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Day 15 is the final full day of competition before the Milano-Cortina Games wrap up on Sunday. It’s another big one for Canada, featuring a pair of curling medal games, a good chance for gold in ski cross, and several other podium opportunities.
Here’s your daily viewing guide:
Canadian medal chances on Saturday
In chronological order:
Freestyle skiing: Canada in the aerials mixed team final at 4:45 a.m. ET
Canada won bronze in this event in 2022 with Marion Thénault, Miha Fontaine and Lewis Irving. The trio returns here after Thenault and Irving placed seventh in their individual events while Fontaine was 15th.
There are seven teams in the final. The top four in the first run at 4:45 a.m. ET will compete for the medals at 5:45 a.m. ET.
Freestyle skiing: Reece Howden in men’s ski cross (final at 7:15 a.m. ET)
Howden won a record seven times on the World Cup circuit last season to capture the third Crystal Globe championship of his career and his second in three years. The 27-year-old from
Chilliwack, B.C., has continued to dominate this season, winning four events so far while adding a silver and a bronze for six podium finishes in nine starts. He broke the all-time men’s World Cup wins record in December and has since raised the number to 22.
But, to truly be considered among the all-time greats, Howden needs a major title — or at least a major medal. He was eliminated in the quarterfinals at the 2022 Olympics and has not reached the podium in his four individual starts at the world championships.
Canada has two more medal hopefuls in Kevin Drury and Jared Schmidt. Drury, 37, finished fourth at the 2018 Olympics, took bronze at the 2019 world championships and, the following season, became the first Canadian man to win a ski cross Crystal Globe. He finished seventh in the World Cup standings last season on the strength of five bronze medals, and this past December he earned his first World Cup win in five years. But he hasn’t reached the podium since then and now ranks 10th in the World Cup standings. Schmidt, 28, has no medals this season and is ranked 12th.
Howden’s main challenger is Italy’s Simone Deromedis. The 2023 world champion is No. 2 in the World Cup standings after being the runner-up last season behind Howden.
The competition begins at 4 a.m. ET with a time trial for seeding. The elimination rounds start at 6 a.m. ET and culminate with the final at 7:15 a.m. ET.
Curling: Canada vs. the United States for the women’s bronze at 8:05 a.m. ET
Rachel Homan’s back-to-back world champion Canadian team came into the playoffs on a roll, having recovered from a 1-3 start by winning five straight de facto elimination games to advance to the medal rounds. But the streak, and their gold-medal dreams, ended with today’s loss to Sweden in the semifinals.
Homan, who missed the playoffs at the last two Olympics, can still go home with her first medal by defeating Tabitha Peterson’s U.S. team in the bronze game. The Americans beat Canada 9-8 in the round robin before losing 7-4 to Switzerland in their semifinal today.
The gold-medal game is on Sunday. Four-time world champion Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland has clinched her first Olympic medal and will now go for the gold against Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg, who won gold in 2018 and bronze in 2022.
Valérie Maltais of La Baie, Que, claimed the 1,500-metre speed skating bronze medal on Friday, to go along with her gold medal in team pursuit and 3,000m bronze medal.
Speed skating: Valérie Maltais and Ivanie Blondin in the women’s mass start (final at 11:15 a.m. ET)
Maltais came out of nowhere today to win bronze in the 1,500m. Prior to this, her best Olympic finish in this distance was sixth. And that was 12 years ago. In short track. At the long track world championships last year, she finished 13th in the mile-ish distance.
Maltais will try to pull off another surprise in the mass start, easily the most chaotic event in long track. Rather than racing two at a time in separate lanes in a time-trial format, more than a dozen athletes all line up at the same time and battle for 16 laps around the 400m oval.
That actually sounds perfect for a converter short tracker, and Maltais has indeed done well in the mass start, winning three World Cup medals last season and two silvers this season. But Canada’s best bet for an Olympic medal is still Ivanie Blondin, who also began her career in short track. The 35-year-old is a two-time mass start world champion and was the Olympic silver medallist in 2022. She also won silver at each of the last three world championships and won a World Cup gold in Calgary this season.
Racing begins with the semifinals at 9:50 a.m. ET. There are two heats of 14, and the top eight in each advance to the final at 11:15 a.m. ET.
The men’s mass start also takes place on Saturday. American star Jordan Stolz can win his third gold medal in four races. He set Olympic records in the 500m and the 1,000m but was upset in the 1,500 on Thursday by China’s Ning Zhongyan.
Canada’s entries are Daniel Hall and Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu. The latter has won two mass start medals at the world championships, including a silver in 2024 in Calgary, and picked up a bronze on the World Cup tour this season.
The men’s semis are at 9 a.m. ET, and the final at 10:40 a.m. ET.
Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg defeats Rachel Homan and her Ottawa-based rink 6-3 in the women’s curling semifinals at Milano Cortina 2026. Homan will face American Tabitha Peterson in the bronze-medal game on Saturday.
Curling: Canada vs. Great Britain for the men’s gold at 1:05 p.m. ET
Brad Jacobs can become the first Canadian skip to win an Olympic title in four-player curling since he and Jennifer Jones swept the men’s and women’s golds in 2014 in Sochi. That victory came with a different team, but two of Jacobs’ current teammates, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert, won Olympic gold with Kevin Martin in 2010 in Vancouver.
Canada drew a tough opponent in Bruce Mouat’s Great Britain team, which won the world championship in 2023 and 2025 (representing Scotland) and took Olympic silver in 2022. They looked in danger of missing the playoffs at 4-4 after Canada handed them their third straight loss on Tuesday, but Mouat’s team beat the U.S. in a do-or-die round-robin finale before knocking off unbeaten Switzerland in the semis.
The Swiss came back to win the bronze game today, trouncing Norway 9-1.
Freestyle skiing: Amy Fraser and Rachael Karker in the women’s halfpipe final at 1:30 p.m. ET
Fraser and Karker placed seventh and ninth, respectively, in qualifying. Canada’s Cassie Sharpe earned the third-best score with her opening run but is unlikely to compete in the final after her frightening crash in the second run, which knocked her unconscious. The 2018 Olympic champion and 2022 silver medallist was said to be awake, talking and in stable condition yesterday, but there was no update on her condition today.
Defending Olympic champion Eileen Gu and reigning world champ Zoe Atkin of Great Britain are expected to battle for the gold. Gu, who was born and raised in the United States and still lives there, is once again facing backlash in the U.S. over her decision to switch allegiances to China before the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
Other stuff to watch on Saturday
Men’s hockey: Finland vs. Slovakia for the bronze medal at 2:40 p.m. ET
The Slovaks were completely outclassed by the U.S. in the semifinals today, falling behind 5-0 before eventually losing 6-2. But it should be a more competitive game against the Finns, who have to be gutted after coming so close to knocking off Canada.
Slovakia beat Sweden for the bronze at the 2022 Games, which did not include NHL players.
Cross-country skiing: Men’s 50km mass start classic at 5 a.m. ET
This is the last race for Norway’s Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, who has won five gold medals in five events so far to get to 10 for his career. That’s an all-time Winter Olympics record, and if Klaebo wins this race he’ll move past U.S. speed skating legend Eric Heiden for the most golds in a single Winter Games.
Canada’s two entries, Antoine Cyr and Tom Stephen, were part of the team that finished fifth in the 4×7.5km relay last weekend.
For more on Norway’s skiing success and other international stories to follow on Day 15, read Richard Deitsch’s daily Olympic notebook.
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