5 Team Canada sports to watch this weekend: March 22-24
There’s plenty of excitement for Team Canada fans this weekend, including two world championships and one World Cup Final taking place on home ice and snow.
The 2024 ISU World Figure Skating Championships are on in Montreal, while the World Women’s Curling Championship is happening in Sydney, Nova Scotia. The final stop on the FIS Snowboard Cross World Cup circuit will take place in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Quebec.
Beyond the Canadian border, Team Canada athletes are also competing in World Cup Finals in ski cross in Idre Fjäll, Sweden and alpine skiing in Saalbach, Austria.
Here’s what you don’t want to miss:
Figure Skating
Canada is welcoming the world’s top figure skating talent to Montreal for the 2024 ISU World Figure Skating Championships. Canada last hosted the worlds in 2013, when they took place in London, Ontario.
READ: What to watch for as Montreal hosts 2024 World Figure Skating Championships
Team Canada is represented by 15 skaters–three pairs, three ice dance duos, two men’s singles competitors and one women’s singles competitor.
Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are in first place after the pairs’ short program. They have nearly a four-point lead over reigning world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan after achieving a personal best score in the short. That free skate is Thursday evening.
Canada’s medal hopefuls also include ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who already have two world championship medals to their name. The duo took home a bronze medal at last year’s worlds after a season which saw them take several months away from competition after Gilles underwent surgery for stage one ovarian cancer. They’ll get their competition underway with the rhythm dance on Friday.
Curling
Team Canada (Team Homan) is on a tear at the World Women’s Curling Championship, taking place in Sydney, Nova Scotia. The team is comprised of skip Rachel Homan, vice-skip Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew, lead Sarah Wilkes, and alternate Rachel Brown.
Team Canada took down the four-time defending champions from Switzerland on Tuesday night, ending the latter’s 42-game win streak. The Canadians followed up with a win over Japan on Wednesday morning, making them the only remaining undefeated team in the tournament.
But the Canadians weren’t done yet. On Wednesday evening, Team Canada defeated Türkiye with a come-from-behind victory to win their eighth game in a row. The result clinched the Canadians a spot in the playoffs. With a top-six finish guaranteed, Team Homan have also secured themselves a spot in the four-player Canadian Curling Trials that will take place in November 2025 and determine who will be Team Canada at Milano Cortina 2026.
On Thursday morning, the Canadians took down Estonia for their ninth consecutive win. Canada will play New Zealand (1-7) on Thursday evening before facing Scotland (3-6) and Korea (6-2) on Friday. Semifinals will begin on Saturday, with the bronze and gold medal matches happening on Sunday.
Ski Cross
The final stage of the FIS Ski Cross World Cup will take place in Idre Fjäll, Sweden.
Marielle Thompson has her sights set on the Crystal Globe for the women’s overall standings. It would be the fourth of her career, but her first since 2017. Having won five of the last seven races on the circuit, the 31-year-old, who has accumulated 932 points, holds a 72-point lead over her closest rival, France’s Marielle Berger Sabbatel. Canadian Brittany Phelan currently completes the top three with 774 points, followed by teammate Hannah Schmidt in fourth place with 663 points.
Last weekend in Veysonnaz, Switzerland, Thompson, Phelan and India Sherret all finished on the podium, making it a Canadian hat-trick, the first time in 14 years that Canadian women have swept a World Cup podium in ski cross.
In the men’s overall classification, Reece Howden, last season’s winner of the Crystal Globe, is in a battle for the title. Howden is currently in second place, 47 points behind Switzerland’s Alex Fiva, who leads with 628 points, and just one point ahead of Sweden’s David Mobaerg.
A women’s race and a men’s race will be held on Friday, followed by an identical programme on Saturday.
Snowboard Cross
The snowboard cross World Cup season comes to an end this weekend at Mont-Sainte-Anne in Quebec. Eliot Grondin, already assured of his first career Crystal Globe, has the opportunity to do what could be considered a lap of honour in front of family and friends.
Having collected five gold, two silver and one bronze medal this season, Grondin missed a podium for the first time in the 2023-24 campaign last Saturday when he crashed out of the semifinal of the first of two events in Montafon. However, that performance was enough to put an end to the slim mathematical chance of the Canadian being dislodged from top spot in the overall World Cup rankings.
Bothered by an injury resulting from this fall, Grondin then skipped Sunday’s event. However, he announced earlier this week that he is able to line up for both home events this weekend.
Qualifying takes place on Friday, followed by a first race on Saturday and another on Sunday.
Alpine Skiing
The FIS Alpine World Cup circuit, which began in October, is coming to a close this weekend as the Alpine World Cup Finals are on in Saalbach, Austria. A limited number of athletes are invited to participate, including the top-25 in the World Cup standings for each discipline, as well as the junior world champions.
There are Canadians in action on Friday in the men’s super-G and Sunday in the men’s downhill. Jeffrey Read will represent Canada in the super-G while Jack Crawford and Cameron Alexander will compete in both disciplines.
Crawford looked strong in Wednesday’s training session, finishing seventh. Alexander, who was 21st in training on Wednesday, has two bronze medals on the World Cup circuit this season, both in downhill, at Bormio in late December and Kvitfjell in mid-February, while Read secured a silver in the super-G at Kvitfjell.
