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Antoine Cyr in the men’s 50 km mass start. Photo: Nordiq Canada / Facebook
Newsletter by Keiran Gorsky, Martin Cleary & Dan Plouffe
Antoine Cyr’s voice was still shaking from the men’s 50-kilometre mass start classic he had completed some hours earlier. The periodic opening and closing of zippers ripped through the receiver.
“I’m currently packing my bag,” Cyr explained to the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Keiran Gorsky. “Drying my stuff and getting ready to hit the road again tomorrow.”
Cyr didn’t even have time for a nap after the behemoth two-hour undertaking after he laid down an encouraging 11th-place performance. With the Olympics wrapping up, the Skinouk skier from Gatineau will be flying directly to Sweden, where he will compete in the next stage of the FIS Cross-Country World Cup in Falun.
Canadian cross-country skiers are hoping a slew of good results in Milano Cortina might spur an increase in funding to Nordiq Canada and its athletes. Their national sports organization has recorded deficits in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent competitive seasons.
No Canadian men were sent to compete in any of the World Cup races in November and December in the Olympic season, and Cyr was left to do loops around the same 1.6 km loop in Canmore, AB, as Ottawa Sports Pages High Achievers columnist Martin Cleary detailed before the Games.
Antoine Cyr. Photo: Nordiq Canada / Facebook
Cyr, 27, had the relative misfortune of entering the competitive circuit around the time three stalwarts of Canadian cross-country skiing announced their retirements.
“We lost a lot of funding when Alex (Harvey), Lenny (Valjas) and Devon (Kershaw) retired,” Cyr noted. “Unfortunately, it’s been quite a challenge when you don’t necessarily have the support and the budget.”
Cyr has been at the centre of their best results at these Olympics – paired with Rémi Drolet and two Olympic debutants in Xavier McKeever and Thomas Stephen, the Canadian men achieved their best-ever result in a four-man relay with a fifth-place finish. Cyr was in a medal position for large stretches of that race.
His 11th-place finish in the gruelling seven-lap 50 km mass start, meanwhile, was far and away his best ever in the discipline.
“When you put [Cyr] at a classic mass start, he goes into beast mode,” Nordiq Canada head coach Julia Mehre Ystgaard told The Canadian Press earlier this month.
Antoine Cyr. Photo: Nordiq Canada / Facebook
Cyr was struck by the sheer pace in the early goings, as Norway’s podium-topping duo of Johannes Høsflot Klæbo and Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget turned on the thrusters from the get-go.
Even on a soft, slush-plagued course, Cyr still managed to settle into a brisk, sustainable pace. As the pack fanned out, he was able to stick with the frontrunners, alternating between 10th and 11th for nearly the entire race. His national teammate Stephen, by contrast, led all 62 skiers at the 8.5 km mark before dropping 17 places in the next sector.
“I didn’t get too excited, I stayed calm,” Cyr indicated. “I kept my rhythm and I made sure I was doing [everything] right.
“I think we showed the world that we were able to be right up there with the best. And with a little bit more support, that might equal some medals.”
Katherine Stewart-Jones 1 of 4 Canadians inside nordic marathon top-30
Chelsea, QC’s Katherine Stewart-Jones also wrapped up her time in Italy Sunday in what was the first-ever women’s 50 km-long mass start at a Winter Olympics. The event was previously 30 km for women.
As per Olympic tradition, the cross-country ski marathon medals were presented at the Closing Ceremonies. Sweden’s Ebba Andersson won the race in 2:16:28.2, and while the Canadian women weren’t in contention, having all four finish inside the top-30 was still cause for celebration.
Katherine Stewart-Jones. Photo: Nordiq Canada / Facebook
Stewart-Jones spent most of her race in the middle of the pack en route to a 27th-place finish in a time of 2:36:35.1. A number of skiers fell during the event as the freshly applied wax took its sticky toll amidst rising temperatures.
“It was a really beautiful day to be out here doing the first-ever 50k,” the 30-year-old Nakkertok Nordic product said via Nordiq Canada. “Even though my body was definitely suffering from the beginning, I pushed through, and I got to do it with three of my teammates, so you can’t really complain on a day like this.”
Jasmine Drolet led the Canadian contingent in 17th place, Sonjaa Schmidt was next in 25th, Stewart-Jones followed in 27th and Amelia Wells cruised in quickly after so the Canadian women could gather in a group hug.
“We’ve had some really great results this Olympics,” Stewart-Jones added. “This is definitely the best Olympics we’ve had in many, many, many years, and a lot of my teammates are quite young, so I think the future is really bright, and I’ve been so honoured to be a part of their journey and to watch them keep thriving.”
Stewart-Jones had a lengthy 10-day wait between her individual 10 km interval start free and Sunday’s mass start. In the meantime, she has been among the most active Ottawa Olympians on social media. In a Feb. 10 post, she showed off the many pins she has accumulated over two Olympic Games.
Canadian men’s bobsledders place 14th & 20th
The end result came as no surprise, but Canada missed out on the podium in bobsleigh for the first time in 24 years at Milano Cortina 2026, finishing with a significant gap behind the world’s best.
Canadian four-man bobsleds placed 14th and 20th at Milano Cortina 2026. Photo: IBSF
Three Ottawa bobsledders wrapped up what has been a troubled Olympic outing on Sunday. The Canadian team is packed with heady engineers and did their best to keep it light off the track, but even they couldn’t will an eight-year-old hand-me-down sled anywhere near a podium finish.
The Jay Dearborn-piloted sled containing Yohan Eskrick-Parkinson, Luka Stoikos and Mark Zanette needed a top-20 finish in their run this morning in order to advance to the fourth and final heat.
Jay Daerborn (left) was the pilot for Canada-2 at the 2026 Olympics. Photo: IBSF
Dearborn was on pace for his best run before skidding against the wall towards the end of the track. The former Carleton Ravens football player’s time of 55.42 was his sled’s slowest at these Olympics. The quartet still made the cut by .15 seconds after the Jamaican, South Korean and Liechtensteiner sleds also recorded their worst times.
Dearborn showed a better grasp of the grooves of the track on his final run, finishing in 19th for a final ranking of 20th. He and his crew produced their third consecutive top-10 ranked start time, and the former CFLer’s second Olympics, and first as a pilot, are now officially in the books.
The Taylor Austin-piloted team containing Shaquille Murray-Lawrence and Ottawa’s Keaton Bruggeling and Mike Evelyn O’Higgins got in their sled somewhat more gingerly after their flubbed loading in the second heat Saturday. Their 15th-place third heat was more than three tenths of a second quicker.
Their slowest start preceded what was a mostly gentle slide down the track on their final run, beyond an early skid. They ranked 11th in the final heat en route to 14th overall.
(From left) Taylor Austin, Mike Evelyn O’Higgins, Keaton Bruggeling and Shaq Murray-Lawrence. Photo: IBSF
“You can have a great driver in a Honda Civic, and the person in the Porsche is going to have to make some pretty serious mistakes,” Evelyn O’Higgins told the CBC’s Morgan Campbell at the Canadian Olympic bobsleigh team announcement for a detailed feature on the state of the program.
Paralympics Preview: Short break until the excitement resumes at the Milano Cortina 2026 Games
And that is a wrap on our 2026 Ottawa at the Olympics coverage!
Thank you very much for following along throughout these Games, we hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about the journeys of our local Olympians, including several historic moments.
Six medals will be returning with Ottawa Olympians – bronze medals for curlers Rachel Homan and Emma Miskew, a silver for women’s hockey player Kayle Osborne, a gold for Isabelle Weidemann, and gold and silver for Ivanie Blondin.
(From left) Rachelle Brown, Sarah Wilkes, Emma Miskew, Tracy Fleury and Rachel Homan were the 2026 Olympic women’s curling bronze medallists. Photo: Anil Mungal / COC
After Sweden outlasted Switzerland 6-5 in the women’s curling gold medal final, the Team Homan Ottawa Curling Club rink was presented the first Olympic medals of their careers on Sunday.
Weidemann and Blondin have now joined fellow speed skater Kristina Groves as Ottawa’s most decorated Olympians of all-time with four career medals apiece.
Our Ottawa Sports Pages team will be very quickly recharging our batteries and then we’ll be back for our Ottawa at the Paralympics coverage from March 6-15 when we’re expecting we’ll have eight more members of Team Canada to follow for the finish of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games.
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