Weekend Roundup: Canada launches into title defence at women’s hockey worlds, two medals at diving World Cup

From the ice in Czechia to the sand in Brazil, Team Canada athletes delivered a weekend packed with intensity and resilience.

The Canadian women’s hockey team launched into the defence of their world title with two dominant shutouts before a narrow loss to Team USA. A young Canadian diving team made a splash with a pair of World Cup podiums at home in Windsor. Corey Conners kept his cool at Augusta for another top-10 Masters finish. And a dynamite Canadian artistic swimming duo stood on a World Cup podium in Egypt.

Read on for the exciting details.

Ice Hockey: Team Canada opens women’s worlds with two wins, tough loss to USA

Team Canada started the IIHF Women’s World Championship in dominant fashion in Ceske Budejovice, Czechia, posting back-to-back shutouts to open the tournament. After blanking Finland 5-0 in their first game and following it up with a 4-0 win over Switzerland, it was time for another chapter of the Canada-USA rivalry on Sunday.

READ: Team Canada takes down Switzerland at women’s world hockey championship

In a tightly contested game, Team USA edged Canada 2-1 to secure their spot at the top of Group A.

READ : Team Canada edged by USA at women’s world hockey championship

Team USA went up 2-0 before the Canadians finally broke through 6:50 into the third period. Laura Stacey made good on a breakaway opportunity after Marie-Philip Poulin threaded a perfect feed up the ice. Stacey turned on the jets, bursting past the defence and sliding the puck five-hole to cut the U.S. lead in half.

Team Canada took out their goalie with 35 seconds to go, but it was too little too late and they had to concede their first lost of the tournament. The Canadians will be back on the ice at 1 p.m. ET on Monday to face the host Czechs.

Golf: Conners notches another top-10 finish at the Masters

At the first major of the men’s golf season, Canada’s Corey Conners continued his strong form at Augusta National, finishing tied for eighth at the Masters. Connors opened the tournament with a 68 on Thursday, followed by back-to-back rounds of 70 to head into Sunday’s final round in sole possession of third. However, a 3-over 75 on Sunday dropped him back to 5-under par, six strokes back of the winner, Rory McIlroy, who completed the career grand slam.

This marks Conners’ fourth career top-10 at Augusta National. He tied for 10th in 2020, tied for eighth in 2021, and tied for sixth in 2022. He entered the Masters as the top-ranked Canadian on the PGA Tour, sitting sixth in the FedEx Cup standings.

Diving: Two World Cup medals for young Canadian team in Windsor

At the start of another Olympic quadrennial, a young Canadian diving team showed their stuff at the second stop of the 2025 World Aquatics Diving World Cup in Windsor, Ontario, winning two medals.

Both medals came on Saturday, as two Canadian synchro teams reached the podium. Sonya Palkhivala and Amélie-Laura Jasmin captured silver in the women’s 3m synchro event with a score of 276.30 points that put them just 0.9 ahead of third place. In the men’s 10m synchro, Benjamin Tessier and Matt Cullen captured bronze, earning 381.15 points from the judges.

Mia Vallée came close to adding another medal in the women’s 3m springboard event, finishing just off the podium in fourth place. Jasmin followed in sixth position. In the women’s 10m synchro, Kate Miller and Katelyn Fung finished fifth, while Fung placed eighth in the individual 10m platform. Tessier earned a seventh-place finish in the men’s 10m platform.

Artistic Swimming: World Cup bronze for Canada in duet technical

Canada’s performance at the second stop of the 2025 World Aquatics Artistic Swimming World Cup in Somabay, Egypt was highlighted by a bronze medal in the women’s duet technical event.

Audrey Lamothe and Ximena Ortiz Montano, competing together for just the second time, achieved their full difficulty to earn a score of 256.2900, good for the bronze medal in the 29-team field.

“Our biggest goal was to swim a routine without any deductions. We didn’t really have a medal objective since we’re still in the early stages as a pair. We weren’t expecting to win a medal, but of course we were really happy to find ourselves on the podium!” said Lamothe. “Since the World Cup in Paris, we’ve increased the level of difficulty in our routine to better highlight our strengths. We’ve worked really hard in training to improve the execution of our technical elements to get better execution scores. I think all that hard work really paid off today.”

Canada finished fourth in the women’s team technical event, about 3.35 points shy of the podium. The next World Cup stop will be May 1-3 in home waters in Markham, Ontario.

Tennis: Canada falls short of Billie Jean King Cup Finals

Team Canada’s four-year streak of qualifying for the Billie Jean King Cup Finals came to an end on Sunday, as the squad fell 2-1 to Japan in a closely contested Qualifiers tie in Tokyo.

Canada got off to a promising start thanks to 18-year-old Victoria Mboko, who battled through a marathon opening match to defeat Japan’s Ena Shibahara 6-4, 6-7(8), 7-5. The 2 hour 45 minute thriller gave second-ranked Canada the 1-0 lead over the No. 14 Japanese side. Japan evened the tie when Moyuka Uchijima outplayed 20-year-old Canadian Marina Stakusic 6-3, 6-3 in the second singles match.

The decider came down to doubles, where the Canadian duo of Rebecca Marino and Kayla Cross pushed hard but fell 6-3, 5-7, 6-2 to Shibahara and Shuko Aoyama.

After both teams defeated Romania, the only other team in the group, whoever won that last tie would advance to the Finals. Canada will now turn its focus to the 2025 Playoffs in November, where the goal will be to get back into the Billie Jean King Cup Qualifiers in 2026.

“Overall, I really do believe it was a great day. It was a very tough day, all matches were very close,” Canadian captain Heidi El Tabakh said. “I’m sure we’re all disappointed we lost, but I’m very, very proud of every single girl on the team and the effort they put in today. We fought till the end, and it just didn’t go our way.”

The Canadian roster, which also included Ariana Arseneault, opened with a 3-0 sweep of Romania on Friday. Canada won the 2023 title before losing to Great Britain in last year’s quarterfinals.

Mountain Bike: Jackson rides to fourth in Brazil

Canada’s Jenn Jackson finished fourth in the women’s cross-country Olympic (XCO) World Cup race at the second leg of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series in Araxa, Brazil, on Saturday. Jackson completed the race in 1:27:36, finishing just three seconds back of the podium. It follows her sixth-place finish the weekend before, which had been her career-best World Cup XCO result.

Paris 2024 Olympian Isabella Holmgren won her second straight U23 XCO World Cup race.

Beach Volleyball: Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson ninth at Elite16 in Brazil

Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson finished tied for ninth in their first Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour event of the season, an Elite16 tournament in Saquarema, Brazil. The Canadian duo opened strong, defeating Italy’s Giada Bianchi and Claudia Scampoli 2-1 (21-14, 17-21, 15-8). They followed that with a tightly contested three-set loss to Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova.

Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson bounced back with a win over France’s Alexia Richard and Lézana Placette to advance to the round of 12. However, their tournament came to an end with a narrow loss to Americans Kelly Cheng and Molly Shaw, 21-18, 13-21, 18-20.

The next Elite16 tournament gets underway on Wednesday in Brasilia, Brazil.

Artistic Gymnastics: Olsen fourth at World Cup

Shallon Olsen just missed the podium at the FIG Apparatus World Cup in Osijek, Croatia where she finished fourth in the women’s vault final. The three-time Olympian, who is a renowned vault specialist, averaged a score of 13.566 for her two vaults in the final, which left her two-tenths back of the bronze medallist, Jayla Hang of the United States.