With only a week of competition, medals were awarded fast and furiously during the first day of Arctic Winter Games finals Monday – and Yukon athletes found themselves on the podium early and often.

The first day of competition in N.W.T. saw speedskating and snowshoe races fill the morning session with the Yukon scoring a total of seven ulus before in the two events.

At day’s end, the Yukon team was on the top of the medal table with 27 ulus – seven gold, nine silver and 11 bronze.

The host Northwest Territories is in second with 21.

The strong start for the team started in Fort Smith where speedskater Lisa Freeman won the first medal of the Games for the Yukon squad with a silver in the juvenile female 1,000-metre race.

The only event that had official races Sunday, the first speedskating races had heats and semifinals before the final races Monday morning.

Freeman had a strong start in the competition winning both her heat and semifinal races – setting personal best times in both. In the final race, Freeman again broke her personal best taking about a second off her semifinal time to finish with the silver ulu behind Emma Carpenter of Nunavut.

“I think I did pretty good my first two races,” the 13-year-old skater said from Fort Smith. “I think I screwed up a little bit on my last race, but I still got silver.”

Not knowing she was the first medallist for the Yukon, Freeman said it was very exciting to get the team off to a strong start.

And she did just that. In the juvenile male final, three Yukoners qualified for the four spots already cementing at least two medals.

In the semifinals, brothers Lucas and Caius Taggart-Cox worked together to pull away from their competitors to come first and second in the race and secure their spots in the final.

Anders Petersson won the second semifinal to qualify for the final as well.

“We kind of had a plan at the beginning. Moving on was the winner of each race plus the next two fastest times,” Lucas said of the semifinal race. “We weren’t really racing each other we were kind of working together.”

But that teamwork faded away in the final as the two brothers pulled away and Caius had a small slip while battling with his brother and fell into the mats.

“(Caius) and Lucas were having a little battle together for first and second,” speedskating coach Phil Hoffman said. “He stuck his toe into the ice and went in for a spill into the mats.”

Caius quickly got back up and finished strongly but just shy of the medals. Petersson took the silver medal for the Yukon and Luke Dizon from N.W.T. won the bronze.

Micah Taggart-Cox, the older brother of Lucas and Caius and only Yukon speedskater with past AWG experience, took the bronze in the junior male race to secure the fourth medal for the team.

In a more technical and slower final in comparison to the seminal and heat races, Micah finished less than a second back of first in a tight race for the medals. The 10-member speedskating team will be back on the ice this evening for the 500-metre sprint race.

With eight of the 10 skaters setting 1,000-metre personal best times throughout the competition, Hoffman said it was a great start for the team and they are ready for the quick turnaround for today’s races.

“They did some pretty good races. They were for the most part following the plans that we had talked about before the race,” he said.

At the same time in Hay River, the Yukon snowshoe team was in action in their short-distance cross-country race.

In the 2.5-kilometre juvenile male race, Naoise Dempsey raced to a bronze ulu, finishing comfortably in third place 36 seconds ahead of his closest competitor.

The junior males raced double the distance and the two Yukoners pulled away from the pack finishing in first and second. Jack Amos, two-time B.C. cross-country champion from Dawson City, won the race in a time of 23:24 and Darby McIntyre came in second with a time of 24:03. Jesse Hanthorn from N.W.T. won the bronze, finishing more than a minute back of McIntyre.

OTHER MEDAL RESULTS:

Bianca Berko-Malvasio won two gold medals in junior female kneel jump and arm pull in arctic sports competition.

Kalina Morrison won a silver in the kneel jump and Emily King won a bronze in the arm pull. Matt Jacobson took the silver in the open male one hand reach and Lou Samson won bronze in the junior male kneel jump.

Derek Deuling and Sonja Schmidt raced to juvenile cross-country ski gold in the 5-km classic race.

The cross-country ski team won seven ulus in the first day of competition and is back in action today in the long-distance free race.

Ben Machtans won gold in the junior male snowboard rail jam. Riley Boland won bronze in the juvenile female competition.