MILAN – From Mikaël Kingsbury delivering Canada’s first gold medal to a hockey beatdown, here are five things to know from Feb. 15 at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games:

FINALLY!

It took until the start of the second half of the Games, but Canada finally reached the top of the podium thanks to freestyle skiing star Mikaël Kingsbury.  The decorated moguls master from Deux-Montagnes, Que., beat Japanese rival Ikuma Horishima in the men’s dual moguls final to win gold in the sport’s Olympic debut. The gold came after Canada had won three silver and five bronze over the first half of the Games, but trailed 19 countries — including Brazil — in the official medal standings, which are weighted by medal type. Canada’s first gold medal in Italy is also Kingsbury’s last of his career. The 33-year-old says this will be his fifth and final Games.

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DROPPING DIX

Canada’s men’s hockey team cruised into the quarterfinals with a 10-2 win over France, with Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Macklin Celebrini and Mark Stone all enjoying three-point games. Did the Canadians run up the score? Absolutely. But although the Canadians were assured of a quarterfinal spot as Group A winners entering the game, they wanted to enter the playoffs as the top overall seed. That meant not only defeating France, but having as lopsided of a goal differential as possible in case a tiebreaker is needed. Canada ended the tournament at plus-17 and will face the winner of the Czechia-Denmark match. In other hockey action, the United States beat Germany 5-1 and will now go up against the winner of the Sweden-Latvia game.

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CARE ABOUT THE PAIRS

Canadian pairs skaters Lia Pereira, of Milton, Ont., and Trennt Michaud, of Trenton, Ont., are looking for a podium finish as they enter Monday’s free skate in third place following their short program. It comes as former world champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are ranked 14th after Stellato-Dudek fell during their performance. The skate marked their return to the ice after the duo withdrew from the team event earlier at the Games after Stellato-Dudek sustained a training injury in January.

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HOSTS WITH THE (SECOND) MOST

Just over halfway through the Olympics, host Italy finds itself second on the medal table and has already won more medals then it has at any previous Winter Games. The Italians added to their impressive total with four medals early Sunday, led by Federica Brignone’s gold in the women’s giant slalom. Italy ended the day with eight gold and 22 overall medals, behind only the powerful Norwegians in both categories.

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CAN’T STOP KLAEBO

Norway continues to dominate the medal table at the Games with 26 medals, including 12 gold. Cross-country skiing star Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo has played a huge part of the winter sports power’s success. Klaebo anchored Norway’s 4×7.5-kilometre relay team to a gold medal on Sunday, giving him his fourth gold at these Games and the ninth in his career. The career mark is a Winter Games record for the 29-year-old, who passed retired Norwegian Olympic stars Marit Bjoergen and Bjorn Daehlie in cross-country skiing and Ole Einar Bjoerndalen in biathlon.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2026.

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MILAN – Halftime arrived, and Canada still had no gold medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

No gold by the end of Day 8 on Saturday marked the deepest a Canadian team had gone at a Winter Olympics without reaching the top of the podium since 1988 in Calgary, when the host nation was shut out.

“We would have preferred to see Canada win gold by now, so it’s not exactly where we want to be just in terms of the medal standings, but at the same time, no one’s panicking,” Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive officer David Shoemaker said Saturday.

“There’s a high degree of confidence among this Olympic team. We’ll see our gold medals, they’ll come, and our team’s poised and ready.”

Gold was also hard to come by four years ago in Beijing, where Canada accrued just four among its 26 medals. That was the lowest total since Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994.

The Canadian Olympic Committee and Own The Podium set matching or bettering Beijing’s 26 medals as the target for the 2026 edition.

With three silver and five bronze, Canada ranked 11th in total medals as of Saturday. Norway topped the table with 20 medals and 10 gold ahead of host Italy with 18 medals and six gold. The U.S. ranked third with 17 medals and five gold.

Canadians came agonizingly close to the podium’s top step in the first half of Italy’s Games.

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Moguls skier Mikael Kingsbury’s score of 83.71 tied Cooper Woods, but the Australian was declared the winner due to higher marks for turns, which were the tiebreaker. Kingsbury’s silver was his fourth career Olympic medal, including gold in 2018.

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On the same day, Eliot Grondin missed gold in men’s snowboard cross by three-hundredths of a second behind Austrian Alessandro Haemmerle, who beat Grondin for gold four years ago in Beijing by two one-hundredths of a second.

There was both glory and agony in those moments. Bronze medals produced memorable performances, too.

Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, under pressure, executed a mesmerizing free dance, inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, to land on the figure skating podium. Gilles was treated for ovarian cancer within months of the duo placing seventh in Beijing.

“We’ve had some incredible medal moments punctuated perhaps by one of my favourite Olympic memories ever, Piper and Paul in the ice dancing,” Shoemaker said.

“To see their emotion, a standing ovation, the emotion of Canadians all around, I don’t think I’ll soon forget the thrill I got from seeing them realize a dream.”

Moncton short track speedskater Courtney Sarault became Canada’s first multi-medallist with a bronze in the women’s 500 metres a day after helping her country take silver in the mixed relay.

At 35 years old, speedskater Valerie Maltais claimed her first medal in an individual long-track race with bronze in the women’s 3,000 metres. She’s among eight Canadian athletes on the 2026 team who made their Olympic debut in 2010 in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C.

The women’s hockey team reached the semifinals, and the men were 2-0 as of Saturday.

The men’s curling team of Brad Jacobs, Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert opened with three straight wins before dropping a game Saturday.

There were strikeouts in the first half. The top-ranked man in the world of short-track speedskating was held off the podium twice. Montreal’s William Dandjinou led until the final lap of the men’s 1,000 metres and finished fourth. He was fifth in Saturday’s 1,500.

The women’s curling team of Rachel Homan, Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes started 1-3.

It was an eventful first half for Canada as well. The women’s hockey opener was postponed a week after multiple players on Finland’s team tested positive for norovirus.

Captain Marie-Philip Poulin missed two games with a knee injury, including a 5-0 loss to the United States, but returned for Saturday’s quarterfinal win over Germany.

Decorated snowboarder Mark McMorris banged himself up in big air training and didn’t compete in that event. The triple Olympic medallist is good to go in slopestyle qualifying Sunday.

The men’s curling team was warned about Kennedy’s salty language in a game against Sweden.

The back half will be big for Canada with hockey and curling playoff games, the short-track team in pursuit of more hardware, Kingsbury competing in dual moguls Sunday, and Canada’s deep ski cross and freestyle ski teams in action.

Defending champions Maltais, Isabelle Weidemann and Ivanie Blondin posted the fastest qualifying time in the team pursuit in women’s speedskating. The trio races for gold on Tuesday.

The women’s short track team advanced to Wednesday’s relay final. Dandjinou continues his pursuit of Olympic hardware in the men’s 500 metres final Wednesday, as well as in the men’s relay starting with Tuesday’s semifinals.

“There’s lots of potential still within this team,” Shoemaker said. “Lots of great opportunities, lots of medal moments to come.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2026.

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MILAN – Here are some notable quotes from the Milan Cortina Olympics on Feb. 13, 2026:

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“That’s a good young team, strong scrubbing. They make a lot of shots with the broom, like a lot of young teams do nowadays. We knew they were going to be excited to play us, Team Canada. We did a good job sort of silencing their US fans today, and just really out-curling them from lead to skip.”

— Team Canada curling skip Brad Jacobs, after his team’s 6-3 win over the United States

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“I’m very happy with the total results, considering this is my personal best.

“I’ll take everything I can from this moment, and considering this is probably the biggest stage of sports, I think I’ll have quite a bit of confidence leading into the world championships.”

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— Canadian figure skater Stephen Gogolev after finishing fifth in men’s single skating.

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“For sure, I don’t like the number beside my name today. But I know I still have something to celebrate. It’s the whole past four years I have to celebrate with my family right now here in Italy.”

— Canadian snowboarder Audrey McManiman, on missing the quarterfinals in the women’s snowboard cross event

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“It did hurt, still hurts, but it’s part of it. That’s why we have a team here. Unbelievable physio and docs have been helping me.”

— Canadian women’s hockey captain Marie-Philip Poulin on the injury that has kept her out of the team’s last two games at the Milan Cortina Olympics.

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“Obviously, we wanted to win that game. But, you know, there’s lots of games left and just take the lessons from that game.”

— Canada’s Rachel Homan, on her team’s 9-8 loss to the United States in round robin play.

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“It’s been a really long career. I had a lot of beautiful moments and this was another beautiful moment in a different way. Maybe not in a performance way, but I think this was a beautiful goodbye at the biggest stage with my family and kids in the crowd. I got to say goodbye in a beautiful way.”

— Canadian long-track speedskater Ted-Jan Bloemen, who ended his Olympic career in the men’s 10,000 metre race.

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“We definitely take some hits at times, and it’s definitely a part of the sport. And there’s not one snowboarder out here that hasn’t taken a hard hit. We’re a tough breed, and everyone has that warrior spirit in snowboarding and definitely has a lot of passion towards it, or else they wouldn’t be out here.”

— Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris, who is recovering from a concussion and bone bruising that incurred during big air training before the Milan Cortina Olympics started.

—

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2026.

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MILAN – Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon had a goal and two assists each as Canada stayed perfect in men’s hockey at the Milan Cortina Olympics with a 5-1 victory over Switzerland on Friday.

Macklin Celebrini, with a goal and an assist, Sidney Crosby and Thomas Harley also scored for Canada (2-0-0-0). Logan Thompson made 24 saves.

Pius Suter replied for Switzerland (1-0-1-0), which got 34 stops from Akira Schmid.

The Canadians, who clinched Group A with two regulation victories, six points and a plus-nine goal differential, opened their tournament with Thursday’s relentless 5-0 victory over Czechia in the first Olympic game involving the country’s NHLers since 2014.

Next up for Canada is a meeting with France on Sunday to wrap up preliminary round play. The Czechs (1-0-1-0) picked up a 6-3 win over the French (0-0-2-0) in Friday’s early game.

Head coach Jon Cooper indicated earlier this week that two of Canada’s three goaltenders — Thompson, Jordan Binnington and Darcy Kuemper — would split the first two games at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. Binnington picked up a 26-save shutout Thursday with Thompson backing up, while Kuemper dressed as the No. 2 option Friday.

Canadian defenceman Josh Morrissey, who left Thursday’s victory early in the second period, didn’t dress against the Swiss. Travis Sanheim took his place and skated as the seventh defenceman. The final addition to the roster after Brayden Point was left at home injured, Seth Jarvis took Brad Marchand’s place up front.

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Swiss fans were in full voice ahead of puck drop as a European-heavy crowd whistled and booed the Canadians when they hit the ice ahead of puck drop for a second straight contest.

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Shea Theodore saw his shot clank off iron inside the first minute for Canada before Switzerland’s Nino Niederreiter was denied by Thompson on an odd-man rush at the other end.

McDavid, who had three assists in the opener, scored his first Olympic goal on a power play at 5:45 of the first period off a great pass from MacKinnon inside the 11,600 rink that was finished just in time for the Games.

Sidney Crosby was denied with a desperation flying skate save from Schmid on a breakaway later in the period, but Canada made it 2-0 at 10:45 when Harley scored five-hole after McDavid found him in the slot off the rush.

Switzerland, which topped France 4-0 in its Thursday opener, cut the deficit in half on a man advantage at 12:42 when Sven Andrighetto’s point shot hit Thompson’s glove, the crossbar and fell kindly to Suter, who was high-sticked by Bo Horvat, set up the 5-on-4 opportunity.

McDavid delivered a huge hit on the forecheck for a second straight game that rocked Andrea Glauser — much to the delight of a group of fans with a “Connor McJesus” banner — before the superstar took a big check from Timo Meier later in the period.

Canada killed off a Theodore penalty for tripping early in the middle period to set the stage for Celebrini, the youngest player in the tournament, to score his second goal in as many nights off a Mackinnon pass from the corner at 4:14.

The plucky Swiss, whose fans tossed a couple of beer cups on the ice during some heated moments, held firm the rest of the second and had a push in the third, including another shot off Thompson’s crossbar in a flurry of action around Canada’s net.

But Crosby put things out of reach moments later when he redirected a Mitch Marner pass at 7:28, and Canada cruised from there to pick up another convincing victory.

MacKinnon rounded out the scoring at 13:03 from McDavid and Celebrini — a newly formed and lethal trio put together for the first time Friday that’s combined for 270 points this season.

Swiss forward Kevin Fiala had to be stretchered off with 2:50 left in regulation with an apparent leg injury after a collision with Tom Wilson along the boards.

The NHL is back on the world stage following a 12-year absence that saw the game’s best skip 2018 before a planned return in 2022 was axed by COVID-19 concerns.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2026.

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MILAN – Canada’s Secretary of Sport knows what it is to be an Olympian, albeit in a summer sport.

Adam van Koeverden, an Olympic kayak champion, said the fan came out in him at the Milan Cortina Winter Games, particularly while watching his favourite winter sport of cross-country skiing.

“Not just Canadian athletes, but all athletes,” he said Friday at the Canadian consulate in Milan. “I watch them, and I have a degree of educated awe that I can feel.”

The Liberal MP for Burlington North-Milton West, who was the 500-metre champion in 2004 and owns three more Olympic medals, was handed the sports post in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first cabinet just under a year ago.

Van Koeverden served six years as parliamentary secretary to successive sport ministers after first being elected in 2019.

Canadian athletes, and by extension the national sport system, are under a hot spotlight at the Olympic Games as successes and misses are magnified in the biggest multi-sport stage on the planet.

With three silver medals and four bronze, Canada had yet to win gold on Friday, which was the deepest a Canadian team had gone, not standing atop the podium since the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary, where the host team was shut out of gold.

The Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees have lobbied the federal government on behalf of national sport organizations (NSOs) for an increase in core funding, with the latest ask a $144-million raise in 2025.

Core funding is money all NSOs count on to fund operations, athletes, coaches and support staff, and they say it hasn’t increased since 2005. It’s been described as the “blood in the veins” of an organization.

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Two federal budgets have passed without an increase, although athletes saw a $410 raise in their monthly athlete assistance cheques in the 2024 budget.

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Chief executive officer David Shoemaker has said that Canada’s athletes “are having to increasingly do more with less.”

Van Koeverden maintains there’s been considerable investment in athletes by the federal government, which spends $266 million annually on sport.

“In the last seven years, we’ve managed to increase the athlete assistance program by 45 per cent,” he said, adding there have also been increases in mental health services, support for student-athletes and funding at sport institutes that provide science and medical resources.

“It has been dwelled on that one stream, which represents about 15 per cent of our sport funding, has remained the same, but the total sport budget and all of the things that I just mentioned, since the time when a lot of organizations have been indicating, about 20 years, has more than doubled.”

The sport system must also do more than build Olympians, van Koeverden said.

“That’s one reason that we fund sport, but there’s a dozen others too,” he said. “My main sort of policy obsession is making sure that everybody has an opportunity to play regardless of your financial background, your situation, where you live, who your parents are, how much money you got, whether you have a disability or not, whether you feel like you belong, let’s lower all those barriers.

“It’s a question of do you want to fund Olympic performance for Olympic performance or do you want to fund sport for all the great reasons in the way that will benefit children, youth, families, seniors, communities, for all of the reasons and all the ways we know it can? What you get out of that is also Olympic performance. That’s my vision.”

Where the federal government has opened the coffers for sport, van Koeverden says, is in the infrastructure money in the 2025 federal budget to build and revitalize pools, arenas and fieldhouses.

“It used to be a be like a $200-million fund, and now it’s a $51-billion fund,” he said. “It’s shared with waste water and public transit, but the availability of funding for sport infrastructure is vastly broadened and increased.

“We’ve got good facilities in our country, but we need to build more. The prime minister is not shy about wanting to build Canada, and that includes sports facilities.”

As for Canada hosting another Olympic Games or a multi-sport event such as the Pan American or Commonwealth Games, van Koeverden said the push does not come from the federal government.

The feds provide financial support for such ventures, such as the $320 million for FIFA World Cup matches in Toronto and Vancouver later this year.

Van Koeverden is a believer in the public legacy pieces that multi-sport events leave behind.

He points to the Milton velodrome in his riding, built for the 2015 Pan American Games, where Olympic track cyclists train, and parents push strollers when it’s snowing outside.

“Before we get too wrapped up in how much the Games cost to implement and do, let’s also look at how timely that infrastructure comes to fruition when we have a deadline and a Games to host,” he said.

“It is a matter of working together with all levels of government to make sure it’s a priority, to make that it’s utilizing existing infrastructure, to make sure the public money that goes into it is going to serve Canadians for decades.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2026.

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MILAN – They held onto their Beijing success too long.

Isabelle Weidemann, Ivanie Blondin and Valérie Maltais agree they were slow adapting to changes in speedskating’s team pursuit after winning Olympic gold in Beijing in 2022.

“The strategy that we used at the Olympics felt so good for us, and so we kept using it,” Weidemann said.

Being shut out of World Cup podiums last season and barely qualifying for the pursuit at the 2025 world championship was a wake-up call for the Canadian trio.

“Last year was a complete bust,” Blondin said.

Team pursuit is three athletes from one country skating close together in a single file, and working as one unit to complete six laps as quickly as possible. The clock stops when the last skater of the three crosses the finish line.

Where skaters previously rotated the leader by changing positions during the race, more countries adopted a no-change formation post-Beijing, pushing one another with a hand on the back instead.

“Strategy-wise, other teams started doing no exchanges, and then they started closing the gap on us,” said Blondin. “We were pretty slow with adapting to that.”

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Rotating to freshen the front engine seems intuitive, but Blondin pointed out that exchanges can cost a team two-tenths of a second per lap.

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So the Canadians started this season with Ottawa’s Weidemann in front for all six laps, Maltais of La Baie, Que., in the middle and Ottawa’s Blondin at the rear.

“The strategy looks counterintuitive because you’ve got one person at the front and you think you should be sharing the load, but actually at the front, especially for the first few laps, I’m really relying on my teammates,” Weidemann said. “I’m skating lap times at the front that I actually can’t skate by myself, so I’m going faster than I’ve ever gone.”

The Canadian women will attempt to defend their gold medal starting Saturday in the quarterfinals at the Milano Speed Skating Stadium.

“When we show up to the line, we’re all nervous, but we know we can do it because we’re going to start together and finish together,” Maltais said.

The six-foot-two Weidemann is the metronome setting the tempo.

“My job is to do eight consistent strides and hit the corner in the same entry position every time and to not make any sudden movements at the front,” Weidemann said.

Added Maltais: “For myself, being in second position, I’m really able to tuck in really well behind Isabelle and kind of skate blindly and give a really good push for Izzy.”

Blondin, a full foot shorter than Weidemann, has no pusher behind her. She wants to stay in the draft of her two teammates, and get her hand on the back of Maltais as much as possible, with the intention of crossing the finish line tucking in beside Maltais.

“A lot of teams really struggle with that third spot,” Weidemann said. “Ivanie, from her mass start and short-track background as well, we like to say she’s impossible to drop. You just can’t get rid of her. She’s so little, she’s so agile.”

Maltais’s move back to Quebec from Calgary after Beijing in 2022 also meant the Canadian women trained together less.

“Previous to Beijing, we were training together every single day, so it became very natural,” Blondin said. “Over the years, it just became harder and harder to skate in line behind each other and know how the person skates.”

So in addition to revamping formation, the three women came together in Calgary in August and Quebec City in October for pursuit-specific camps.

They also spent a few days in Salt Lake City ahead of the season’s first World Cup in November, when they placed second just three tenths of a second off their Canadian record.

The trio then placed second in Calgary the following week and won the last team pursuit in Hamar, Norway, before the Olympic Games.

“We haven’t felt like that since ’22, just being able to nail it,” Blondin said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2026.

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From the first game involving Team Canada in the return of men’s best-on-best international hockey to a pair of near-misses on the ski slope that brought in two silver medals for the Canadians, here are five things to know from Thursday, Feb. 12 at the 2026 Milan Cortina Games:

… AND WE’RE BACK

Canada’s men’s hockey team won its first game of the tournament as NHL players returned to the Olympics for the first time since the 2014 Sochi Games. The Canadian team soundly defeated Czechia 5-0 with goals from Macklin Celebrini, Mark Stone, Bo Horvat, Nathan MacKinnon and Nick Suzuki. Jordan Binnington, who wasn’t named Canada’s starter until shortly before the game, made 26 saves for the shutout. The Canadians did suffer an injury as defenceman Josh Morrissey left the game and did not return. Canada next takes on Switzerland on Friday.

CLOSE BUT SILVER CIGARS

Canada won a pair of silver medals on the hills of Livigno, narrowly missing gold in both cases. In men’s moguls, freestyle star Mikael Kingsbury of Deux-Montagnes, Que., won his fourth Olympic medal but had to settle for silver after matching gold medallist Cooper Woods of Australia with an identical score. Kingsbury was relegated to second because Woods had the higher turns score — the technical element that accounts for 60 per cent of the total. Canada also nearly won gold in snowboard cross, where Eliot Grondin finished second behind Austria’s Alessandro Haemmerle, repeating their 1-2 result from Beijing 2022. Both Grondin and Kingsbury said they were satisfied with their performances despite narrowly missing gold.

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SARAULT COMES CLUTCH LATE

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Canada’s Courtney Sarault spent much of the women’s 500-metre short-track final in fourth, outside the podium picture. But on the final lap, she surged past the Netherlands’ Selma Poutsma and lunged at the line, getting her skate across to secure bronze. The Moncton native edged Poutsma by .064 seconds. Meanwhile, Montreal’s William Dandjinou met the opposite fate in the men’s 1,000 metres, leading most of the race before being passed on the inside by Dutch skater Jens van ‘t Wout, who went on to win gold, and overtaken by two more skaters to finish fourth.

MORE OLYMPICS CONTENT FOR NHL?

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman made an appearance in Milan, saying that the world’s top hockey league has made progress in gaining more access to Olympics content, but hopes there’s more to come, looking ahead to the 2030 Games in the French Alps. The NHL has not been able to show highlights such as Sidney Crosby’s golden goal in Vancouver 2010, and Bettman says more Olympic content access is needed so his league does not “disappear for a couple of weeks” while players take part in the Games.

ONTO THE QUARTERFINALS

The Canadian women’s hockey team rebounded from a 5-0 loss to archrivals the United States earlier in the week with a 5-0 win over Finland on Thursday, securing a quarterfinal matchup against Germany on Saturday. Playing again without injured captain Marie-Philip Poulin, Canada got two goals from Emily Clark in the victory. The team had another injury scare early in the match when Sarah Fillier slid hard into the end boards and jammed her left hand, but she returned to the game within minutes and recorded an assist in the game. Canada finished preliminary round play in second place in Group A.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2026.

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LIVIGNO – Canadian Evan Bichon had to change boards on the fly Thursday when a binding snapped in the start gate during the Olympic snowboard cross competition.

But the 27-year-old from Mackenzie, B.C., had to deal with far worse in getting to the Milan Cortina Games.

His mother, Trish Bichon, died of cancer in November while Bichon was at a training camp in Austria preparing for the World Cup season and a last-ditch attempt to qualify for the Olympics. She was just 63.

Bichon, who shared a home with his mother in North Vancouver, immediately flew home. The games were put on hold as life interjected.

Trish had been diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer in the summer and had undergone surgery to remove a tumour before undergoing chemotherapy because the cancer had spread through the lymph nodes.

She was on her fifth round of chemo when she passed away.

“It unfortunately was fairly sudden,” Bichon said, fighting back his emotion. “She was doing very well up until that point with everything. She was positive. She was planning to come to Mont-Sainte-Anne in Quebec (in March) to watch the final World Cup because she wasn’t able to make it here during chemo treatment.

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“She had more belief in me than anyone that I’d be here.”

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Bichon proved her right, despite missing training and dealing with her loss.

“I went home for three weeks and did the best I could to be able to go back to Italy (for the first World Cup stop of the season). I had some really great help with some family and friends who came and helped me to get everything sorted so that I could return to sport.”

That included his father, who was separated from his mother.

“My dad was a huge help. He drove from Mackenzie, B.C., all the way to North Vancouver … He helped me gather all of things that needed to happen for funeral arrangements and stuff like that.”

Upon returning to Europe, Bichon placed 41st in Cervinia, Italy, on Dec. 13 and then 22nd and 33rd in Jan. 17-18 races in Dongbeiya, China, in the final Olympic qualification events. It was only after China that he learned he was headed to his debut Olympics.

“There was a lot going on with the uncertainty of not knowing if I was going or not. As well as just trying to come back to sport the best I could,” he said.

Bichon was seeded 11th in the 30-man snowboard cross field Thursday at Livigno Snow Park after a solo timed run down the 1,110-metre course with a 154-metre vertical drop.

But his binding broke as he was in the start gate for the 1/8 final, the first knockout stage of the competition — featuring four riders with the top two advancing.

There wasn’t enough time to replace the binding so he had to switch the entire board.

“I did the best I could to put myself in there. It’s a run to be proud of, even with a couple of setbacks with the equipment.”

Bichon finished third and did not advance. But it was still memorable.

“I’m very much competing for someone special,” he said of his Olympic campaign. “I always carry my mom with me into every race. She was my biggest fan — more so here than ever. It’s a really special day for me to be able to compete here.’

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2026

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