What to watch in Olympic sports this weekend
CBC
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A pair of world championships and a near-major golf tournament highlight this weekend's slate for Canadian athletes on the world stage. Here are the key events:
Curling: Women's world championship
After defeating Jennifer Jones in the Scotties Tournament of Hearts final last month in Calgary to capture her fourth Canadian championship, Ottawa skip Rachel Homan will try to end a vexing dry spell for her country. Despite being home to most of the planet's best curlers, Canada has not won a world or Olympic title in any of the mainstream events (women's, men's and mixed doubles) in six years.
Homan might be just the one to halt the gold drought. She and Miskew (Homan's longtime third) won the world title in 2017, and with Fleury and Wilkes now on board the team looked nearly unstoppable at the Scotties. They went 11-0 to boost their record to a sparkling 49-5 this season, and they're No. 1 in the world rankings.
Homan's rink will have the support of a partisan crowd in Sydney N.S., which is hosting the women's worlds for the first time starting Saturday and running through next weekend. But they'll have to get past the likes of Swiss skip Silvana Tirinzoni, who's going for her fifth consecutive world title, and 2018 Olympic gold medallist Anna Hasselborg of Sweden.
Short track speed skating: World championships
Several Canadians should contend for the podium in the Netherlands, where sold-out crowds are expected for the medal events on Saturday and Sunday in the cradle of long track skating. There are individual 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m races for both men and women, plus men's, women's and mixed relays.
Canadian skaters won 35 medals over the six short track World Cup meets this season. Jordan Pierre-Gilles and William Dandjinou finished atop the men's 500m and 1,500m standings, respectively, while Steven Dubois was the runner-up in both the 500m and 1,000m. Felix Roussel placed third in the 500m, but he's been scratched from the worlds after suffering an injury in training yesterday. Pascal Dion was fourth in the 1,500m.
Dubois won a medal of each colour at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, and he was the top Canadian man at last year's world championships in Seoul, taking silver in the 500 and bronze in the 1,000.
Canada's women had a tough World Cup season, with no one cracking the top six in the standings for an individual distance. But the relay team placed third, and Kim Boutin's return offers some upside. The four-time Olympic medallist skipped the first four meets of the season to focus on her studies before capturing a 500m bronze at last month's season finale in Poland. Boutin and Courtney Sarault each won a solo and a relay bronze at last year's worlds.
Watch Saturday's races live starting at 8:30 a.m. ET and Sunday's at 9 a.m. ET on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem.
Golf: The Players Championship
You might not think of golf as an Olympic sport, but this year it is. Sixty players will qualify for the men's tournament in Paris in August based on the world rankings on June 17 — the day after the U.S. Open is completed.
Canada's Kevin Drury battled his way to a gold medal that left him in tears at a World Cup ski cross event on Friday in Val Thorens, France.
Soccer fans have accused FIFA of a "monumental betrayal" after latest prices for World Cup tickets began to circulate on Thursday.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is “disappointed” that the main arena slated to host ice hockey at February’s Olympics isn’t yet completed with less than two months to go before the Games are scheduled to be played.
A two-year suspension from competitive swimming has forced Penny Oleksiak to answer questions about drug use, train by herself in public pools and defend her legacy as Canada’s most decorated female Olympian.
Hockey, one of the premier events at the Winter Olympics and one that is welcoming NHL players back for the first time in more than a decade, will take place on ice shorter than NHL-regulation size.
Summer McIntosh capped swimming’s U.S. Open with the event record in the women’s 200-metre butterfly on Saturday in Austin, Texas.
Some bronze medals are worth their weight in gold. Valerie Grenier's third-place finish in women's giant slalom at the Mont-Tremblant World Cup certainly fits that category.
The men’s World Cup draw in Washington D.C. was going well for Canada until Pot 4.
The draw for the 2026 World Cup takes place Friday at 12 p.m. ET at the Kennedy Center in Washington, for the purpose of dividing the 48-team field into 12 groups of four. Once the tournament starts, 32 teams will advance from those preliminary groups to the single-elimination knockout rounds.
The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., buzzed with activity and speculation on Thursday in advance of Friday’s all-important draw for the 2026 men’s World Cup.
By the time the management group for the Canadian men’s national hockey team emerges from marathon meetings on Tuesday, as much as 80 per cent of the roster going to Italy next February should be written in pen.
Canada’s ski mountaineering athletes have their Olympic dreams on the line this weekend at a World Cup event in Solitude, Utah.
Goalie Carter Hart, one of five 2018 Canada world junior hockey players acquitted of sexual assault in July, will make his first NHL appearance in nearly two years when he starts in goal Tuesday night for the Vegas Golden Knights, who host Chicago.