Buckle up! Here’s your midday Olympic digest 🤌

It’s a busy day for Canadian athletes at the Milano-Cortina Olympics, with overlapping competitions. Here are the highlights from this morning:

Canada’s medal count: Six (three 🥈 and three 🥉).

Historic silver in men’s moguls (after a tiebreak)

Canada’s Mikaël Kingsbury scored his third career Olympic silver medal in the men’s moguls after losing gold in a tiebreaker. 

It came down to the Deux-Montagnes, Que., native’s turns score. He was 0.7 points behind Australia’s Cooper Woods — meaning his run down the moguls slope wasn’t as clean. (Kingsbury beat him in the air score, because his tricks had a higher degree of difficulty.)

The new dad still made history as the first male freestyle skier to claim four Olympic medals (one gold and three silvers). His 18-month-year-old even wanted a taste.

Silver in snowboard cross. Is this 2022 all over again?

Éliot Grondin captured silver in the men’s snowboard cross, his third career Olympic medal, after a tight race that came down to a photo finish.

It was a repeat of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, with Austria’s Alessandro Haemmerle narrowly beating Grondin to the finish line. 

The Canadian was three-hundredths of a second behind.

Canadian hockey double header

Sidney Crosby is back 🥹. I repeat: Sidney Crosby is back. Plus, Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon are making their Olympic debuts as NHL players return to the Games for the first time since 2014.

Canada is opening the preliminary stage against Czechia. We’re up 3-0 at the end of the second period.

On the women’s side, the team was still without its captain Marie-Philip Poulin against Finland to close out the group stage. Canada’s head coach told us she needs an “extra couple days” of rest. 

That didn’t stop Team Canada from ending the preliminary round on a high, with a 5-0 win. 

They move on to the quarterfinals on Saturday where they’ll face Germany. These two teams have never played each other at the Olympics.   

Ukrainian skeleton slider out of Olympics over banned helmet

The Olympic governing body’s debate over the Ukrainian skeleton slider’s helmet has come to an end. Vladyslav Heraskevych, a likely medal contender, was disqualified from competing — roughly 45 minutes before the start of the race. 

His helmet honouring teammates killed in the war with Russia has been a flashpoint in a days-long standoff between the athlete and the International Olympic Committee.

The IOC president appeared to have tears in her eyes after making the decision. Heraskevych plans to appeal his disqualification to the Court of Arbitration of Sport.

Quick hits: