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Newsletter by Dan Plouffe, Martin Cleary & Keiran Gorsky
Exhale Team Homan curling fans, but only for a breath or two, because the most nervous wheezing likely lies ahead.
The Ottawa Curling Club rink of Rachel Homan, Tracy Fleury, Emma Miskew and Sarah Wilkes survived a Wednesday match against Italy to prevail 8-7 in an extra end and give themselves a chance to book a ticket to the medal round with a win on Thursday at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
Facing the 2-5 host nation that had nothing to lose since they’d already been eliminated from playoff contention, Team Homan opened up breathing room in a few instances but struggled to hold the pesky Italians down.
“We’ve been resilient for sure. It’s not always been easy, and we knew from the last two world championships that that was how it was going to be,” Miskew told TSN’s Bryan Mudryk after Canada improved its record to 5-3. “We knew that there were going to be battles this week. We knew that we were going to have tough games. Everyone who earns the right to get here is exceptionally good at their positions for their country.
“So we were just trying to stick it with it one shot at a time here, and even if we miss a couple, just trying to bounce back.”
After a relative stalemate through the first half of the match, the Canadians put good pressure on their opponents to steal two points in the sixth end to go up 5-2.
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But Italy stuck around with consecutive single points to setup a nervous ninth end. Team Homan had two of three major misses on consecutive shots in the ninth and seemed destined to be forced to take only one point with the hammer.
But just when you saw signs of stress compacting and possibly set to implode, Homan absolutely nailed an improbable draw that required pinpoint accuracy and an extra bit of spin, with her teammates perfectly managing the shot on ice that had often tricked them to score a pair.
“It was a great shot. She threw exactly the way that we wanted to,” Miskew said of her teammate since the start.
But the relief of a three-point cushion in the final end evaporated as Homan was forced to make a game-saving double takeout with her last shot to limit Italy to just three points. And then in the extra end, she was left with a testy draw to the four foot ring to either win or lose the match.
Celebrated a day earlier for a heavyweight hit that turned their match with previously-unbeaten Sweden, Homan delivered a fine touch under pressure as she showed why her old coach Earle Morris called her “the best shot-making female skip on the planet” when she was still a junior.
Miskew was relieved that the adjustments they made were effective as they battled with rocks and changing ice conditions.
“We really just tried to learn the best that we could out there and try to make the next one,” signalled the Brookfield High School and Carleton University grad. “Thankfully that last draw we got it there.”
Canada now sits in a three-way tie for third place with South Korea and USA for the final two places in the semi-finals behind 7-2 Sweden and 6-2 Switzerland.
Team Homan must win their final round robin match against the Koreans since the Americans hold the tiebreaker advantage over Canada thanks to their earlier win.
Beating Italy ensured that a Canada win over Korea would guarantee their spot in Friday’s semis, which would represent a remarkable turnaround from their 1-3 start.
“We’re just happy to still be in a position that we can control our own destiny, and we’re just trying to stick with one shot at a time again and not really think ahead too much,” added Miskew, momentarily sounding like a Mike Evelyn O’Higgins/Jay Dearborn interview imitating hockey players. “We know that we can manage to win tough games that aren’t always looking as good at the start, and we’re just gonna keep with that.”
Antoine Cyr scores impressive 6th-place finish in cross-country skiing team sprint
Gatineau’s Antoine Cyr and Canadian teammate Xavier McKeever earned a very strong sixth-place result in the cross-country skiing men’s team sprint free event on Wednesday morning in Tesero.
They recorded a time of 18:38.69 to finish less than 10 seconds behind champion Norway and 6.4 seconds back of host Italy for the final podium place as the teammates took turns skiing 1.5-kilometre laps three times each.
“It was a really tough race. There were a lot of really good teams,” McKeever said via the Canadian Olympic Committee. “The pace was a little more relaxed at the start, but it rose with every lap. We just tried to stay in the top pack and make good exchanges.
“Tony did a really good job to put me in a really good place for my last lap. I was just missing a little bit of gas to be able to stay with the podium group, but I’m super proud of our efforts. We left everything on the course.”
After safely advancing from the earlier qualifications among the top-15 out of 27 entries, the Canadians kept their spot near the front of the race throughout the final, with Cyr tagging McKeever for the final anchor leg ranked sixth, just 3.3 seconds away from the lead skier.
“I’m super happy with our team’s effort. I think we have super nice chemistry,” underlined Cyr, the 27-year-old Skinouk athlete who was paired with 22-year-old McKeever of Canmore, AB. “I think we’re starting to develop a super strong team with lots of potential. I think today was the proof. At the Olympic Games, to finish in sixth, you know, we were right there the whole time on the course.
“It was a lot of fun and it’s super exciting.”
In biathlon, Canada’s result wasn’t as encouraging, with the women’s 4×6 km relay team failing to finish after getting lapped in the third leg of the race to place 19th out of 20.
University of Ottawa Gee-Gees product Shilo Rousseau kept Canada alive as she moved Canada up from 19th to 18th during the second leg. The 25-year-old first-time Olympian was perfect in the prone shooting position and avoided penalty by only using two extra bullets to hit all the targets in the standing shooting portion.
In earlier events, Rousseau placed 78th in the women’s 15 km individual and 80th in the women’s 7.5 km sprint. The mass start is the last remaining event on the biathlon programme.
1960 Olympic slalom champion Anne Heggtveit’s first Olympics 70 years ago at Cortina d’Ampezzo
Today in Cortina, the most successful World Cup alpine skier of all time Mikaela Shiffrin was again crowned an Olympic champion in the women’s slalom, a dozen years after the American became the youngest person to ever win the Olympic slalom at age 18.
Once upon a time, the title of the youngest ever Olympic women’s slalom champion belonged to Ottawa’s Anne Heggtveit.
It was 70 years ago that Heggtveit first became an Olympian at Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956, although she recently told Ottawa Sports Pages High Achievers columnist Martin Cleary that those Games were not particularly memorable as she placed 22nd in the downhill, 29th in the giant slalom and 30th in the slalom..
“It’s not something I think about,” insisted Heggtveit, who now lives in Cornelius, North Carolina, with her husband James Ross Hamilton. “It was so difficult for me. It’s not memorable.”
What made it especially frustrating for the New Edinburgh-raised athlete was that she had spent most of the previous year recovering from a serious left leg injury and wondering if she would be healthy for the 1956 Cortina Olympics.
On Jan. 31, 1955, she sustained a spiral fracture of her leg during a slalom practice. She spent three months in the Ottawa Civic Hospital, wore a leg cast for six to seven months and worried about nerve damage.
A student at Lisgar Collegiate Institute at the time, she missed the Canadian trials for the 1956 Olympics, but was named to the team as a 17-year-old based on her past performances, including seventh place in the slalom and ninth in the downhill at the 1954 world championships at age 15.
When Heggtveit wants to think about something memorable, she focuses on the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. Her Games started somewhat slow, but ended with her becoming the second-ever Canadian Winter Olympic champion, and the second from Ottawa too.
Heggtveit, now 87, still remembers how she was inspired as a nine-year-old when she was among thousands of Ottawa citizens who welcomed home 1948 Olympic figure skating champion Barbara Ann Scott at a downtown parade.
“I’ll never forget that. She was my first idol, a non-skier, but really memorable,” Heggtveit highlighted. “She did it. I thought I could do it. The fact she did it, that’s all she had to do for me. It was possible.”
Heggtveit had designs on winning gold at the 1960 Olympics, but she had some doubts because handling the turns around the gates presented her with some discomfort because of the earlier injury to her left leg. The top part of the first run also had some tricky icy sections that could cause a skier to slide off course.
Ottawa Olympians in action on Feb. 19:
Day 13 Preview: Canadian women’s hockey team seeks to reverse recent trends and overcome USA juggernaut
Ottawa’s Kayle Osborne and the Canadian women’s hockey team will collect gold or silver medals after their championship game against USA on Thursday, and as you’ve certainly heard, the expected result is silver.
Up to this point, Osborne has often experienced sinking feelings when facing the stars and stripes in international competitions.
The John McCrae Secondary School grad’s first bitter taste came when she served as backup to Ève Gascon in a 2-1 overtime defeat at the 2020 IIHF U18 Women’s Hockey World Championship.
In this season’s Canada vs USA Rivalry Series, Osborne was beaten five times on 31 shots while Ottawa Charge goalie Gwyneth Philips turned aside 29 of 30 in the 6-1 trouncing by USA, which won all four Rivalry Series contests by at least three goals when the women’s hockey powers met in November and December.
With an embarrassing 5-0 spanking in the preliminary round last week, all signs point to Canada accepting silver come the final buzzer Thursday. But despite the unsettling recent history, Osborne has every bit of faith that Canada will show its true potential in the biggest moments.
“I got to see how special this group was, and not just see it, but be a part of it. It’s something you can’t really explain,” Osborne said of her pre-Games prep with Team Canada in conversation with the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Keiran Gorsky.
As Canada’s #3 goalie, the odds of seeing Osborne between the pipes Thursday are next to nil – making the Canadian Olympic team was the 23-year-old’s major accomplishment.
We could see fellow goalie Emerance Maschmeyer, who has ties to the Ottawa area, and we’ll certainly see current Ottawa Charge players Brianne Jenner, Emily Clark and Jocelyne Larocque for Team Canada, and maybe a bit of Rory Guilday for Team USA along with Philips, who is expected to be backup.
The only other Ottawa athletes in action on Thursday will be curlers Rachel Homan and Emma Miskew (as outlined above) in a winner-moves-on, loser-goes-home match with South Korea.
Preview: Keaton Bruggeling to join bobsleigh big show for four-man event
In today’s second official training run in advance of the start of the four-man bobsleigh competition on Saturday morning, Keaton Bruggeling helped push Canada to the second-fastest start time and ninth-fastest down time in an encouraging sign for the top Canadian men’s bobsled.
Like fellow Carleton University Ravens football product Jay Dearborn, the Canada-2 pilot, Bruggeling is one of three Canadian bobsledders who can trace their roots in the sliding sport to CANAM Strength and Conditioning on Colonnade Rd. in Nepean, brakeman Mike Evelyn O’Higgins being the third.
In a sport where the initial push-off is just as important as the subsequent descent, the explosive speed and upper-body strength of football players come in handy. Bruggeling is a past Ottawa Redblacks receiver and current Hamilton Tiger-Cat who misses the first chunk of bobsled preseason at the tail end of his CFL season.
It isn’t a simple matter of hopping into a sled in the winter – both sports call for distinct physical profiles. The 27-year-old has to put on some weight come late October to be ready to heave the massive 460-pound sled in November.
“Bobsleigh is not an easy sport on your body,” Bruggeling signalled in an interview with Gorsky the day he was officially named to his first Olympic team.
The Olympics were never on Bruggeling’s radar until former Team USA bobsledder Adam Blandford, the CANAM co-owner, introduced him to the idea and noted he had the type of profile they’re after in the sport.
Olympians are often asked to spare a few words of wisdom for youngsters. Bruggeling, instead, has a message for everyone else.
“I wasn’t a prospective Olympian until two years ago,” noted the St. Catharines, ON-raised athlete. “It is not too late. It is never too late to start and to try something new. This is one of those unique sports where you can join. It’s not hyper skill based. You won’t run into a lot of barriers and hurdles on your way. It’s a lovely sport for that. And it brings all kinds of people together.”
The first two runs of the four-man bobsleigh event are set for Saturday, with the last two on Sunday. You can read Gorsky’s full feature on the local bobsled crew here on OttawaSportsPages.ca.
