 Canadian athletes experienced a wide range of outcomes this weekend | | | From a dominant performance by the country's best swimmer, to a heartbreaking setback for a national marathon record holder, here's a recap of the biggest results of the weekend for Canada's Olympic athletes.
Summer McIntosh had a perfect start to her Olympic year.
The Canadian swimming phenom won all three of her races at the 2024 Pro Swim Series opener on the University of Tennessee campus. After taking the women's 200-metre butterfly on Thursday night, McIntosh, 17, won the 200m freestyle and 200m individual medley finals over the weekend to complete the trifecta. Her victory in the 200m IM came against American Alex Walsh, the 2022 world champion and silver medallist at last year's worlds. Reigning world champ Kate Douglass, also of the U.S., opted out of the final.
McIntosh is the junior world record holder in the 200m IM, but she skipped it at last year's worlds in Japan, where she repeated as gold medallist in both the 400m IM and 200m butterfly to become the first Canadian swimmer ever with four world titles. She also took bronze in the 200m freestyle and placed fourth in the 400 free. It's unclear which events McIntosh will enter this summer in Paris, where she'll be going for her first Olympic medal(s) after debuting as a 14-year-old three years ago in Tokyo.
Other notable Canadian results from the weekend in Knoxville included a victory by Tessa Cieplucha in the women's 400m IM and a second-place finish by Olympic champion Maggie Mac Neil in the 100m butterfly. Penny Oleksiak was slated to compete for the first time since last May but was scratched from her three events, fuelling worries about the seven-time Olympic medallist's readiness for this summer's Games. Read more about Canada's top performers at the Knoxville meet in this story by CBC Sports' Devin Heroux.
Canadian women's marathon record holder Natasha Wodak failed to qualify for the Olympics.
Dodgy hamstrings and a painful calf cramp doomed Wodak to a ninth-place finish in Sunday's Houston Marathon in 2:28:42 — nearly two minutes slower than the 2:26:50 required for a spot in this summer's Games in Paris.
She could take another run at the Olympic standard this spring, but a "frustrated and heartbroken" Wodak admitted yesterday that this was "pretty much my last chance" to qualify for her third Olympic Games. "I'm emotionally really tired," said the 42-year-old. "[Running] is my whole life and I feel I've put so much into this [Olympic pursuit] over the last year. It's exhausting."
Former national record holder Malindi Elmore, who turns 44 in March, is the only Canadian woman who has qualified for the marathon in Paris. She ran a 2:23:30 in Berlin in September. Canadian men's record holder Cam Levins has a spot in Paris after running a 2:05:36 in Tokyo last March. That was the fastest marathon ever by a North American and well under the men's Olympic standard of 2:08:10. Read more about Wodak's tough day in Houston in this story by CBC Sports' Doug Harrison.
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier reclaimed their Canadian figure skating title.
Denied a shot at their third consecutive ice dance crown last year after Gilles had surgery for ovarian cancer, the duo returned to the top of the medal stand with their victory on Saturday at the Canadian championships in Calgary. Gilles and Poirier will go for their third medal at the world championships in March in Montreal after taking bronze in 2021 and '23.
Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps repeated as national pairs champs, 18-year-old Wesley Chiu won his first men's title and 17-year-old Kaiya Ruiter upset two-time winner Madeline Schizas for her first women's crown. Read more about the Canadian championships here.
2023 ice dance winners Nikolaj Soerensen and Laurence Fournier Beaudry withdrew from the nationals last week after USA Today reported that an American coach and former skater accused Sorensen of sexually assaulting her in 2012. Soerensen called the allegations "false" in an Instagram post announcing that he and his teammate were withdrawing because they didn't want to be "distracting."
Yesterday, Soerensen and Fournier Beaudry were named to the Canadian team for the upcoming Four Continents Championships in Taiwan. Canada's roster for the world championships will be determined at a later date.
Canada's field hockey teams are still in the hunt for the Olympics.
The men's and women's squads are both competing in one of the last-chance global qualifying tournaments being held this week. In each case, only the top three finishers in an eight-team field get a ticket to Paris, so Canada must advance out of its four-team group and into the semifinals to have a chance.
The women are 1-1 after losing to Great Britain and defeating Malaysia over the weekend. They'll likely have to beat Spain (2-0) on Tuesday to maintain a shot at their first Olympic appearance since 1992.
The men got trounced 9-0 by Germany in their opener but can keep their hopes of a third straight trip to the Olympics alive by defeating Chile on Tuesday and New Zealand on Thursday. "We don't have to win every single game," Canadian captain Gordon Johnston explained. "We have to win the right games." | | |  | Summer McIntosh went 3-for-3 at the 2024 Pro Swim Series opener in Knoxville, Tenn. (Alex Slitz/Getty Images) | | | Quickly… | | | Some other things to know:
1. It's a rare Monday doubleheader in the NFL playoffs.
Joining the game between Philadelphia and Tampa Bay at 8:15 p.m. ET, a Pittsburgh vs. Buffalo matchup was postponed from Sunday afternoon to today at 4:30 p.m. ET due to a classic lake-effect blizzard in Western New York. Buffalo had to call on locals to help shovel the two feet of snow that buried the stands — which went pretty much exactly how you'd expect from Bills fans. The work, it seems, was not completed in time for fans arriving at their "seats" today.
If the Bills get past the underdog Steelers, they'll host reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City next Sunday. Taylor Swift's favourite team iced Miami 26-7 on Saturday night in one of the coldest games in NFL history. The other second-round AFC matchup will see Houston travel to either K.C. or top seed Baltimore after rookie quarterback C.J. Stroud led the Texans to a 45-14 rout of favoured Cleveland. Baltimore, which enjoyed a first-round bye, would face Pittsburgh if the Steelers upset the Bills today.
In the NFC, top seed San Francisco will come off a bye to face Green Bay on Saturday night after young QB Jordan Love and the Packers shocked No. 2 seed Dallas 48-32 yesterday. The winner of tonight's Philly-Tampa game will head to Detroit after the Lions edged the Rams 24-23 last night for their first playoff win in 32 years.
2. Canada's top singles players advanced at the Australian Open.
Felix Auger-Aliassime and Leylah Fernandez are the only two Canadians ranked in the top 100 and the only two to reach the second round so far at the year's first tennis major.
Fernandez, seeded 32nd in the women's tournament, defeated Czech qualifier Sara Bejlek in straight sets on Saturday. She'll face 82nd-ranked American Alycia Parks next. Auger-Aliassime, No. 27 in the men's draw, won a marathon five-setter over unseeded Austrian Dominic Thiem today. He'll meet 178th-ranked Frenchman Hugo Grenier next.
Denis Shapovalov and Milos Raonic were both eliminated in the men's first round — the latter after an injury forced him out in the third set of his match vs. 10th-seeded Australian Alex de Minaur. Women's qualifier Rebecca Marino plays her first-round match on Tuesday morning in Canadian time zones. Doubles ace Gabriela Dabrowski, seeded fourth with her Ontario-raised New Zealander teammate Erin Routliffe, opens on Tuesday night.
Along with Auger-Aliassime's win, today's results included a loss by Naomi Osaka in her first Grand Slam match since 2022. The former world No. 1 gave birth to her first child in July.
3. A teenage surfing star got her Canadian citizenship in time for the Olympics.
Sixteen-year-old Erin Brooks is considered a contender for an Olympic medal this summer after taking silver at last year's world championships and gold at the world juniors in 2022. Though born in Texas and raised in Hawaii, she represented Canada at international events based on a family connection — her father is a dual American-Canadian citizen and her grandfather was born and raised in Montreal — and hoped to do the same at the Paris Olympics.
But, last June, surfing's world governing body ruled that Brooks could no longer compete for Canada while her citizenship application was pending, and in October the Canadian government rejected it. It seemed Brooks' Olympic hopes were ruined before Ontario's Superior Court of Justice ruled last month that it is unconstitutional for Canada to deny automatic citizenship to the children of foreign-born Canadians who grew up abroad. The Brooks family refiled its application, and this time it was approved.
The final step for Brooks is to qualify for the Olympics at the world championships starting next month in Puerto Rico. Read more about her successful fight for Canadian citizenship here. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | |
