What to watch this weekend in Olympic sports
De Grasse is back, and skiing's scariest race returns
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Here's some of the best stuff to keep an eye on involving top Canadian athletes:
Speed skating: Canadians have home-ice advantage
Calgary's aging Olympic Oval might be on its last legs, but it's still in good enough shape to host the third long track World Cup event of the season, beginning tonight.
Canadian skaters had a lot of success when the Oval hosted the world single distances championships last year, winning a national-record 10 medals — second only to the powerhouse Netherlands' 13. Ivanie Blondin led the way with a gold and two silvers, and she's been the top Canadian on the World Cup tour this season, accounting for three of the country's six medals.
The international skater to watch is 20-year-old American phenom Jordan Stolz. At the worlds in Calgary last February, he won gold in all three of his individual races for the second straight year, then went on to capture his first allround world title in Germany. Stolz is dominating the World Cup circuit too, winning four gold medals at four straight tour stops dating back to last season. If you missed our preview of the Calgary World Cup, read it here.
WATCH l CBC Sports previews what to watch over the weekend:
Alpine skiing: The scariest race on snow
This weekend's men's World Cup races are in Kitzbuehel, Austria, home of the most terrifying downhill on the planet. The legendary Streif course isn't the fastest on tour — that would be last week's Lauberhorn in Wengen, Switzerland. But its combination of rough terrain, steep drops, sharp turns and long jumps (skiers can be airborne for as much as 60 metres) challenges the skills and courage of the world's best downhillers like no other. There have been several near-death experiences on the Streif over the years, including Canadian Brian Stemmle's infamous 1989 crash.
For those reasons, anyone who conquers this monster with a World Cup win earns the respect and admiration of his peers. The legendary Crazy Canucks made their bones by winning the Kitzbuehel downhill four straight times in the 1980s, and it remains the most coveted World Cup title in the sport.
The annual Hahnenkamm races at Kitzbuehel began today with the super-G — the downhill's slightly less sinister cousin. Swiss star Marco Odermatt, a 44-time World Cup winner, finally earned his first victory at Kitzbuehel, setting him up as the favourite for Saturday's downhill.
Canada's Cam Alexander placed an impressive fifth today while Jack Crawford (the reigning super-G world champion) was eighth. The race was interrupted by multiple crashes, most notably when three-time Olympic medallist Alexis Pinturault of France was airlifted off with an apparent knee injury, underscoring the danger lurking around every corner of this hill.
WATCH | Why the Kitzbuhel downhill is the ultimate test for skiers:
Track and field: Andre De Grasse is back
Canada's biggest track star makes his 2025 debut at a World Athletics Indoor Tour event in Kazakhstan, where he'll be running the 60m on Saturday. It's De Grasse's first race since he anchored Canada's incredible 4x100m victory at the Olympics in Paris.
The world's best sprinters mostly treat their indoor 60m races as training for the outdoor season, which this year will culminate with the world championships in Tokyo in September. But De Grasse will be facing a marquee opponent in Kishane Thompson, the Jamaican who took Olympic 100m silver in that thrilling photo finish with American Noah Lyles.
Winter X Games: The robots are coming
The annual snowboard and freestyle ski festival in Aspen, Colo., opened Thursday and continues through Saturday. Among the 11 Canadians invited is Cassie Sharpe, the 2018 Olympic champion and 2022 silver medallist in the women's ski halfpipe.
Sharpe, who won an X Games SuperPipe title at Aspen in 2019, recently returned from a two-year hiatus around the birth of her daughter. The 32-year-old took bronze in her third event back and is eyeing the world championships in March and next year's Olympics. Here's more on Sharpe's return.
A new A.I. judging system is being tested in the snowboard SuperPipe competitions this week. Supporters say it could help alleviate human errors like those that occurred at the last Winter Olympics, where there were some high-profile instances of judges either failing to notice a key trick or thinking one was performed when it wasn't. Here's the pitch from former freestyle skiing star Jeremy Bloom, who helped build the technology: "What if we could give judges superpowers and they could see things they couldn't see with the human eye?"
For this week, human judges will still decide the official scores, but the A.I. evaluations will be shown to viewers. Here's more on the experimental tech.
Other stuff to watch:
The first moguls World Cup events of the calendar year took place today at New Hampshire's Waterville Valley, known as the birthplace of freestyle skiing. Canadian star Mikaël Kingsbury won for the third time in five starts this season for his record-extending 93rd World Cup victory. Canada's Maia Schwinghammer placed fourth in the women's event. Waterville will host the dual moguls events on Saturday.
The aerials World Cup tour continues in Lac-Beauport, Que., with men's and women's events on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Canada's Marion Thenault took bronze in the women's season opener last weekend in Lake Placid, N.Y.
How to watch:
With the exception of the X Games, everything mentioned above is being live-streamed on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem, with additional coverage of some events on the CBC TV network. Here's the full streaming and broadcast schedule.
You can also watch Saturday's PWHL game between the New York Sirens and Toronto Sceptres at Scotiabank Arena live at 2 p.m. ET on the CBC TV network and streaming. Read about how hockey helped Toronto coach Troy Ryan climb out of poverty in this story by CBC Sports' Karissa Donkin.
