The Canadian luge team built upon the momentum from the opening night of the Veissmann World Cup stop in Calgary to claim their second silver medal in the relay event this season, Dec. 9.

Cochrane's Tristan Walker and Calgary's Justin Snith, Canada's doubles team, were part of that silver medal performance and it capped off their best performance of the season.

In the doubles event the night before, Dec. 8, Walker-Snith finished a solid sixth in a field of 23 teams. 

The pair blazed the track with a time of 43.621 seconds to set the Canadian doubles record in their first run, good enough to secure sixth in the first heat. They held on to their placement with a follow run of 43.732 seconds for a total time of 1:27.353. After the race, though, their focus wasn't the record, it was the improvement in their overall performance.

"We're building confidence and moving forward, especially now that the first half of the season is almost over and the Olympics are starting to move into play," said Walker, following the race." I think this is a really good step forward from a rocky first set of the season to just put down two solid runs."

"With two good runs here I think we need to push a bit with the equipment and try to find some speed there because the starts are good."

In a sport where performances are separated by milliseconds, equipment comes heavily into play and Walker equates its importance to that of Formula One racing. Physically, he says, they were there last season, but the equipment needed to be upgraded. Pressing home the point was a race where they dropped from a first-place first run to a ninth place finish.

"That was a bit of a wake-up call and we knew we needed to push with the equipment because the sled was falling a bit behind the world stage, for sure."

That has made each race this season a learning experience and compounding that is the wild swing in temperatures they've seen. Here in Calgary, the temperature rose above 10 degrees Celsius.

Pyeongchang, South Korea is hosting the Winter Olympics, Feb. 9-25, and for Walker-Snith it will be their third appearance. They'll be competing in both doubles and as part of the relay team. In the meantime, though, there are other world cup races on the schedule.

"It comes up really fast when you're grinding out day in, day out on the World Cup circuit," says Snith. "This is going to be our third games this year and I don't want to say it's surprising, but it does sneak up on you."

Both sliders are in good health leading up to the games.

"It's one of the first times we haven't had any major injuries to contend with," says Snith.

In Friday's doubles race, it was Germany's Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken who set a new course record (43.421) and finished first with 1:26.875. They were also part of the German's doubles team that won gold on Saturday and set another course record 2:21.146. The pair continues to dominate the doubles circuit with five gold medals and a silver and three gold medals in all three relay events of the season.

The Canadian team previously won silver in the first relay event of the season in Iglis, Austria.