russell Kennedy, the Canmore, Alta., native crossed the finish line in 51 minutes 39.4 seconds for his latest gold medal, just under three minutes ahead of silver medallist Jake Adicoff of the U.S. Sweden's Zebastian Modin rounded out the podium with bronze at 1:00:05.4.
WATCH | McKeever cruises to gold medal:
McKeever said ahead of Beijing that these would be his final Games, ending a legendary career in which he's rarely stood below the top spot of the podium.
In fact, he's now won 14 of his 16 total individual Paralympic races. The last time McKeever failed to top the podium in the 20km cross-country event was in 2006 when he won silver.
He quickly put to rest any questions that might have lingered about his fitness after the Canadian team skipped the 2022 world championships in Lillehammer.
McKeever hadn't competed at a major international event since 2019, when he won gold in the long-distance event. Still, it was reasonable to wonder if the 42-year-old remained as dominant as ever.
McKeever is a B3 athlete, the least severe classification in the visually impaired category.
"If you stare at the sun for a long time and turn away, you get these fuzzy spots. Well for me, the fuzzy spots don't go away," he once said of his sight.
McKeever will be back in action in the sprint event on Wednesday.
WATCH | What you missed on Day 2 of the Paralympics:
Canada's Kevin Drury battled his way to a gold medal that left him in tears at a World Cup ski cross event on Friday in Val Thorens, France.
Soccer fans have accused FIFA of a "monumental betrayal" after latest prices for World Cup tickets began to circulate on Thursday.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is “disappointed” that the main arena slated to host ice hockey at February’s Olympics isn’t yet completed with less than two months to go before the Games are scheduled to be played.
A two-year suspension from competitive swimming has forced Penny Oleksiak to answer questions about drug use, train by herself in public pools and defend her legacy as Canada’s most decorated female Olympian.
Hockey, one of the premier events at the Winter Olympics and one that is welcoming NHL players back for the first time in more than a decade, will take place on ice shorter than NHL-regulation size.
Summer McIntosh capped swimming’s U.S. Open with the event record in the women’s 200-metre butterfly on Saturday in Austin, Texas.
Some bronze medals are worth their weight in gold. Valerie Grenier's third-place finish in women's giant slalom at the Mont-Tremblant World Cup certainly fits that category.
The men’s World Cup draw in Washington D.C. was going well for Canada until Pot 4.
The draw for the 2026 World Cup takes place Friday at 12 p.m. ET at the Kennedy Center in Washington, for the purpose of dividing the 48-team field into 12 groups of four. Once the tournament starts, 32 teams will advance from those preliminary groups to the single-elimination knockout rounds.
The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., buzzed with activity and speculation on Thursday in advance of Friday’s all-important draw for the 2026 men’s World Cup.
By the time the management group for the Canadian men’s national hockey team emerges from marathon meetings on Tuesday, as much as 80 per cent of the roster going to Italy next February should be written in pen.
Canada’s ski mountaineering athletes have their Olympic dreams on the line this weekend at a World Cup event in Solitude, Utah.
Goalie Carter Hart, one of five 2018 Canada world junior hockey players acquitted of sexual assault in July, will make his first NHL appearance in nearly two years when he starts in goal Tuesday night for the Vegas Golden Knights, who host Chicago.