Two days. Two medals.

Emily Nishikawa single-handedly upped the Yukon's medal count from two to four in the past two days.

The 21 year old won bronze today – tying the Yukon with Newfoundland and Labrador for eighth in the medal count – in the 1000-metre sprint event at the Canada Winter Games in Nova Scotia.

"I'm pretty happy with that, really excited to be on the podium again today,” said Nishikawa, who trains at the Alberta World Cup Academy in Canmore.

"I'm just really happy to be back on the podium for the second time.

"I love representing the Yukon. It's pretty cool to win medals for the Yukon.”

Nishikawa won the Yukon's third gold medal yesterday by finishing the 7.5-kilometre free (interval start) in 19 minutes, 37.60 seconds.

Today, she placed third behind Alberta's Heidi Widmer and British Columbia's Alysson Marshall – the same three who occupied the podium yesterday.

All Yukon skiers advanced from the qualifiers to the quarter finals.

Yukoners Dahria Beatty and Janelle Greer got to the B final and finished eighth and 10th respectively.

Kendra Murray and Heidi Brook were eliminated in the quarter finals.

Nishikawa's best results this season have come in distance events.

She finished as the top Canadian in the U23 Cross Country Ski Championships in Otepaa, Estonia, at the end of January.

"I think I'm fairly strong in both sprinting and distance now,” she said.

"I think I could have done a little bit better (today), but there was a lot of deep snow on the course that made it kind of tricky, but overall I'm really happy with the way I skied.”

Earlier this month, Nishikawa won the Open Women's distance race at the Eastern Canadian Cross Country Ski Championships.

This year marks Nishikawa's third time competing at the Canada Winter Games.

She had a disappointing 2007 Games when she was denied a podium spot after breaking a pole midway through the race.

She's nabbed these two medals in two days despite suffering a shoulder injury in September which threatened to put a damper on her whole season.

Cross Country Yukon coach Alain Masson said Nishikawa is right where she should be.

"It's one thing to be where you should be, but it's another thing to actually do it and win the medal, because a lot of people go into events thinking they should win a medal and not,” Masson said.

"In the female category, there's probably six, seven skiers who could realistically win a medal, Emily being one of the better ones of that group in the last few weeks or months.

"There's no guarantee, even if you're the favourite, that you're going to actually come through,” he added.

Criteria for this year's Games has changed since 2007, Masson pointed out.

Before, national team members and those who competed internationally were ineligible.

Now the only skiers ineligible for the Canada Games are those who have won medals at the Olympics, World Championships or World Cup.

That makes the level of competition this time around much stronger, Masson said.

"A top 10 here is much better,” he said.

Cross country skiers will take a break from competition tomorrow before the men's 15 km classic and women's 10 km classic races on Thursday.

Those events will be followed by the male 4x5km relay and female 4x3.75km relay events on Saturday.

Masson said the upcoming races are the events in which the Yukon should shine.

"Usually, as an overall team, that's usually our best day,” Masson said. "Not to say that we will do better, but in theory that's where the average Yukon skier should do better.”