{"id":476518,"date":"2026-02-15T13:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T13:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476518\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T13:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T13:08:14","slug":"gold-eludes-canada-in-first-half-of-olympic-games-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476518\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold eludes Canada in first half of Olympic Games – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILAN \u2013 Halftime arrived, and Canada still had no gold medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would have preferred to see Canada win gold by now, so it\u2019s not exactly where we want to be just in terms of the medal standings, but at the same time, no one\u2019s panicking,\u201d Canadian Olympic Committee chief executive officer David Shoemaker said Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a high degree of confidence among this Olympic team. We\u2019ll see our gold medals, they\u2019ll come, and our team\u2019s poised and ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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The Canadian Olympic Committee and Own The Podium set matching or bettering Beijing\u2019s 26 medals as the target for the 2026 edition.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Canadians came agonizingly close to the podium\u2019s top step in the first half of Italy\u2019s Games.<\/p>\n

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Moguls skier Mikael Kingsbury\u2019s 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\u2019s silver was his fourth career Olympic medal, including gold in 2018.<\/p>\n

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On the same day, Eliot Grondin missed gold in men\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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There was both glory and agony in those moments. Bronze medals produced memorable performances, too.<\/p>\n

Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, under pressure, executed a mesmerizing free dance, inspired by Vincent van Gogh\u2019s Starry Night, to land on the figure skating podium. Gilles was treated for ovarian cancer within months of the duo placing seventh in Beijing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had some incredible medal moments punctuated perhaps by one of my favourite Olympic memories ever, Piper and Paul in the ice dancing,\u201d Shoemaker said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo see their emotion, a standing ovation, the emotion of Canadians all around, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll soon forget the thrill I got from seeing them realize a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moncton short track speedskater Courtney Sarault became Canada\u2019s first multi-medallist with a bronze in the women\u2019s 500 metres a day after helping her country take silver in the mixed relay.<\/p>\n

At 35 years old, speedskater Valerie Maltais claimed her first medal in an individual long-track race with bronze in the women\u2019s 3,000 metres. She\u2019s among eight Canadian athletes on the 2026 team who made their Olympic debut in 2010 in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C.<\/p>\n

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The women\u2019s hockey team reached the semifinals, and the men were 2-0 as of Saturday.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s curling team of Brad Jacobs, Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant and Ben Hebert opened with three straight wins before dropping a game Saturday.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s William Dandjinou led until the final lap of the men\u2019s 1,000 metres and finished fourth. He was fifth in Saturday\u2019s 1,500.<\/p>\n

The women\u2019s curling team of Rachel Homan, Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes started 1-3.<\/p>\n

It was an eventful first half for Canada as well. The women\u2019s hockey opener was postponed a week after multiple players on Finland\u2019s team tested positive for norovirus.<\/p>\n

Captain Marie-Philip Poulin missed two games with a knee injury, including a 5-0 loss to the United States, but returned for Saturday\u2019s quarterfinal win over Germany.<\/p>\n

Decorated snowboarder Mark McMorris banged himself up in big air training and didn\u2019t compete in that event. The triple Olympic medallist is good to go in slopestyle qualifying Sunday.<\/p>\n

The men\u2019s curling team was warned about Kennedy\u2019s salty language in a game against Sweden.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s deep ski cross and freestyle ski teams in action.<\/p>\n

Defending champions Maltais, Isabelle Weidemann and Ivanie Blondin posted the fastest qualifying time in the team pursuit in women\u2019s speedskating. The trio races for gold on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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The women\u2019s short track team advanced to Wednesday\u2019s relay final. Dandjinou continues his pursuit of Olympic hardware in the men\u2019s 500 metres final Wednesday, as well as in the men\u2019s relay starting with Tuesday\u2019s semifinals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s lots of potential still within this team,\u201d Shoemaker said. \u201cLots of great opportunities, lots of medal moments to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2026.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2013 Halftime arrived, and Canada still had no gold medals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. No…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[161684,43,44,82,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-476518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-2026-olympics","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}