What to watch this weekend in Olympic sports
Lindsey Vonn makes her downhill return
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The next few months are going to be very busy for Canada's winter Olympic athletes as they gear up for the 2026 Games in Italy, which are just over a year away. World championships in curling, figure skating, speed skating, skiing, sliding and women's hockey will help reveal the top medal contenders in those sports, while the 4 Nations Face-Off serves as an appetizer for NHL players' return to the Olympics.
For now, though, we're looking at a relatively quiet weekend in the Olympic sports realm. But there are a few interesting things on tap involving Canadian Olympians, so let's go through some of those.
Tennis: Australian Open kicks off the new year
There's almost no off-season in tennis, but the Australian Open is the spiritual start of a brand-new year. The first major tournament of 2025 finds 10-time men's champion Novak Djokovic trying to reclaim the Aussie title from world No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who beat him in the semifinals last year en route to the Italian's first Grand Slam trophy. Djokovic finished the year without a major championship for the first time since 2017 (though he did win his elusive Olympic gold), so the 37-year-old Serb still needs one more to become the first player in history with 25 Grand Slam singles titles.
Five Canadians are competing in the singles events in Melbourne, which get started Saturday night in our time zones. Felix Auger-Aliassime, seeded 29th in the men's draw, reached the final of a warmup tournament in Adelaide today by defeating world No. 12 Tommy Paul of the U.S. Felix will face 22nd-ranked American Sebastian Korda before heading over to Melbourne.
Denis Shapovalov (ranked 58th in the world) and Gabriel Diallo (87th) are also in the Aussie Open men's bracket, while 30th-seeded Leylah Fernandez and 98th-ranked Rebecca Marino represent Canada in the women's draw.
In doubles, Canada's Gabby Dabrowski is ranked No. 3 in the world after winning the lucrative WTA Finals with her teammate Erin Routliffe of New Zealand. Dabrowski also won the Olympic mixed doubles bronze in Paris with Auger-Aliassime before revealing at the end of the year that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer in April.
WATCH l CBC Sports previews what to watch over the weekend:
Hockey: Canadian junior women go for gold
Still smarting from that painful world juniors in Ottawa, where Canada lost in the quarterfinals to the Czech Republic for the second straight year? Well, the Canadian women's under-18 national team can relate. They got upset by the Czechs in the semifinals of their U18 world championship last year.
A chance for redemption awaits on Saturday in Finland, where Canada will once again face the Czechs in the semis at 11:30 a.m. ET. Look out for star Canadian defender Chloe Primerano, who could be playing in the Olympics next year after making her senior national-team debut as a 17-year-old in November. She won MVP at last year's U18 worlds with 16 points in six games (a record for blue-liners) and has four goals and four assists through four games this time.
The winner will face either the defending-champion United States or Sweden in the gold-medal game on Sunday at noon ET. Here's more on the Canada-Czech semi from CBC Sports' Karissa Donkin.
Other likely members of the Canadian and U.S. Olympic women's hockey teams will be in action in the three PWHL games this weekend. Those include Boston at Ottawa on Saturday at 2 p.m. ET on the CBC TV network and CBC Sports.ca, and Montreal vs. Minnesota on Sunday at 3 p.m. ET in Denver. The latter is part of the nine-game Takeover Tour designed to bring PWHL games to NHL arenas while testing potential expansion sites.
In the NHL, three-time Russian Olympian Alex Ovechkin continues his pursuit of Wayne Gretzky's all-time goals record as the Washington Capitals host Montreal tonight and visit Nashville on Saturday. Goalless in his last two games, Ovechkin is 23 away from breaking the record with 41 games left in the season. He has 19 goals in 25 games so far, including four in seven games since missing almost six weeks with a broken leg.
Skiing: Lindsey Vonn returns to the downhill
The 40-year-old American alpine star launched her World Cup comeback before Christmas with a cautious 14th-place finish in a super-G race in St. Moritz, Switzerland. On Saturday in Austria, weather permitting, she'll return to her signature discipline for the first time in six years.
Vonn's 43 World Cup downhill wins are a record for women and men, and they make up the bulk of her 82 career victories — third all-time behind active American star Mikaela Shiffrin (99) and Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark (86). Shiffrin is still recovering from a crash in late November, and it's unclear when she'll resume the chase for her 100th win.
Vonn, who won Olympic downhill gold at the 2010 Vancouver Games, is expected to compete next week at Italy's Cortina d'Ampezzo, which will host the women's alpine events for the 2026 Olympics. She's won six downhills and six super-Gs there.
Vonn's lone Canadian opponent on Saturday is Val Grenier. She's looking for her first World Cup podium since winning a giant slalom gold and a downhill bronze (the latter at Cortina d'Ampezzo) last January.
You can watch Vonn's downhill return live on Saturday at 5:15 a.m. ET on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem. There's a women's super-G race at the same time Sunday.
This weekend's streaming menu also includes men's alpine skiing, bobsleigh and luge. Here's the full schedule.
