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Turning to Day 10 of the Milano-Cortina Games, did Mikael Kingsbury’s victory in the dual moguls maybe open the floodgates for more Canadian golds? Canada has a top contender in short track speed skating on Monday, plus medal hopes in freestyle skiing and figure skating.
We’ll start our daily viewing guide there, then cover some other key things to watch, including Canada’s women’s hockey semifinal and two games for star curler Rachel Homan, whose back is against the wall again.
Short track speed skating: Courtney Sarault, Kim Boutin and Florence Brunelle in the women’s 1,000m (final at 6:47 a.m. ET)
With a silver in the mixed relay and a bronze in the women’s 500m already under her belt, Sarault has an excellent chance here to win her third medal of the Games. Her three world-championship medals in the 1,000m include a silver last year, and the 25-year-old from Moncton owned this distance on the World Cup tour this season, winning three of the four races and taking silver in the other.
Expect Sarault to battle for the gold with the Netherlands’ Xandra Velzeboer, who won the 500m on Thursday and was the 1,000m world champion in 2023; and Belgium’s Hanne Desmet, the reigning 1,000m world champ and the only skater to beat Sarault in the 1K on the World Tour this season.
Boutin and Brunelle are longshots for the podium. Boutin took Olympic silver in this event back in 2018 and earned her fifth career Olympic medal on Tuesday in the mixed relay.
Racing begins with the quarterfinals at 5 a.m. ET, followed by the semis at 5:57 a.m. ET and the final at 6:47 a.m. ET.
Monday’s short track slate also features the first round of the men’s 500m at 5:17 a.m. ET. This event is Canadian star Will Dandjinou’s last chance to win an individual medal after he missed the podium in the 1,000m and the 1,500m as the gold-medal favourite in both. Canada’s Steven Dubois is the reigning world champion in the 500 and won bronze at the 2022 Olympics. The medal rounds are on Wednesday.
Also, the men’s relay competition begins with the semifinals at 6:06 a.m. ET. Canada, led by Dandjinou and Dubois, is favoured to win gold. The top two in each heat qualify for the final on Friday.
Freestyle skiing: Megan Oldham and Naomi Urness in the women’s big air final at 1:30 p.m. ET
Coming off her bronze in the slopestyle event on Monday, Oldham was the surprise winner of Saturday’s qualifying round, outscoring defending Olympic champion Eileen Gu of China and slopestyle gold medallist Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland. Most of Oldham’s success has come in the slopestyle, but she did earn a bronze in the big air at the 2023 world championships.
Urness was seventh in qualifying. The 21-year-old leads the World Cup big air standings after rattling off three consecutive medals earlier this season, including her first career gold in December in Colorado.
Figure skating: Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud in the pairs final round at 2 p.m. ET
Those are not the names we expected to see here. Yes, Pereira and Michaud beat Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps at the Canadian championships last month. But they’ve never finished better than sixth at the world championships or the Grand Prix Final, while the more seasoned Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps won the world title in 2024 and were expected to contend for the Olympic podium.
Instead, it’s the 21-year-old Pereira (literally half Stellato-Dudek’s age) and the 29-year-old Michaud who will skate in the final flight after placing a stunning third in the short program today. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps scraped into the 16-team free skate with their 14th-place showing.
They weren’t the only pair to disappoint. Gold-medal favourites Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan, who won two of the last three world titles, are in fifth place. Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin, the runners-up at last year’s worlds, lead by about 4½ points over Georgia’s Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava, with Pereira and Michaud less than a point behind them.
