Yukon’s Arctic Winter Games athletes returned home this weekend with one of their best medal finishes as the territory begins the journey to hosting the next one in two years.

The Yukon finished third overall in the final medal standings with 122 medals – a medal high since the 2012 Games in Whitehorse, equalling that total.

The team won 35 gold, 41 silver and 46 bronze ulus, beating the gold and silver totals and equalling the bronze count at the 2016 AWG in Nuuk, Greenland.

At the Greenland Games, with some of this year’s events not in contention, the team won a total of 100 medals which was good for second place.

The Yukon was leading the medal standings until the end of Thursday’s competitions. They finished three ulus back of Alaska with 125 and Alberta North took top spot with 133.

It was some of the absent sports from 2016 that led the way for the Yukon, with the speedskating team picking up 19 medals throughout the Games, including seven gold.

On Friday, the speedskaters had their final two events of the competition – the 1,500-metre long-distance race and the team relays. The juvenile male competitors swept the podium in the 1,500 with Lucas Taggart-Cox winning his third individual gold medal, his brother Caius taking the silver and Anders Petersson winning the bronze.

Just a few hours after, the three medallists took the ice together in the 3,000-metre relay and took the gold handily.

On the juvenile female side, Lisa Freeman continued her medal haul and completed the trifecta winning gold in the 1,5000 to add to her two silvers and bronze. The relay team took the silver medal falling to Nunavut by just six seconds.

Micah Taggart-Cox also went four for four in individual medals taking a silver in the final race to add to his gold, silver and bronze ulus. The junior male relay team took silver with Micah along with brothers Simon and Joshua Lauer.

Dawson City athletes had major success on the podium as well throughout the AWG. Snowshoer Jack Amos won all three individual events in the junior male category. Table tennis players Ethan Gaw and Sam Crocker, both from Dawson, won the bronze in the junior male table tennis doubles. After losing the first set, they rallied back to win three in a row.

The junior female doubles team of Emily Gaw and Grace-Anne Janssen also took bronze.

In other team events, the intermediate female futsal team dropped a tight gold-medal game to Sápmi 2-1 to take the silver.

The junior male team won bronze with a 7-2 win over Nunavut. Both volleyball teams took bronze with wins over Nunavut.