It was 2022 all over again in Olympic men's snowboard cross.
Canada's Eliot Grondin captured silver on Thursday at Milano Cortina 2026, finishing just behind Austria's Alessandro Haemmerle in a thrilling race.
Haemmerle and Grondin also placed 1-2 in a photo finish at the 2022 Winter Olympics, with the Austrian prevailing by 0.02 seconds.
This one was a wider gap — all of 0.03 seconds.
"Not many people can do back-to-back podiums in the Olympics," Grondin told CBC Olympics. "I nearly won just twice in a row. I just got silver twice. It shows we've been on top of the sport for a little while now."
It marks Canada's sixth medal at these Olympics — three silver and three bronze.
Just hours earlier, Canada's Mikael Kingsbury also came as close as possible to gold in men's moguls, dropping to silver on a tiebreaker when finishing with the same overall score as Australia's Cooper Woods.
In snowboard cross, Grondin took the lead late in the race, but couldn't quite hold off Haemmerle at the finish.
"Super tight race," Grondin said. "I have no regrets. I had fun. For sure, we wanted gold. But having silver is not so bad either."
Grondin said he would have preferred to stay back a bit earlier in the race before pouncing late. But the strategy didn't work in the final.
"The problem is I was having too much speed behind (him). I was trying to slow down and stay back and I just couldn't," he said. "Seems like from the front today, (it) was not possible (to win races) or really hard to do, especially in the later rounds. It worked all week in training. But obviously at this level, winning from the front is starting to be more difficult."
Grondin, 24, now has three career Olympic medals. The Sainte, Marie, Que. racer also won bronze in 2022 with Meryeta O’Dine in the team event.
Grondin captured gold at last year's world championships, while Haemmerle got bronze. The Canadian is also the two-time reigning World Cup season champion.
