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Looking ahead to Day 5, Canada has a good shot at its first Olympic figure skating medal since 2018. Plus, two of the Games’ marquee events, men’s hockey and men’s curling, get underway. So let’s get into all that and some other interesting stuff, including another Olympic flop by American alpine star Mikaela Shiffrin, and a biathlon skier who decided to tell the world he cheated on his girlfriend.
In chronological order:
Alpine skiing: Jack Crawford and Cam Alexander in the men’s super-G at 5:30 a.m. ET
Canada’s top two men’s alpine skiers finished ninth and 14th, respectively, in Saturday’s downhill, which was probably their best shot at the podium. Nine of their 11 career World Cup medals have come in that discipline, including all five of Alexander’s. But Crawford won gold at the 2023 world championships in the super-G — the downhill’s slightly slower, more technical cousin — and has a couple of World Cup silvers.
Switzerland’s Franjo von Allmen will try for his third gold medal of the Games after winning the downhill and Monday’s team combined event with slalom specialist Tanguy Nef. But he’ll have to hold off his countryman Marco Odermatt, the four-time World Cup overall title winner and reigning super-G world champ who finished a disappointing fourth in the downhill before grabbing a silver in the team combined.
Freestyle skiing: Maïa Schwinghammer in the women’s moguls final at 8:15 a.m. ET
A 24-year-old from flat-as-a-pancake Saskatoon (she learned to ski on a tiny man-made local hill known as “the Pimple on the Prairie”), Schwinghammer broke through last year with her first World Cup victory at Quebec’s Val St-Côme and a bronze at the world championships in Switzerland, but has yet to reach the podium this season. She placed sixth in qualifying today to advance to the final along with Canada’s Laurianne Desmarais-Gilbert, who was eighth.
There’s another round of qualifying at 5 a.m. ET for those who didn’t finish in the top 10 today. It includes Canada’s Ashley Koehler and Jessica Linton. The top 10 there will move on to the final, which consists of two runs.
The men’s final is on Thursday. Canadian flag-bearer Mikaël Kingsbury, going for his fourth consecutive Olympic medal and his second gold (he won in 2018) placed third in qualifying today to advance. Canada’s Julien Viel was second behind Ikuma Horishima, the Japanese star who halted Kingsbury’s run of three straight world titles last year.
Speed skating: Laurent Dubreuil in the men’s 1,000m at 12:30 p.m. ET
Dubreuil won Olympic silver in the 1,000m in 2022 before missing the podium in this distance at all three world championships since then. He was right on the cusp the last two years, placing fourth and fifth, but now it seems like the 33-year-old may have aged out of contention in the longer of the two sprint races. He did not win a 1,000m medal on the World Cup tour over the last three seasons, and finished 14th and 20th in his two starts this season.
Dubreuil’s best hope for a medal in what will likely be his final Olympics will come in the 500m on Saturday. He won silver in that distance at the 2023 and ’24 worlds and placed fourth last year.
The man to beat is Jordan Stolz, the 21-year-old American dynamo who won an incredible 80 per cent of his individual World Cup starts over the last seasons while going a perfect 10-for-10 in the 1,000m. Stolz swept the 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m golds at the world championships in both 2023 and 2024 but settled for two silvers and a bronze last year after illnesses sapped his strength.
Figure skating: Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier in the ice dance free skate at 1:30 p.m. ET
The four-time world championship medallists are in position to reach their first Olympic podium after placing third in the opening round on Monday. France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry (who formerly skated for Canada) and Guillaume Cizeron (who won Olympic gold in 2022 with his former teammate Gabriella Papadakis) have a slim lead over back-to-back-to-back world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States, with a much larger gap separating the Americans from Gilles and Poirier.
The Canadians will have to hold off Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who sit close behind them in fourth. Curiously, the British judge scored the Canadians in sixth place in the opening round while placing Fear and Gibson second, ahead of Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron.
Canada’s other two dance teams also qualified for the final skate. Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha are in ninth place while Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac are 15th.
The men’s event started today with American star Ilia Malinin topping the short program. Canada’s Stephen Gogolev placed 10th to qualify for Friday’s free skate.
Men’s hockey gets underway with two games.
The most anticipated event of these Olympics begins at 10:40 a.m. ET when Slovakia faces Finland. The Finns are technically the defending Olympic champs, and the Slovaks took bronze four years ago in Beijing. But that tournament did not include NHL players, who are back for the first time since 2014, when Canada beat Sweden for the gold.
Finland is generally considered the fourth-best team this time, behind Canada, the United States and Sweden. The Finns are without Florida Panthers star Aleksander Barkov, who’s out for the season with a knee injury, but they still have All-Star forwards Mikko Rantanen and Sebastian Aho. Slovakia, featuring young Montreal Canadiens sniper Juraj Slafkovsky, are long shots for a medal.
The second game, at 3:10 p.m. ET, pits Sweden vs. host Italy. The Swedes are strong on defence with the likes of Victor Hedman, Erik Karlsson and Rasmus Dahlin. But their most talented forward, William Nylander of the Toronto Maple Leafs, was sidelined recently with a sore groin and could be a game-time decision after missing today’s practice. Italy is the only team in the tournament with no NHLers, though it does include nine Canadian-born players with dual citizenship.
The four teams playing on Tuesday make up Group B. Canada, which opens Thursday against Czechia, will also face Switzerland and France in Group A. The U.S. headlines Group C with Germany, Latvia and Denmark.
All 12 teams advance to the playoff round. The top finisher in each group plus the best second-place team get a bye to the quarterfinals. In the group stage, teams get three points for a regulation win, two for a win in overtime or the shootout, one for a loss in OT or the shootout, and zero for a regulation loss.
Men’s curling begins.
The mixed doubles event wrapped up today with Swedish siblings Isabella and Rasmus Wrana winning the gold-medal game 6-5 over Americans Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin. Italy’s
Stefania Constantini and Amos Mosaner, who were the reigning Olympic and world champions, salvaged a bronze by defeating Great Britain 5-3.
Now it’s time for the traditional four-player events, starting with the opening draw of the men’s tournament at 1:05 p.m. ET, which includes Canada vs. Germany. The women’s event begins Thursday.
The Canadian men are skipped by Brad Jacobs, who’s trying to lead Canada to its first four-player Olympic gold since he and Jennifer Jones swept the men’s and women’s titles in 2014. The 40-year-old from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., is now with three different teammates: Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert, who won gold with Kevin Martin in 2010, and Brett Gallant, who took bronze with Brad Gushue in 2022 but just finished a disappointing 4-5 in mixed doubles with his wife, Jocelyn Peterman.
The favourite for the men’s gold is Bruce Mouat’s Great Britain team, which won the world championship last year for Scotland. 2022 gold medallist and seven-time world champ Nik Edin of Sweden had appeared to be in decline at age 40 before winning the European championship in December. Here’s more on Mouat from CBC Sports’ Devin Heroux.
Mikaela Shiffrin’s Olympic nightmares continued. In 2022, the American alpine star had aspirations of winning six medals but went home empty-handed after DNF’ing in half her races. Today, Shiffrin was handed a golden opportunity to redeem herself in the women’s team combined event when her partner, downhill gold medallist Breezy Johnson, clocked the fastest time in the opening leg. All Shiffrin had to do was hang onto it in the slalom, her specialty and the source of 71 of her all-time-record 108 World Cup wins, including seven victories in eight starts this season. But she finished a disastrous 15th, dropping her and Johnson down to fourth place.
A Norwegian biathlete made a strange confession. Shortly after winning a bronze medal in the men’s individual 20km event today, Sturla Holm Laegreid had to get something off his chest. “Six months ago I met the love of my life. The world’s most beautiful, sweetest person. And three months ago I made the biggest mistake of my life and cheated on her,” a tearful Laegreid told Norway’s public broadcaster. “I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to say by saying this now, but sport has taken a back seat in recent days. I wish I could share this with her.”
Laegreid’s viral interview is just one of the international stories in today’s edition of Richard Deitsch’s daily Olympic notebook. Read it here.
