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Newsletter by Keiran Gorsky, Dan Plouffe & Martin Cleary
Valérie Grenier’s second appearance at Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games was an improvement on her first, but the alpine skier from St. Isidore, ON remained unsatisfied following her 13th-place showing in the women’s team combined event Tuesday.
Grenier finished in 20th position after her downhill portion of the event before Canadian teammate Laurence St-Germain lifted them up to the 13th thanks to the seventh-fastest run in the slalom.
“I’m disappointed with my downhill run. It’s not the performance I was hoping for, especially to set Laurence up for success for her slalom run. I had good feelings on the skis but in the end, it just wasn’t fast,” the Mont-Tremblant athlete said via the Canadian Olympic Committee. “Laurence skied very well. It’s a fun format because we want to do well for ourselves and for our teammate.”
An explosive start out of the gate gradually slowed in speed until Grenier was more than two seconds in the red at the straight “Casonetti” portion of the slope preceding the final jump.
It was a cloudy morning chock-full of surprises in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Ariane Raedlar and Katharina Huber of Austria unexpectedly topped the podium while Germany’s Kira Weilde-Winkelmann and Emma Aicher claimed silver 0.05 seconds behind them. Americans Jacqueline Wiles and Paula Moltzan won bronze, edging out their compatriots and gold medal favourites Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin.
Grenier had a rough start to her Games on Sunday when an equipment issue led to her disqualification in the women’s downhill. The 29-year-old recounted the incident in an Instagram post.
Grenier will return to action on Thursday for the women’s super-G. She’ll be racing on the hill that’s brought her both joy and pain in the past, High Achievers columnist Martin Cleary detailed in his pre-Games profile on Grenier. She won her lone World Cup downhill medal at Cortina in 2024, but then suffered broken bones and torn ligaments when she crashed in the super-G two days later.
Grenier’s got positive vibes, however, heading into the race, thanks to a season where she’s shown potential for a top-10 super-G performance.
“I’m very excited for the super-G,” Grenier noted. “I’m feeling good in the discipline this season. I love the hill here and I’ve had success in the past so I’m excited for the next race.”
Rough day for local flatland skiers too
Ottawa biathlete Zach Connelly made his Olympic debut Tuesday, trekking through the Rieserferner Mountains in Antholz some 1,600 metres above sea level. With a final time of 1:00:39.1, the 24-year-old finished 66th of 89 competitors in the men’s 20 km individual biathlon.
Connelly finished with the 38th-fastest ski time but missed six of 20 targets over the course of four shooting stations, each miss tacking a minute onto his final tally. The Chelsea Nordiq product struggled with his shooting heading into Italy – he also missed four of 10 shots at his final pre-Olympic event at the IBU World Cup in Rupholding.
“His shooting can be very good, but for sure, [Connelly’s] strength lies in his skiing,” his national team coach Andrew Chisholm told the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Keiran Gorsky in an interview before the Olympics.
Connelly will compete in the 10 km sprint on Friday.
Gatineau’s Antoine Cyr picked up speed during his qualification run, but came just short of advancing to the heats of the men’s cross-country skiing sprint classic this morning.
Cyr was among the pack leaders in places gained over the second half of the 1.5 km course, rising from 49th to 39th in the final 0.8 km dash but missed out on a place in the quarterfinals by 3.23 seconds.
“I’m really disappointed,” Cyr told Radio-Canada after the event. “I have already performed well and then to fail like that, well it hurts, but it’s mainly about continuing… I didn’t show what I had to show today.”
Cyr was the top Canadian finisher in the men’s section, two spots ahead of 22-year-old Xavier McKeever. Calgary’s Tom Stephen made his Olympic debut, finishing in 47th. Remi Drolet came in 56th of 95 competitors.
Cyr may compete in the men’s 10 km interval start free on Friday.
While we’re talking about cross-country skiing, we’d like to share a nugget of local sport history from the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame about a special golden anniversary.
It was 50 years ago today that two-time Olympic medallist Sue Holloway officially became an Olympian, and while her medal wins came in canoe sprint, her debut came at the 1976 Winter Olympics in cross-country skiing.
Holloway later became the first woman to ever compete in the Winter and Summer Olympics in the same year when the Rideau Canoe Club paddler competed in Montreal.
Speaking of the 1976 Winter Games, Ottawa had huge representation in Innsbruck, Austria, with a remarkable 12 of 59 Canadian Olympic team members owning capital connections.
You can check out the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame’s Today in Ottawa Sport History social media series for more details.
Canadian women’s hockey team shutout for first time in Olympic history
At the risk of inspiring loads of hate mail from Team Canada fans, we will not lead with what a wonderful day it was for Ottawa Charge rookie defender Rory Guilday and the U.S. women’s hockey team… But the 23-year-old from Chanhassen, Minnesota was indeed on the winning side of a historically bad day for the Canadian women.
For the first time in Olympic competition since the sport debuted in 1998, Team Canada failed to score a goal as the Americans humbled the reigning Olympic champs 5-0.
Munster goaltender Kayle Osborne remained a healthy scratch as Ann-Renée Desbiens went between the posts for a second consecutive night, turning away 22 of 27 shots before she was replaced with former Ottawa Charge netminder Emerance Maschmeyer late in the game. Aerin Frankel earned the shutout for USA, while Charge goalie Gwyneth Philips watched as backup.
The Canadians were without captain Marie-Philip Poulin due to a lower-body injury suffered the previous night in a 5-1 win over Czechia. Ottawa Charge captain Brianne Jenner wore the ‘C’ in her absence.
“She’s the best player in the world,” Jenner said of Poulin in a post-game interview with CBC. “She’s our captain and it’s too bad we couldn’t have a better showing for her.”
The Americans continued their domination over Canada dating back to the Rivalry Series at the end of last year when the swept the four games with a combined score of 24-7.
“I think the divide tonight was just in our puck management, to be honest. I think we were skating well, we just mismanaged the puck too many times and didn’t take care of the details,” Jenner added. “We’ll take a lot (of lessons from the loss). That’s the biggest thing about this game is learning from it and better prepare if we see them again.
“Obviously we’ve got to earn that opportunity, but ya, our coaches are going to do their work and figure out how we can make some adjustments.”
Canada now sits 2-1 through three games. They will wrap up their preliminary round on Thursday against Finland.
Ottawa Olympians in action on Feb. 11:
Day 5 Preview: Shilo Rousseau continues family biathlon tradition, becomes first Olympian
On Wednesday in the Antholz Valley nestled in the towering Rieserferner Mountains, biathlete Shilo Rousseau will make her Olympic debut 40 years after her father’s career-ending injury.
Yves Rousseau was supposed to be an Olympian. That was before his ankle gave out two years before he got his opportunity at Calgary 1988. A military man, as were a great many biathletes in his era, Rousseau was well acquainted with this basest bodily treachery.
He tried and he tried to force his way back onto the competitive circuit, but his body refused to cooperate. Propped onto skis, his ankle swelled up to a rather alarming size. So quickly, the dream was over.
“I couldn’t do it anymore,” the elder Rousseau recalled in an interview. “I had to retire.”
As days went by, his six-year stand on the competitive circuit settled into some pocket of the past. Medals dangled in the doorway of his home in tiny Thessalon, Ontario, where he settled down as a welder. Close by, a signed portrait of Myriam Bedard, Canada’s only ever medalist in Olympic biathlon, sat on the wall.
It was roughly 26 years removed from his last race when he received a call from a club in neighbouring Blind River inviting his 12-year-old daughter Shilo Rousseau to compete in an air rifle race.
Shilo had learned to ski, but holding an air gun was new to her. The night before the competition, the younger Rousseau learned where to place her hands on the contraption and how to align her sights.
“Whatever she takes on, she does it. Like she gives it her 100%,” Yves Rousseau underlined.
There was no world where Rousseau wasn’t going to become extremely proficient. From then on, every Sunday, they would make the 40-minute drive along Lake Huron to train at the club. They set up a target in the backyard they would shoot at together.
It has been a slow and steady ascent through the IBU biathlon rankings all the way to Italy. While at the University of Ottawa, Rousseau burst onto the scene at the 2023 FISU Games in Lake Placid, where she became the first Canadian ever to win three medals at a Winter World University Games.
It wasn’t her first experience representing Canada in an international competition, but it seemed to Rousseau the first time she truly donned the maple leaf.
“At World Cups, it feels like it’s Biathlon Canada, not Team Canada,” Rousseau explained to the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Keiran Gorsky before the Games. “FISU is so special because you really feel like you’re part of Team Canada.”
Rousseau was offered a spot on Canada’s national team after the event, but opted to stay in Ottawa to finish her undergraduate degree en route to medical school. With a similar enthusiasm to which she speaks of her Olympic qualification, Rousseau was quick to mention the culmination of her neuroscience master’s studies – a research paper on the seasonal adaptive capabilities of goldfish published last summer in a prestigious biochemistry journal.
It was challenging, at times, watching her peers flying around the world on tour while she was confined to the trails of Gatineau. World Cup dates had an awful habit of coinciding with exam days.
Even lacking any competitions on the horizon, Rousseau was meticulous with her scant free time. She assured and reassured herself that biathlon was a sport well-suited to late bloomers. Her best course of action, she decided, was never to rush things.
“I wanted to get my schooling done and keep up my training in Ottawa so that when I got older I didn’t feel like I needed to hurry up and get on with my life and leave the sport earlier than I wanted to,” explained the 25-year-old.
It was never a challenge Yves dealt with during his career, nor was the financial burden so many Olympians and prospective Olympians face today. The prospect of a CAF Olympian, the elder Rousseau speculated, generated positive publicity. It was enough to earn him a livable wage.
“There’s nobody that could excel the way she does in the sports and at school at the same time,” Yves Rousseau signalled.
Rousseau said her father is “over the moon” to watch her compete at the Olympics, and she’s grateful to have his support as well as her mom, Cecilia, and all of Thessalon, which will pack into the local curling club to watch their hometown star on the biggest stage in sport.
You can read our full pre-Games profile on Rousseau, the lone local athlete competing at the Olympics on Feb. 11, here on OttawaSportsPages.ca.
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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.
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