One spot off the podium. Twice.

Both Yukon relay teams finished fourth at the last cross-country skiing event of the Canada Winter Games in Nova Scotia on Saturday.

The female team missed the podium in the 4x3.75-kilometre relay with a time of 45:07.30, 37 seconds behind bronze-medalists Alberta (44:30.70). British Columbia won gold with a time of 43:51.00 and Quebec won silver with a time of 44:27.60.

The Yukon men finished fourth in the 4x5-km event with a time of 54:13.20. Alberta won gold in 52:24.80, Quebec won silver in 52:38.40 and B.C. won bronze in 52:39.30.

In both the men's and women's event, however, the Yukon beat fifth-place Ontario.

But the absurd population gap – the Yukon's 35,000 to Ontario's 13 million – has to count for something.

"Ontario has a tad bigger population than us,” laughed Claude Chabot, executive director of the Whitehorse Cross Country Ski Club.

"We're doing good if we can beat Ontario. We've got 30,000, we're beating a population that admittedly doesn't have as much winter as we do but they sure have a lot more people to draw from.”

Dahria Beatty finished the Yukon's first leg in 11:36.70, Kendra Murray finished the second in 12:04.40, Janelle Greer skied to a time of 10:47.00 in the third and Emily Nishikawa finished in 10:39.20 as the anchor.

On the men's side, John Perry finished the first leg in 13:47.30, Colin Abbott finished the second leg in 14:22.80, Ray Sabo skied third in 13:19.50 and David Greer anchored in 12:43.60.

Chabot said some of the Yukon skiers, particularly on the men's side, were battling illnesses at the Games after competing in Europe.

"You have to be 100 per cent at these things,” he said, noting that the Yukon's female relay team won bronze at the 2007 Canada Games in Whitehorse.

"It was a bit heartbreaking because going into the Canada Games we had medal hopes for both men's and women's relay, and on paper the women's team should have picked up a medal and the men's team probably too.

"We knew that we should have been in the medals in both of those, but we had skiers who were sick, and it seems to happen a lot in these Games.

"When you're competing at that kind of level you don't need much of an illness to put you off a few seconds here and there, makes a big difference.”

David Greer, who was getting over the flu during the Games, was a medal hopeful after winning gold in the 2007 Games, Chabot pointed out.

In 2011, Nishikawa shone.

The 21 year old won gold in the 7.5-km free, bronze in the 1000-metre sprint and silver in the 10-km classic.

"Not just Emily; we had some really strong performances by the rest of the girls earlier in the week as well.

They're all young and they're skiing fine, lots of top 10 performances there,” Chabot said.

Beatty finished eighth in the 7.5-km free, Janelle Greer finished sixth in the 10-km classic and was followed by Beatty in seventh, and Beatty finished eighth in the 1000-m sprint.