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By Dan Plouffe, Martin Cleary & Keiran Gorsky
First-time Paralympian Emma Archibald got to see both the thrill of a Canadian standing on the podium and perhaps a glimpse into her future as she laid down a breakout performance Wednesday at the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games.
The 22-year-old para cross-country skier from the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees finished sixth in the women’s standing 10-kilometre classic, while Canadian veteran Brittany Hudak earned her fourth medal in her fourth Games with her bronze.
“It was awesome,” Archibald said via the Canadian Paralympic Committee. “It was a very, very tough course out there, but I learned a lot from doing it last year at the test event, and I was able to pace it a lot better this year and just kind of get into a good rhythm.”
Many athletes donned short sleeves Wednesday and there was plenty of grass visible around the course on a 5°C day in Val di Fiemme.
The difficult racing conditions were especially challenging for racers who didn’t have use of poles (Hudak only uses one and Archibald has no poles due to missing fingers), but Archibald still managed to equal her best-ever world event result in an interval start race.
Archibald’s adjusted time – which takes into consideration the degree of impairment for each athlete – was 35:26.8, while Hudak claimed the bronze with almost two minutes to spare over the fourth-place finisher in 32:01.0.
WATCH CBC SPORTS | Emma Archibald competes for Canada in Para cross-country: 10 km IS standing | Winter Paralympics
Hudak stuck around to greet Archibald and congratulate her on her performance at the finish line. And then the TV cameras captured Archibald’s elation as she learned, between gasps for air, that Hudak had won a medal.
“Just having my teammate Britt out there too racing, that was so fun to be racing with her again, and for the first time at the Paralympics,” Archibald underlined. “Having her around and seeing her on course, I just built off of energy from that.”
The Canadian pair have become fast friends since Archibald joined the national team the season about the 2022 Paralympics. Archibald has managed to glean plenty of tricks and tips over the years from Hudak, who is a decade her senior.
Team Canada later celebrated a second medal on cross-country snow as Mark Arendz won the 14th of his career in the men’s standing event.
That called for another congratulatory cappuccino for the Canadian team members, who have taken a liking to coffee man Carlos’ stand, which is open until 3 p.m. each day, Archibald noted.
“It’s been amazing,” Archibald said of her first Paralympic experience. “It’s been really cool. It’s so fun having friends and family here. It’s been so fun getting to celebrate all the teammates’ wins and accomplishments.
“These Paralympics just feel like a big celebration of how far each one of us has come, so it’s been to have such a great team with me here.”
Canada keeps perfect record intact in wheelchair curling
In wheelchair curling, Stittsville’s Collinda Joseph made way for alternate Gilbert Dash to make his second appearance of the Paralympics, earlier results having already assured Canada’s qualification for the semifinals.
Canada’s opponents from Slovakia had been eliminated from playoff contention earlier Wednesday and were their own worst enemies in the second end when their skip wound up taking out his own stone to give up a steal of four and dig a 6-0 hole.
But the Slovakians slowly made their way back, scoring a pair in the third and then stealing one point in consecutive ends followed by two more in the sixth. They then limited Canada to a single in the seventh to enter the final end down by one with hammer.
But the Canadians persevered and built a fortress in the eighth end, ultimately taking two points and earning a 9-6 victory to maintain their perfect record of seven wins in seven matches.
“We’re definitely a resilient team,” skip Mark Ideson said via the CPC. “It can be challenging when you have a big lead early and you let a team back in, but Slovakia earned all those points and put the pressure on us throughout.
“Luckily we continued to go to school throughout the game and were able to make big shots when we needed to in the eighth.”
Ottawa Paralympians in action on March 12:
Day 6 Preview: Double-header for Collinda Joseph, Brian Rowland seeks first finish in final event
It’s a busy day for Collinda Joseph and the Canadian wheelchair curling team on Thursday as they finish up the preliminary round, but perhaps not as stressful as it could have been.
With their place in Friday’s semifinals already locked up, Canada’s double-header with Slovakia and then South Korea will only impact potential matchups for opposition in the semis.
Curling is the only sport on Thursday’s schedule for Ottawa Paralympians, so we’ll take a moment to tell you about one of our local athletes getting ready to compete on what’ll be a furious Friday for the capital contingent.
Brian Rowland will be seeking to make it through all the gates and down to the finish line for the first time in three outings when he races in the men’s giant slalom, which is a two-run event and will be Rowland’s final competition of the Games.
The spring snow conditions have made it tough for the world’s best para alpine skiers. The sit-skiers have been particularly impacted, with the men’s group the last to take to the course in Cortina d’Ampezzo as the temperature rises.
More than half of the men’s sitting field did not finish the downhill and more than a quarter failed to make it through the super-G, including Rowland on both occasions.
“I ended up hitting some soft, soft snow and my ski jutted to the right and put me off-course,” Rowland recounted in an interview shared by the CPC after the downhill event.
While the 39-year-old who turns 40 on Saturday hasn’t been able to show his best stuff on the slopes, he has made the most of his time off the hill, collecting a sparkling vest’s worth of Paralympic pins from different participating countries.
Rowland is certainly soaking up his Games experience – one that seemed doubtful on a couple of occasions when he suffered significant shoulder injuries since making his Paralympic debut at Beijing 2022.
Those came after he experienced the most incredible moment on March 12, 2023.
That’s when, at the age of 36 – when most speed skiers, whether able-bodied or para, had retired from their daily battles with unforgiving mountains – the Merrickville, ON, athlete was celebrating his first World Cup medal.
In the Italian village of Sella Nevea, Rowland flew down the downhill course with controlled reckless abandon to earn the bronze medal in a time of 52.67 seconds. His best-ever international result arrived a day after he notched a personal-best sixth place in another downhill.
“It’s almost unbelievable,” he said in a Canadian Paralympic Committee news release about his medal. “It was super fast out there. It wasn’t pretty, but I just gave it my best and held on.
“People were cheering at the finish and when I saw my time, I was a couple of seconds faster than yesterday, so I knew I had a shot at a podium. It’s pretty awesome.”
That uplifting result came near the end of the first season after the Beijing Paralympics, where he was 10th in the super-G and 12th in the giant slalom.
While his inaugural World Cup medal was an indication of good things to come, it really wasn’t, with his next two seasons riddled by shoulder injuries, surgeries, recovery time and limited skiing.
“The last four years have been challenging,” Rowland summarized bluntly in a call with Ottawa Sports Pages High Achievers columnist Martin Cleary before the Games.
It’s all history now, but Rowland suffered back-to-back scapula injuries, which wiped out his 2023-24 season and seriously impacted his 2024-25 campaign.
At the 2023 Canadian para alpine ski championships, Rowland was training on a cold morning at Panorama, B.C., when one of his two outriggers caught a gate and flipped him backwards. When he landed, his right shoulder blade took all the impact and he broke his scapula.
Rowland, who suffered a spinal cord injury 11 years ago as a result of a motocross accident, zips down the hill in a sitting position with springs under his seat to absorb the bumps, a single ski underneath him and two outrigger poles for stability.
His paralysis didn’t allow him to use his arms to lift himself up, after his crash. He spent a week in a British Columbia hospital, two weeks at Ottawa’s Montfort Hospital and was a long-term patient at the Kemptville District Hospital, which is close to his home.
It was five weeks before he could weight-bear on his shoulder and move around. He missed the 2023-24 season because of a long recuperation period.
Back on skis almost a year later at Panorama, once again, Rowland came off a bump during a super-G training session, landed crooked, tried to stop hockey style, but he hit a gate and landed on his left shoulder. Instead of a full break, it was only a fracture.
He was out for two months, but was able to salvage part of the second half of last season.
“I knew the feeling (shoulder injury), but I was able to ski to the bottom,” Rowland explained. “I didn’t ski for two months, but I got back into it. I trained last February and got strong enough to race a few times.”
Despite those significant bumps on the road, Rowland has enjoyed his best season yet in the lead-up to the 2026 Paralympics.
You can read this full feature by Cleary here on OttawaSportsPages.ca.
