LIVIGNO – Canadian snowboarder Laurie Blouin took some solace in finishing fifth on a difficult day in women’s slopestyle at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old from Quebec City, a two-time world champion (slopestyle in 2017 and big air in 2021) and slopestyle silver medallist at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, fell on her first two runs before landing her third run.

Changing conditions reduced the riders’ speed on the Livigno Snow Park course, making jumps difficult on the day.

“Honestly it was a hard day for everyone,” said Blouin. “The speed wasn’t there … I’m just happy I landed a run. It was not the cleanest one. I had to adjust after my second jump on my third run, I was going so slow.”

Japan’s Mari Fukada won the gold, improving on her second run score of 85.70 with a third run of 87.83. Defending champion Zoi Sadowski-Synnott of New Zealand moved into second with the final run of the day, scoring 87.48.

That knocked Japan’s Kokomo Murase down to bronze at 85.80 and Germany’s Annika Morgan off the podium at 78.78.

Murase won gold in big air earlier in the games while Sadowski-Synnott took silver.

Blouin’s third-run score left her fifth at 68.60.

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“At least it’s not fourth, honestly. I’ve had too many fourths in my career,” Blouin said with a giggle. “I’m just happy I had fun.”

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Blouin was fourth in Beijing four years ago. She has also placed fourth at the world championships (in big air in 2023) and at the Winter X Games (in slopestyle in 2025, and big air in 2021 and 2019).

Blouin says she has yet to decide whether she will be back for a fourth Olympics.

“I’m going to go year by year,” she said. “I want to still keep competing because I love competing and I still have the tricks and my body feels good.”

Blouin said she will choose what competitions to enter and also wants to continue making her own snowboarding videos.

“So I’m going to try to and balance everything,” she said. “But I want to still compete. I’m not done.”

Juliette Pelchat finished ninth. The 21-year-old from Whistler, B.C., in her first Olympics, had trouble with a rail on her first run and fell on her second before recording a final run score of 51.76.

“Honestly I had a lot of fun and I really tried my hardest to get speed. But that was definitely the biggest issue,” said Pelchat.

In the earlier men’s final, an emotional Mark McMorris fell on his third and final run in a bid to keep his run of Olympic medals going. The 32-year-old from Regina, who won bronze in Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing, finished eighth in the field of 12 after going down hard.

Cameron Spalding of Havelock, Ont., was 10th with Yiming Su winning to collect China’s first gold of the games.

Pelchat’s first run was a throwaway Wednesday as she fell coming off the rocket rail while Blouin missed the landing on her second jump.

Pelchat looked to have completed her second run but couldn’t hold the landing on her third and final jump. Blouin also had issues, coming off a top rail early before failing to land her second jump.

Australian Ally Hickman crashed hard on her second run, hitting the snow face first after coming off the top rail. She kept competing and finished seventh.

Blouin had qualified ninth for the final with Pelchat 12th. Sadowski Synnott topped qualifying as she did four years ago in Beijing.

The 24-year-old Kiwi, who only returned to competition last month after being sidelined by bone bruising, earned her fifth Olympic medal, having also won big air bronze in 2018 in Pyeongchang and silver in big air in 2022 in Beijing.

Her slopestyle win in Beijing marked New Zealand’s first-ever Winter Olympic gold medal.

Canada can take a small piece of the credit. According to the New Zealand Olympic team, a family Christmas holiday in Whistler, B.C., is Sadowski-Synnott’s earliest memory of snow and “probably where her love of sliding began.”

The 650-metre slopestyle course at Livigno Snow Park, which featured a vertical drop of 165 metres, features rail and jumps with riders judged on the breadth, originality, and quality of their tricks. Fifty percent of the marks come from the rails.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2026.

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Natalie Spooner isn’t just at the Milan Cortina Olympics to bring home another medal.

The Toronto hockey player is determined to make the most of her time at the Olympic Village — one bite at a time.

When she’s not on the ice, the 35-year-old has made it her mission to taste-test her way through the Games and share reviews on social media of some of the things she eats, ranging from chocolate pudding to pizza topped with potatoes.

“Why is there potato on a pizza? I guess in Canada we say, ‘Does pineapple belong on pizza?’” Spooner says in one post, smiling as she takes a bite. “Here, it’s, ‘Does potato belong on pizza?’”

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Last week, the International Olympic Committee said in a press release that more than 10,800 meals are served daily across the three Olympic sites in Milan, Cortina and Predazzo. In the Milan village alone, the kitchens serve around 3,000 eggs and 450 kilograms of pasta, the IOC said.

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The food in the Olympic Village has gone viral in more ways than one. The IOC announced in October that it had created a special pasta noodle shaped like the five Olympic rings.

The limited-edition dish was later served to the athletes in the village, resulting in a flood of social media comments from fans calling for the pasta to be available for the public to buy.

But for Spooner, a self-proclaimed “chocolate monster,” the sweet treats are definitely the highlight of the Olympic Village cuisine.

“This might be the best thing yet that I’ve found,” Spooner says in one video where she tries an Italian chocolate spread with a croissant. “That’s really good.”

Another post shows Spooner trying a chocolate lava cake, something she says is “famous” around the village.

“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” she says with a smile. “It’s gooey, it’s chocolatey … this is like hitting the spot right now.”

But not every dessert gets a gold medal — in one video, Spooner tries a chocolate soufflé, which she rates three out of 10.

“I would say this is a hockey puck,” Spooner laughs.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2026.

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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO – When Canadian curling coach Scott Pfeifer was a member of the Ferbey Four, the curling team would use the large group of reporters at big bonspiels to fuel rivalries and hype the players and the sport.

“(We’d be) lobbing bombs across the alley to the other teams,” Pfeifer said with a laugh. “I don’t think you see that as much anymore.”

That’s an understatement.

The Canadian media contingent is not what it used to be at the curling rink or at the Winter Games. It’s even more noticeable this year with the Milan Cortina Games the most spread out in Olympic history.

A thinning journalist presence at major sports events has been a media storyline for years due to shrinking newsroom budgets. The global pandemic made remote coverage the norm and not everyone returned to on-site coverage when the sports world got back to normal.

In addition to impacting the depth and quality of reporting, fewer on-site journalists means many amateur athletes are unable to share their stories.

“They’re just not going to get that coverage that they got in previous Olympics and that is sad,” USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan said Tuesday from Milan. “That’s sad because this is their moment.”

There are about 40 accredited Canadian journalists covering the Games across Italy, a Canadian Olympic Committee spokesman said in a direct message.

That’s up slightly from the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, which was an outlier due to the pandemic. Media numbers from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games in South Korea were not available, the COC said.

Brennan, who is covering the Olympics for the 22nd consecutive time, recalls how difficult it was to get near athletes in the mixed zone at previous Games over her career.

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“The interview area would just be packed,” she said. “I mean, you’d have to elbow your way in.

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“Well there’s none of that here. There’s plenty of room for all of us. And so that is certainly noticeable. That’s a big change.”

Rather than cover the Games in person, some outlets have reporters write stories after watching the competition remotely.

“It’s absolutely essential to be on site,” Brennan said. “Certainly that trend of sports sections and news organizations to have people cover events off TV is incredibly troubling. Although I understand the financial constraints.”

Brennan cited an example from the figure skating last week. When American star Ilia Malinin was preparing to begin his skate, she noticed from her seat in the media tribune how “shockingly nervous” he appeared.

She was able to observe some of the interaction with his coaches that wasn’t shown on the broadcast, she said, adding there was lots of colour to be gathered from the scene after his disappointing performance.

“There’s no way I could have reported on it and given my commentary and my opinions on it had I not been in the arena,” she said.

Rather than traditional media, many competitors instead use social media to build their brand or share their stories. Younger competitors have grown up in the social media age and many use those options to their benefit.

“Everybody is a storyteller,” said Canadian Secretary of Sport Adam van Koeverden, a four-time Olympian who won kayaking gold in 2004. “I had a blog in 2008 but I don’t think anybody read it though. It wasn’t a viral story. It was like, if I got 25 readers, I think I’d be thrilled.

“Now if you put something on social media, you might get 2,000 likes and 20,000 people looking at it, or more if you’re (freestyle skiing star) Eileen Gu. That media landscape has changed significantly.”

There are great stories to be had all around the Games, but many go untold simply because there are fewer options available to tell them. Another hurdle is travel, since most reporters aren’t moving between hubs due to the long distance.

“Athletes in other years would have received coverage,” Brennan said. “The athletes who are lesser known, are not receiving that coverage now.”

About a four-hour drive northeast of Milan, Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium has been a beehive of activity for the last fortnight with Canada at the centre of the action.

However, there are usually only three Canadian reporters in the press interview area. On some days, one-on-one sessions are available — a rarity at the Games.

“It would be nice to see a lot more in-person coverage rather than just seeing what you see online or what’s conveyed by certain people,” Pfeifer said in a recent interview. “It’s always good to have more people out there giving a more balanced perspective.”

COC chief executive officer David Shoemaker was asked about the changing media presence at the start of the Games.

“I wish there were more media here in Milan Cortina,” he told reporters. “It’s sort of why I started my remarks by acknowledging the challenges that each of you face, and frankly thanking you for your honest coverage of what we’re doing and what we are trying to do.”

Van Koeverden was a contributor for the CBC at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia and the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

He recalled simply hopping on buses to cover athletes at a wide array of competitions.

“We would plan our day based on where the medal hopefuls were and where the Canadians were,” he said in a recent sit-down chat in Cortina. “But you just can’t hop on a bus and go from Milan to Cortina, or Milan to Val di Fiemme, or over to Livigno.

“I guess that comes with the territory with a more environmentally sustainable Games and a more affordable Games for the organizer. So it’s a lot of changes.”

With files from Canadian Press sports reporter Donna Spencer.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2026.

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MILAN – From golden jumps to record-breaking goals, here are five things to know from Feb. 16 at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics:

GOLDEN OLDHAM

Parry Sound, Ont.’s Megan Oldham won gold in women’s freestyle skiing big air at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, topping the 10-woman final with a combined score of 180.75 from her first two jumps. China’s Eileen Gu, the defending Olympic champion, was next at 179.00, while Italy’s Flora Tabanelli took bronze four months after tearing an ACL. Oldham fell on her third and final jump — by then it was a victory lap — and embraced Gu before stepping onto the podium. The 24-year-old also won bronze in slopestyle earlier in the Games. It is Canada’s second gold medal and 11th overall of the Games.

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SARAULT WINS THIRD MEDAL

Moncton’s Courtney Sarault added to her medal haul with silver in the women’s 1,000 metres in short track, her third podium finish of the Milan-Cortina Games. The 25-year-old had already won silver in the mixed team relay and bronze in the 500 earlier in the week. She becomes the third Canadian to medal in the event, joining Nathalie Lambert (silver in 1994) and Kim Boutin (silver in 2018).

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POULIN SENDS CANADA TO GOLD-MEDAL REMATCH

Marie-Philip Poulin scored twice to lift Canada to a tight 2-1 semifinal win over Switzerland and into another Olympic women’s hockey gold-medal game. The captain became the first player to reach 20 career Olympic goals, breaking Hayley Wickenheiser’s record of 18. Canada will face the United States in Thursday’s final, marking the eighth straight Olympic final appearance for the Canadians, who are 5-2 in previous gold-medal games.

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PAIRS PODIUM PUSH FALLS SHORT

Canada’s medal hopes in pairs skating faded as Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud slipped from third to eighth after errors in the free skate. The duo, who posted a personal-best short program Sunday, scored 199.66 overall after mistakes on multiple jumping elements. Former world champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps finished 11th at 192.61. Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara rallied for gold with a clean, personal-best free skate.

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REBOUND AND ROLL IN CURLING

Rachel Homan’s Ottawa rink halted a three-game slide with wins over China (10-5) and Japan (9-6) to climb back to 3-3 in round-robin play. Canada now sits tied with Denmark for fifth place, with only the top four teams at the end of the round robin Thursday advancing to Friday’s semifinals. On the men’s side, Brad Jacobs continued to roll, improving to 5-1 with an 8-2 victory over Czechia.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 16, 2026.

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