ANTOINE CYR
Sport: Cross-Country Skiing
Events: Men’s 10km + 10km Skiathlon, Men’s Individual Sprint Classic, Men’s 10km Interval Start Free, Men’s 4 x 7.5km Relay, Men’s Team Sprint Free, 50km Mass Start Classic (Events to be confirmed)
Age: 27
Hometown: Gatineau
Residence: Canmore, AB
Local Club: Skinouk
Second Olympics
Instagram: @antoine_cyr98
VIEW ANTOINE’S COMPETITION SCHEDULE HERE.
By Martin Cleary
Sometimes, things just happen. You accept it. You go with the flow and move forward. Your life straightens out.
Cross-country skier Antoine Cyr of Gatineau and the Club Skinouk certainly can relate to how life unfolds sometimes.
Only one athlete met the Nordiq Canada standards during the 2024-25 international season to be pre-qualified for nomination to the Canadian Olympic team. That was fellow Quebec skier Katherine Stewart-Jones of Chelsea.
Read More: Nakkertok Nordic’s Katherine Stewart-Jones does it her way to prepare for 2026 Winter Olympics
Cyr, who recorded the best-ever result (fifth) by a Canadian in the men’s team classic sprint with Graham Ritchie at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, missed the boat on that opportunity. And it also cost him his traditional start on the World Cup circuit for this season.
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When the FIS World Cup season opened in Ruka, Finland and continued in Trondheim, Norway and Davos, Switzerland in November and December, Cyr wasn’t sent to Europe by Nordiq Canada for those pre-Olympic races.
Instead of heading east from his home near Mont Ste. Anne, PQ to go overseas, Cyr headed west to train at the Canmore Nordic Centre, where he would go around and around a 1.6-kilometre loop of snow that had been preserved from the 2024-25 ski season.
“It was quite hard,” Cyr said in a phone interview this week about missing the early World Cup races before he travelled to Oberhof, Germany, for the resumption of the World Cup circuit this weekend.
“I wasn’t racing the World Cups with my group of people performing in races. It was a little tough. But that’s life. That’s how she goes sometimes.”
While the early World Cup races were out of the picture for Cyr, he altered his focus to training for the all-important Nordiq Canada Olympic trials in mid-December. He needed to be a consistent top-5 skier to be considered for the five-man Canadian team attending the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games, which begin Feb. 6.
After off-season training camps in Tignes, France as well as Park City, Utah and Gatineau Park, Cyr put in the time, dedication and laps on the carry-over snow course to be prepared for what was on the horizon.
“There was not much to do to make it (training) better,” he explained. “We were on the snow farm, a 1.6-kilometre loop, and we’d do circles. It was nothing too interesting. But I didn’t change much in my preparation.”
Cyr, 27, travelled around that loop almost every day for a month of training, except for the brief period when he headed to Lake Louise, AB, for a change of scenery and fresh, natural snow.
The snow track he was training on in Canmore is nicknamed Frozen Thunder. It’s a unique venue of stockpiled snow from the previous season, which was thickly covered with sawdust. When the cold weather arrived out west this fall, the sawdust was removed to give high-performances skiers an early opportunity for on-snow training.
“It was interesting. You do the work, do the hours. You make the best of it and do what you have to do. Then you go home,” Cyr explained.
At the Olympic trials, Cyr expected to be one of the leaders of the pack. Instead, he was chasing his peers.
“The trials didn’t exactly go to plan,” he admitted. “I underperformed due to a lack of racing. It’s hard to say why. But it was enough to make the Olympic team and in the end that’s all that mattered.”
Cyr opened the trials with a third-place result in the 10-kilometre classical interval start. He followed that by placing fourth in the 10-kilometre freestyle interval start. Not known as a sprinter, he qualified 21st in the sprint, was second in his quarterfinal, third in his semifinal and finished fifth in the final, stopping three seconds after the winner.
In the end, Nordiq Canada officials selected Cyr to the men’s team along with Remi Drolet of Rossland, B.C.; Max Hollmann of Thunder Bay, ON; Xavier McKeever of Canmore; and Tom Stephen of Calgary.
The members of the women’s Olympic nordic team are Jasmine Drolet of Rossland, B.C.; Liliane Gagnon of Shawinigan-Sud, PQ; Alison Mackie of Edmonton; Sonjaa Schmidt of Whitehorse; Stewart-Jones; and Amelia Wells of Victoria.
“It’s amazing,” Cyr said with joy in his voice. “I’m so thrilled to be named a second time. Not many people can say they’re a two-time Olympian.
“It’s also a relief. I worked so hard to make this thing happen to represent my country and the community that I’ve grown up with and that has supported me.”
When Cyr finally made it to Europe at the end of this year, it felt like home.
Competing in the six-stage Tour de Ski in Italy, which went from Dec. 28 to Jan. 4, Cyr posted his best-ever overall result with an 11th-place showing as Norwegian skiers filled the podium steps.
“I have raced the Tour de Ski four or five times. It is a race I love. It’s long and it’s hard. I always perform well. This year was my best overall result. I had a very good time,” he added.
The bonus for Cyr and his peers was the final two stages were held at Val di Fiemme, which is the site of the races for the 2026 Winter Olympics. And Cyr has developed a good track record on the Italian course in his 10 races over the past four seasons.
At the 2023 Tour de Ski, Cyr burst into the top 10 in his debut at Val di Fiemme, placing fourth in the men’s 15-kilometre classic stage race and sixth in the classic sprint. At this year’s tour, he was 13th in the final day’s 10-kilometre freestyle mass start. In the same race in 2024, he was 14th.
“I’m so excited to be there for the Olympics,” he continued. “My parents, sister and family will be there. My sister has never seen me race internationally.
“It’s a really good course for me. There’s a lot of striding and that suits me in the classic races.”
He enters his second Olympics with guarded confidence.
“I have a little bit of confidence, not too much,” he reasoned. “But you never know what can happen. One thing for sure, I will do everything in my power to be ready and in top shape.”
The 2022 Olympics is a good example of what can happen at a Winter Games.
While his three individual races produced results ranging from 37th to 56th and the 4×10-kilometre relay left Canada 11th, the classic team sprint with Ritchie earned them a Canadian team all-time best showing of fifth place.
“I was happy about the one result (team sprint) I had, but the rest of my Olympics was kind of a tough go. I wasn’t super well prepared and the altitude caught us off guard,” he explained.
Being fully prepared for these Olympics will be the key to his success on the Val di Fiemme courses.
“If I show up to every race with the best version of myself, it (the Games) will be a success,” he forecasted. “I’m not sure I’m a better skier now, but I’m a more mature skier, when it comes to race tactics and moving in the peloton.
“I’m 27 now. I like to think I’m still good. What’s really motivating for me is if I can perform and be smart. That will be a good goal.”
ANTOINE CYR COMPETITION SCHEDULE
Add Antoine’s schedule to your calendar on this page.
Ottawa at the Olympics Newsletter
The Ottawa Sports Pages will produce an Ottawa at the Olympics Newsletter throughout the Feb. 6-22 Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, featuring daily recaps, previews and competition schedules. Sign up to receive it in your inbox for free below.
Martin Cleary has written about amateur sports for over 52 years. A past Canadian sportswriter of the year and Ottawa Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement in Sport Media honouree, Martin retired from full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen in 2012, but continued to write a bi-weekly “High Achievers” column for the Citizen/Sun.
When the pandemic struck, Martin created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times, via his Twitter account at first and now here at OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.
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