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By Dan Plouffe
Better funding for Canadian sport at all levels and moving the Paralympics up on the calendar were several top-of-mind topics for Ottawa Paralympians following the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games.
Winter certainly seemed to already be on its way out when the Paralympics began on March 6 in Italy, until it roared back and reminded everyone who’s boss with a blizzard and intense fog during the last para alpine skiing competition on the final day of the Games.
Para cross-country skier Emma Archibald of the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees made her Paralympic debut, as green and yellow hills surrounded the course in Val di Fiemme, where organizers managed to preserve enough snow for a race.
Archibald said she and her teammates had a quite a few falls on training days in particular, with melting snow causing havoc.
“The snow was getting so deep and so heavy,” noted the 22-year-old. “It’s really hard to navigate through that and make sharp corners with the speed we were picking up on the downhills.”
In response, course crews added salt on some hills to make the snow more firm, but other flatter sections or more gradual hills weren’t salted.
“It’s been actually a bit more difficult to manage the fatigue through that,” Archibald highlighted. “You don’t want to put all the effort into trying to push through all that. You kind of want to kind of like ride it like a wave almost, and just kind of glide through it all.
“You just want to be more smart on this course, rather than just powering through it.”
The conditions came as no surprise to the Canadian team, which figured they may as well do their best to prepare for non-winter weather, including a training camp in New Zealand.
“It was totally expected,” Archibald indicated. “Taking those times that the weather is not the best, or the snow is not the best, and just taking advantage of it, that really set up the team and myself really well, mentally and physically, to just be prepared for these Games.”
Ultimately Archibald laid down several strong performances at the Paralympics, including a sixth-place finish that had her eagerly anticipating her next Games.
Read More: Paralympic rookie Emma Archibald impresses with 6th-place finish
“Obviously, everyone’s performing at their best in those conditions. I think it’s about adaptability in that sense,” Archibald said. “But it’s too bad, because I think it would be super, super cool if we were in conditions that we’re more typically in – even in that -10, -5, solid snow – it would just be a whole different ball game and those conditions would allow us to ski at our very best.
“The March skiing, the spring skiing, is more just fighting through it and getting to the end. Definitely, I’m not sure if it portrays us at the best of our abilities.”
For fans who watch the World Cup circuits or winter sports outside of the Olympic/Paralympic spotlight, it’s clear many of the outdoor competitions were certainly different, if not entirely lesser. The conditions unquestionably juxtapose what’s supposed to be the pinnacle of sport.
Gatineau para alpine skier Alexis Guimond won a Crystal Globe as the planet’s best overall men’s standing super-G racer for this season’s World Cup series, but he failed to finish any of his races – like many fellow competitors.
“At the start of the day, the conditions are alright, but with the warmth, it degrades rapidly,” Guimond told Quebec’s SportCom sports information service. “Your push on the skis is not very stable, it breaks your tempo and it’s really hard to stick to your tactical plan.
“It’s not ideal, but it’s the same conditions for everybody.”
‘I feel bad for the athletes’: Paralympian & former Own The Podium chair Todd Nicholson
Retired five-time Paralympian Todd Nicholson, who won a full set of para ice hockey medals during his storied career, watched the 2026 Games from home in Dunrobin while “still in a lot of pain” following shoulder surgery to repair tendons from a fall.
The Olympics and Paralympics came at a good time from a personal pain-distraction perspective for Nicholson, who hasn’t been able to leave home since mid-December, but one of his first reflections was that a Paralympics in March is scheduled too late in the season.
“I feel bad for the outdoor events,” underlined the past Own The Podium chair. “I feel bad for the athletes.”
Some observers have commented that the Paralympics should be moved before the Olympics, although Nicholson is not a fan of that idea.
“They had trouble getting the venues ready for the Olympics. I think if we put the Paralympics first, they definitely wouldn’t be ready,” he signalled. “But I think one of the things that can be done is to shorten that timeframe in between the Olympics and the Paralympics.”
Nicholson explained that the two-week wait after the Olympics until the start of the Paralympics was a necessity in the past because organizers had to make adjustments to venues in order for them to be accessible for parasport athletes. Now, there’s been a positive shift, and venues are just made accessible in the first place, so there’s no longer a need for a dramatic transformation.
Another change is that Games organizing committees now run both the Olympics and Paralympics, so there aren’t many officials landing and needing orientation.
Nicholson also feels there is merit to taking a true deeper look to study the possibility of integrating the Olympics and Paralympics into one Games.
“In some of the sports, the nationals and World Championships are held in conjunction with each other,” he highlights. “The only time they really get separated is when it comes to the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Fading winter climate a greater fear for sport
Advancing the Paralympics, and the Olympics, by a month or two into the usual colder parts of winter could be helpful for upcoming Games, but winter sport is also engaged in a bit of a losing battle against global warming.
Ski cross racers were greeted with sleet and snail-like speed (by their standards) near the end of the Olympics, as world #1 Reece Howden of Canada vented that the Olympics are supposed to be the peak of their sport, but the conditions were anything but.
Read More: Ottawa at the Olympics Day 15: Jared Schmidt ‘robbed’ of advancement in ski cross
An International Olympic Committee study recently found that only about half of past Olympic hosts will have a climate capable of hosting a Winter Games come the 2050s.
While March pretty much guaranteed that snow would be soft, Archibald noted that most of their European races have been similar, and that last year’s test event in Italy was held in January, but offered “pretty much the same” conditions.
“It was just kind of like that slush fest,” she outlined. “It’s more frustrating. You’re just like, ‘this sucks.’ It’s just really hard.”
Canada only drawing affluent athletes into high-performance sport, says Nicholson
Canada’s medal total dipped to 15 at the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics, which is slightly over half of the team-record 28 won at PyeongChang 2018, when Nicholson was Canada’s chef de mission.
Canadian Paralympic Committee CEO Karen O’Neill told The Canadian Press that the CPC was very proud to see Canadians win medals, but acknowledged that they are concerned about whether these performances will be repeatable, particularly if funding doesn’t improve.
The future is likewise a worry for Nicholson.
“I think we’ve got to look at what are we going to do down the road in order to ensure that we’ve got the next generation of athletes ready for 2030?” he signalled.
It’s not only a question of athletes’ abilities to maintain performance levels as they age, Nicholson added, it comes down to whether pursuing Olympic/Paralympic sport is a sustainable career choice.
“For elite athletes who are sticking around for multiple Games or four or five Games, we’ve got to be able to figure out a way to ensure that those athletes are not living below the poverty line,” he highlighted.
Nicholson echoed calls for increased funding to national/multi-sport organizations, noting “they’re doing their best with what they’ve got,” but that core funding has remained stagnant since the Vancouver 2010 Games.
Provincial funding needs attention as well, Nicholson said, since that level provides a key opportunity for the next generation of athletes to have a pathway to get to the Paralympics. He tipped his cap to the Quebec sport system and the way that supporting their athletes is an engraved culture, which can serve as inspiration to other provinces.
While meeting with Canadian athletes in Europe, Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that a transformation is forthcoming once the Future of Sport in Canada Commission’s final report is released later this month, and that changes should be expected within six months.
Nicholson noted that Canadian sport is inadequately funded if it’s a country that wants to excel at the top levels of sport. But even deeper – and increasingly in recent years – he’s seen that the cost of getting into sport limits the potential pool of athletes who can pursue high-performance sport in the first place.
“We don’t have access to the best athletes in Canada,” Nicholson underlined. “Right now, we have access to the athletes whose families can afford to keep them in sport.”
The adaptability of parasport is one component of creating a welcoming environment for participants of all abilities, Nicholson noted, but financial accessibility is another crucial measure of true inclusion.
“We’ve got to look at how we can ensure that sport is affordable for everybody, and making sure that it’s accessible for everybody,” highlighted the director for Abilities Ottawa, which promotes and provides inclusive and parasport opportunities in the capital.
Read More: Ottawa at the Paralympics Daily Coverage
