Olympic viewing guide: Will Canada’s speed-skating resurgence continue

Bloemen goes for Canada’s second long track medal in as many days

Jesse Campigotto · CBC Sports ·

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Canada wasted no time getting on the board in Beijing, reaching the podium twice on the first day of medal events. Speed skater Isabelle Weidemann broke the ice with a bronze in the women’s 3,000 metres before men’s moguls favourite Mikaël Kingsbury had to settle for silver. It looked like Canada added a bronze in short track speed skating’s mixed relay event, but the team was disqualified for causing a crash after finishing third in the final.

An Olympic silver medal is a marvelous accomplishment, but for Kingsbury it’s a tough pill to swallow. The best moguls skier of all time was favoured to win his second consecutive Olympic title, and he put himself in position to do it with a near-flawless last run. But the final skier, 21-year-old Swede Walter Wallberg, shocked the GOAT with an even better one to steal the gold. Before this, Wallberg had never won an event at the highest level of the sport. The figurative silver lining to Kingsbury’s second Olympic silver medal (he won one as an up-and-comer in 2014) is that he’s the first men’s moguls skier to reach the podium at three straight Olympics.

Looking ahead to tonight and tomorrow morning in Canadian time zones, Canada’s long track speed skating team has a good chance to win its second medal in as many days. Let’s start our daily viewing guide there, then look at Canada’s other strong contender for a podium tonight. Plus, the Canadian mixed doubles curling team has some work to do, it’s crunch time in figure skating’s team event, and alpine skiing competition opens with the sport’s most volatile race.

Here’s what to watch on Saturday night and Sunday morning:

Canada’s resurgent speed skating team can add another medal

After capturing an all-time-high eight medals at the 2006 Olympics and following that up with five in 2010 in Vancouver, Canada’s long track speed skaters managed only a pair at each of the last two Winter Games. Both times, a single man was responsible for the entire haul, with Denny Morrison collecting a silver and a bronze in 2014 before Ted-Jan Bloemen delivered a gold and a silver in 2018. The Dutch ex-pat’s victory in the 10,000 metres in South Korea gave Canada its first Olympic gold in an individual men’s long track event since the great Gaétan Boucher won a pair 34 years earlier.

Bloemen’s silver came in the men’s 5,000m, which is the event he’s competing in at 3:30 a.m. ET. Bloemen won the world title in this event in 2020. An Olympic gold looks like a tall order for the 35-year-old with Nils van der Poel looming as a heavy favourite. The Swede is the reigning world champion in the 5,000 and the 10,000, holds the world record in both events and is undefeated on the World Cup circuit this season. But Bloemen should be in the mix for a medal. He’s second in the World Cup rankings for the men’s long distances, which includes the 5,000 and 10,000, and reached the podium in two of the three 5,000m races this season.

If Bloemen can follow Weidemann’s medal performance from this morning with one of his own, it will be another sign that Canada’s long track speed skating team is back and might be on its way to a boatload of medals in Beijing. Canadians have won 24 medals on the World Cup circuit this season — an average of six per stop. Laurent Dubreuil is the reigning world champion and current World Cup leader in the men’s 500m, where he’s reached eight consecutive podiums. Weidemann, Ivanie Blondin and Valérie Maltais completed a perfect World Cup season in the women’s team pursuit, winning all three races. Blondin is ranked No. 1 in the women’s mass start. Weidemann should contend for another Olympic medal in the women’s 5,000m. Bloemen led Canada to a third-place World Cup ranking in the men’s team pursuit.

One caveat: this season was held during a global pandemic, so the World Cup fields were not always at full strength. But it’s clear that Canada has regained the kind of depth it enjoyed in its peak years. With medal races happening on most days through the end of the Games, this team is going to be very fun to follow.

Snowboarding: Laurie Blouin in the women’s slopestyle final at 8:30 p.m. ET

Blouin took silver in this event in 2018, overcoming a hard crash in training to win her first Olympic medal. She was the world champion in 2017 and has reached the slopestyle podium three straight years at the X Games, including a bronze last month. The 25-year-old posted the seventh-best score in qualifying this morning. Blouin is also the reigning world champion in big air, which she’ll compete in later in the Games.

The men’s snowboard slopestyle event gets started tonight with qualifying at 11:30 p.m. ET. Canada has three excellent medal contenders in Mark McMorris, who took bronze in this event at the last two Olympics; Max Parrot, the silver medallist in 2018; and Seb Toutant, the silver medallist at last year’s world championships and the reigning Olympic big air champion. Read more about Canada’s outlook in all the Olympic snowboarding events here.

Some other interesting stuff you should know about

Alpine skiing competition kicks off with the sport’s wildest event. Since Kerrin Lee-Gartner’s magical downhill victory in 1992, Canada has won just two Olympic alpine medals — a downhill bronze by Ed Podivinsky in ’94 and a super-G bronze by Jan Hudec in 2014. The chances for a podium in Beijing don’t look great either, with no Canadians ranked in the top 24 of the men’s or women’s World Cup overall standings. The best hope for a medal in tonight’s men’s downhill is probably Jack Crawford, a 24-year-old who’s ranked 21st in this discipline and has never reached a podium at the highest level of the sport. But the downhill is alpine’s most volatile race, and the Olympic course — located 80 kilometres outside Beijing — is mysterious. Created entirely with artificial snow, it has never hosted a World Cup race or even a test event. Could the top skiers’ lack of familiarity with the track open the door for a Gartner-esque upset? We’ll find out at 10 p.m. ET.

Canada is fighting for its life in the team figure skating competition. Only the top five teams after the completion of the men’s, women’s, dance and pairs short segments get to advance to the free skates. Canada is in sixth place heading into the women’s short at 8:30 p.m. ET. That means it’s all on 18-year-old Madeline Schizas to lift the team into the final round, which starts at 10:50 p.m. ET with the men’s free and concludes Sunday night.

Canada’s mixed doubles curling team has a battle on its hands this time. This is not like 2018, when John Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes closed with eight straight wins to cruise to the gold. Facing a tougher slate of opponents so far in Beijing, Morris and Rachel Homan are a respectable but unspectacular 4-2 after losing to Sweden and beating the United States last night. The top four in the 10-team field make the playoffs, and Canada sits in fourth place with three games left in the round robin. Homan and Morris need to bank wins against the ninth-place Czech Republic (2-4) at 1:05 a.m. ET and last-place Australia (0-7) at 7:05 a.m. ET to take the pressure out of Sunday night’s round-robin finale vs. Italy, the surprising leader at 6-0. Get all the latest buzz on what’s shaping up as a riveting event by watching That Curling Show with hosts Devin Heroux and Colleen Jones every night at 7 p.m. ET on the CBC Sports YouTube channel.

Justine Dufour-Lapointe hopes to recapture her old magic. The 2014 Olympic women’s moguls champ and 2018 silver medallist is now in the twilight of her career. Ranked 16th in the World Cup standings, she’s not expected to join Mikaël Kingsbury in reaching a third consecutive Olympic moguls podium. But the 27-year-old slipped into the medal round by grabbing the 10th and final spot available in the first round of qualifying. Hoping to join Dufour-Lapointe in the final at 6:30 a.m. ET is her older sister Chloe, who stood beside Justine on the 2014 podium as the silver medallist. She placed 11th in Thursday’s qualifying but can still get into the final via the second qualifying round. Same for fellow Canadian Sofiane Gagnon. That goes at 5 a.m. ET.

And also…

The Canadian women’s hockey team is taking no prisoners. The squad looks hell-bent on reclaiming the Olympic title after losing it to the archrival United States in a shootout in 2018. Through two games in Beijing, Canada has outscored its opponents 23-2. After routing overmatched Switzerland 12-1 in their tournament opener, it seemed like the Canadians would get a tougher test last night vs. Finland, which took bronze at the 2018 Olympics and last year’s world championship. Nope. Canada crushed them 11-1, with Sarah Nurse and Brianne Jenner scoring hat tricks, 21-year-old Olympic rookie Sarah Fillier notching her second straight two-goal game and Laura Stacey also contributing a pair. Canada’s depth is so strong that it hardly missed 2018 tournament MVP Mélodie Daoust, who sat out with an upper-body injury sustained in the opener. She’s listed as day-to-day and is expected to return “at some point” in the tournament, according to the Canadian team. Canada’s next game is Sunday at 11:10 p.m. ET vs. Russia. Read more about the blowout of Finland and what we can take away from it here.

How to watch live events

They’re being broadcast on TV on CBC, TSN and Sportsnet. Or choose exactly what you want to watch by live streaming on CBC Gem, the CBC Sports app and CBC Sports’ Beijing 2022 website. Check out the full streaming schedule (with links to live events) here and read more about how to watch the Games here.

If you’re located outside Canada, you unfortunately won’t be able to access CBC Sports’ coverage of the Games on the app or the website. That’s due to the way the Olympics’ media rights deals work. But if you’re in the northern United States or other international regions, such as Bermuda, that regularly offer the CBC TV network, you can watch the Games there.