BURSTNatalie Wilkie shot to a gold-medal finish in Italy over the weekend at the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games.
On Saturday (March 7) – her first day of competition in this year’s Games – the Salmon Arm athlete achieved a silver-medal podium finish in the Women’s Standing Sprint Para biathlon event with a time of 18:46.4, coming in second behind Ukraine’s Oleksandra Kononova, with a time of 18:41.5.
The following day, with gold glitter on her cheeks, Wilkie took the top spot in the Women’s Individual Standing Para biathlon event with a time of 33:01.8, ahead of China’s Zhiqing Zhao at 33.33.5 and Oleksandara with 33:37.9. This was the first gold-medal finish for Team Canada at the 2026 Games and Wilkie’s first Paralympic win in Para biathlon.
“This is pretty unreal. Silver was pretty awesome yesterday, but the gold today is even better,” Wilkie shared with the Canadian Paralympic Committee. “It all came together today. It’s just a race like any other race, but when you add in the crowds and everything that goes along with the Paralympic Games, it all just feels like such a bigger event. But I do feel like I’ve had enough exposure at events like this that I was able to still lock in.”
Cheering her on at the Games was sister Madeleine Wilkie who, the week prior, had represented Canada at the World Junior/U23 Championships in Lillehammer, Norway. In the Women’s Sprint Final Free event, the Larch Hills Nordic skier came in 18th place (among 78 competitors), and 29th of the 64 who finished the Women’s 20-kilometre Mass Start Free event.
With her weekend wins, Natalie’s Paralympic medal collection had grown to nine, with four won at the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing (two gold, a silver and a bronze) and three won at the 2018 Games in South Korea (gold, silver and bronze).