What to watch this weekend in Olympic sports
CBC
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The calendar says winter is still a couple weeks away, but we're already in the thick of the winter Olympic sports season. Here are the top things for Canadian fans to keep an eye on in skating, skiing and sliding:
Figure skating: Big titles up for grabs
The exclusive Grand Prix Final is happening in France, where the top six in each discipline compete for one of the most prestigious titles in the sport.
For the fifth straight time, no Canadian singles skaters qualified for the Final. No Canadians are involved in the pairs competition either after reigning world champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps withdrew due to an illness.
Canada's two remaining entries are in the ice dance, and both teams are outside a podium spot after today's opening round. Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha sit in fourth place, which isn't bad considering they ranked sixth in the season-long standings. But third-ranked Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier are dead last after Poirier fell during today's skate. Everyone is chasing back-to-back world champs Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States, who will try to wrap up their second straight Grand Prix Final gold in the free skate on Saturday at 1:40 p.m. ET.
WATCH | CBC Sports tells you what sports to watch this weekend:
The women's free skate is on Saturday at 7:30 a.m. ET. Three-peat world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan is a surprising fourth after a disappointing short program. The men's free goes Saturday at 3 p.m. ET. World and Grand Prix Final champion Ilia Malinin of the U.S. built a huge lead in today's short skate.
The pairs event wrapped up today with Germany's Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin winning for the second straight year. Here are the latest results.
Alpine skiing: Speed events launch and Vonn's comeback begins
The first World Cup downhill of the season took place today at Colorado's Beaver Creek resort. Swiss journeyman Justin Murisier was the surprise winner, upsetting runner-up Marco Odermatt for his first World Cup victory and just the second medal of his career. Odermatt, also from Switzerland, is the defending World Cup men's downhill, super-G and giant slalom champion and is trying for his fourth consecutive overall title.
Canada's Jack Crawford, the reigning super-G world champion, placed fourth — 0.16 of a second off the bronze medal. Brodie Seger was 10th while Cameron Alexander, the downhill bronze medallist at the 2023 worlds, failed to complete the course.
Beaver Creek will host the season's first super-G on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. ET, followed by a giant slalom on Sunday at noon ET.
The women's World Cup stop scheduled for Quebec's Mont-Tremblant this week was cancelled due to a lack of snow. But American great Lindsey Vonn is beginning her comeback at age 40 with some lower-level downhill and super-G races this weekend at Colorado's Copper Mountain.
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.