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Day 2 of the Milano-Cortina Olympics also happens to be Super Bowl Sunday. This is where a clever writer would delight you with a neat connection between these Games and tonight’s big football extravaganza. But all I could come up with is the fact that Milan is in the Lombardy region of Italy, and the Super Bowl champion will be awarded the Lombardi Trophy.
Anyway, today was far less than super for Canada, which did not have any great medal opportunities and was indeed unable to add to the bronze by speed skater Valérie Maltais on Saturday.
Canada had podium aspirations in figure skating’s team event but ended up falling one spot to a fifth-place finish. Japan surged into a tie with the United States heading into the closing men’s free skate before American superstar Ilia Malinin delivered the gold by outscoring Shun Sato with a (by his standards) so-so performance.
Earlier in the day, veteran Canadian speed skater Ted-Jan Bloemen placed 13th in the men’s 5,000m, and Canada’s best result in cross-country skiing was also a 13th, by Xavier McKeever in the men’s skiathlon. In snowboarding, none of the four Canadians in the parallel giant slalom went deeper than the quarterfinals, while former world champion Laurie Blouin and Juliette Pelchat both failed to advance to the women’s big air final.
But the most devastating result for Canada came in mixed doubles curling, where the married couple of Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant were eliminated from playoff contention with losses to Sweden and South Korea that dropped their record to 3-5 after a 3-0 start.
The big international story of the day was a tough one too. American alpine skiing star Lindsey Vonn, attempting to compete on a torn ACL, lost control early in her downhill run and crashed spectacularly. The 41-year-old was airlifted off the course with a broken leg and later underwent surgery. World champion Breezy Johnson of the U.S. won the gold for her first Olympic medal.
On a brighter note, the Canadian men’s hockey team arrived in Italy and, no surprise, named Sidney Crosby its captain. Canada’s first game is on Thursday against Czechia.
Here’s more on how Canada fared on Day 2. And make sure to check out CBC Sports’ daily recap show, Air Canada Olympic Winter Games Today with host Ariel Helwani, tonight (and every night) at 8 p.m. ET on CBC Gem.
Looking ahead to Day 3, it could be another quiet one medal-wise for Canada. But we do have a couple of contenders in a freestyle skiing event and a long shot in speed skating, so we’ll start our daily viewing guide there. Plus, some other interesting things to watch.
There are two to keep an eye on. In chronological order:
Freestyle skiing: Megan Oldham and Naomi Urness in the women’s slopestyle final at 6:30 a.m. ET
In slopestyle, athletes make their way down a course tricked out with a variety of obstacles including rails and different kinds of jumps. They’re judged on the breadth, originality and quality of the stunts they perform.
The 24-year-old Oldham is Canada’s top contender here. She won a slopestyle medal at each of the last three world championships, taking silver in 2023 and bronze in 2021 and 2025, and currently ranks third in the World Cup standings. Oldham grabbed a silver in Colorado in January and earned three medals on the tour last season, including a gold.
Urness, 21, burst on the World Cup scene earlier this season with three straight medals in the big air discipline, including a gold. She’s finished 13th in all three slopestyle World Cup starts so far in her career but won a silver at the Winter X Games in Aspen two weeks ago.
Reigning Olympic and world champion Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland is a slight favourite to win gold over Eileen Gu, the U.S.-born China star who took silver in this event in 2022 and won gold in two other events.
Oldham and Urness placed seventh and eighth, respectively, in qualifying to reach the 12-skier final. It consists of three runs, with the last one going at 7:28 a.m. ET.
Speed skating: Béatrice Lamarche in the women’s 1,000m at 11:30 a.m. ET
The 27-year-old Lamarche won a silver at the world championships last year in the non-Olympic team sprint, then scored a World Cup bronze in the 1,000m at the season opener in Salt Lake City in November. However, that’s her only individual World Cup medal, and she finished sixth in the season-long standings for the 1,000m.
Lamarche was 18th in the 1,000 at last year’s world championships and has never finished higher than 12th in any solo distance at the worlds. So she’s a long shot for the podium here.
The favourite is Dutchwoman Jutta Leerdam, a two-time world champion in this distance who is engaged to the American YouTuber/boxer Jake Paul. But she’ll have to get past Japan’s Miho Takagi, who beat her at the 2022 Olympics and last year’s worlds.
Mixed doubles curling: Round-robin finales at 4:05 a.m. ET, semifinals at 12:05 p.m. ET. At 3-5, Peterman and Gallant have nothing to play for in their final game against Switzerland after becoming the second straight Canadian mixed doubles team to not reach the medal rounds at the Olympics (Rachel Homan and John Morris missed out after going 5-4 in 2022). The Swiss (4-4) are eliminated too as all four playoff spots are now spoken for. Great Britain (8-1) has clinched first place, while the United States (6-2) and defending champion Italy (5-3) will square off in the morning for second. Sweden (5-4) will round out the playoff bracket. The gold and bronze medal games are on Tuesday.
Alpine skiing: Men’s team combined (4:30 a.m. ET and 8 a.m. ET). New to the Olympics, this event replaces the old individual combined, where each skier raced both a slalom and a downhill leg and the fastest total time won. It’s the same idea in the team combined, except a pair of skiers from the same country split the two legs. Canada did not qualify a team, while some countries have as many as four — including Switzerland, which has newly crowned Olympic downhill champ Franjo von Allmen and World Cup overall king Marco Odermatt in separate pairings. The downhill leg kicks things off, followed by the slalom.
Figure skating: Ice dance begins at 1:20 p.m. ET. With the team event over, competition in the traditional disciplines opens with the first stage of the ice dance. Canada has a strong medal contender here in Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who have reached the podium at four of the last five world championships, including silvers in 2024 and ’25. However, they finished fourth in the biggest event so far this season, the Grand Prix Final in December, and were also fourth in their team-event skate on Friday. Two other duos are representing Canada: Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, and Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac. The latter had to make a last-minute change to their music when they couldn’t get the rights to a Prince song. Here’s more on that from CBC Sports contributor Chris Jones.
Women’s hockey: Canada vs. Czechia at 3:10 p.m. ET. The defending Olympic champion Canadians dominated their opener on Saturday, blanking Switzerland 4-0 while outshooting them 55-6. The Czechs (1-2) lost to the Swiss in a shootout and got trounced 5-1 by the world champion United States, but they shut out Finland 2-0 today to avenge their loss in last year’s bronze-medal game at the world championship in Czechia.
For a look at the international storylines to follow on Monday, read this by CBC Sports contributor Richard Deitsch.
Along with TV broadcasts on CBC and its partner networks Sportsnet and TSN, you can stream all of the action from the Milano-Cortina Games live and on demand exclusively on the free CBC Gem app. You can also access Gem on your desktop web browser at gem.cbc.ca.
For a full listing of what’s on each day, see the full CBC Olympic streaming schedule.
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