Olympic viewing guide: A Canadian great skates for his final medal
What to watch on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning
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The wait is over. Canada captured its first gold medal in more than a week today when speed skaters Isabelle Weidemann, Ivanie Blondin and Valérie Maltais won the women's team pursuit in Olympic-record time. It's the third medal of the Games for Weidemann, who took silver and bronze in the women's 5,000m and 3,000m individual events. Maltais now owns an Olympic medal in both types of speed skating — she earned a short track relay silver in 2014.
Canada also picked up another bronze on Day 11, by Max Parrot in the men's snowboard big air. It's the third Olympic medal for the 27-year-old cancer survivor, who won gold in the men's slopestyle earlier in the Games and was a slopestyle silver medallist in 2018. Now he owns the full set.
With five days still to go in Beijing, Canada has 17 medals — two gold, four silver, 11 bronze. That's tied with the United States for the fourth-highest total, behind Norway (26), the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) team (20) and Germany (18).
Day 12 features one of Canada's greatest Olympians going for a record-tying medal in his final Olympic race. We'll start our daily viewing guide there, and cover the big games coming up for the Canadian men's hockey and men's and women's curling teams. Plus, controversial Russian Kamila Valieva shakes it off in the opening round of the women's figure skating event.
Here's what to watch on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning:
Charles Hamelin can grab a share of a Canadian medal record in his final Olympic race
No matter what happens tomorrow, the 37-year-old short track speed skater will walk away from the sport at the end of this season with a staggering list of accomplishments. Hamelin has won 142 medals on the World Cup circuit, another three dozen or so at the world championships (including 13 gold) and five at the Olympics (three of them gold). The post-race, rinkside kisses he shared with his then girlfriend and Canadian teammate Marianne St-Gelais after winning individual golds in 2010 in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi are among the most indelible moments in recent Canadian Olympic history.
Now competing in his fifth and final Olympics, Hamelin added another honour to his resumé when he carried the Canadian flag into the opening ceremony along with women's hockey captain Marie-Philip Poulin. On Wednesday, the final day of short track competition, Hamelin has a chance to cap off his brilliant Olympic career by winning his sixth medal. That would match long track speed skater Cindy Klassen's record for the most by a Canadian in the Winter Games.
It's a good chance too. With Hamelin's help, the Canadian men's 5,000-metre relay team earned the No. 1 ranking in the world this season after winning a pair of World Cup races and placing second in another. The team of Hamelin, Steven Dubois (who has won two individual medals at these Games), Pascal Dion and Maxime Laoun won their semifinal last week to advance to the five-team final.
The competition for gold will be fierce, with South Korea favoured to win and host China also boasting a strong team. The ROC and Italy round out the field for what's always a potentially chaotic race.
Three of Hamelin's five Olympic medals have come in this event. He helped the Canadian team to silver in 2006, gold in 2010 and bronze in 2018. We'll see if he's got one more (historic) medal in him on Wednesday at 7:44 a.m. ET.
WATCH | Charles Hamelin skates to his final chapter:
Other Canadian medal chances tonight and tomorrow morning
Canada has two contenders in the women's 1,500m short track event.
Kim Boutin, you're probably familiar with. She won bronze in this event at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, where she overcame online abuse from fans of a South Korean rival to reach three podiums and earn the honour of carrying the Canadian flag at the closing ceremony. The 27-year-old added a bronze in the 500m in Beijing, putting her just one medal behind Hamelin in the lifetime count despite being a decade younger.
But Courtney Sarault is actually the better contender in this event. The 21-year-old took silver in the 1,500 at last year's world championships and is currently ranked No. 3 in the world. In four World Cup 1,500m races this season, she took two silver and a bronze. Boutin competed in just one 1,500m this season and missed the podium.
The event starts with the quarter-finals at 6:30 a.m. ET, then the semis at 7:15 a.m. ET and the final at 8:18 a.m. ET.
Some other interesting stuff you should know about
Canada's men's hockey team is into the quarter-finals. As expected, the Canadians took out China pretty easily in this morning's playoff game, pulling away for a 7-2 win. Next up is a quarter-final matchup vs. Sweden on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Both teams finished second in their respective groups after winning two of their three games in the preliminary round. But the Swedes got a bye to the quarter-finals along with the three group winners because their lone loss came in overtime, making them the top second-place team in the tournament. The other quarter-final matchups are the United States vs. Slovakia (tonight at 11:10 p.m. ET), the ROC vs. Denmark (1 a.m. ET) and Finland vs. Switzerland (3:40 a.m. ET). The winners will be re-seeded for the semifinals.
Canada's men's curling team still has work to do. A win this morning vs. the ROC would have clinched a playoff spot for Brad Gushue's rink. But they lost in an extra end, setting up a potentially nervy round-robin finale on Wednesday night vs. Great Britain. At 5-3 and alone in third place, Gushue and the b'ys still control their playoff destiny. A win and they're into the semifinals. It's also possible that they won't need a victory — losses by both the ROC and Switzerland in Wednesday's 1:05 a.m. ET draw would send Canada through. But if either of those teams wins, Canada will be feeling the pressure when it faces a very good British team. Representing Scotland, Bruce Mouat and his teammates took silver at the world championship in Calgary last April, then won the European title in November. This morning, they improved to 6-1 in the Olympic tournament and clinched a playoff spot by handing reigning world champion Sweden (7-1) its first loss.
Canada's women's curling team is on the outside looking in. At 3-3, Jennifer Jones' rink is tied for sixth place and sits a half game out of a playoff spot. One of the teams it's trying to catch, the 4-3 United States, is Canada's opponent tonight at 8:05 p.m. ET. Canada then faces China (2-5) at 7:05 a.m. ET.
And also…
Kamila Valieva shook it off. The 15-year-old Russian figure skating star at the centre of the doping controversy shadowing these Games did not let all the negative attention — nor an early mistake — deter her in today's women's short program. After stumbling on her first jump, Valieva, as expected, earned the top score to put her herself in position to win gold in Thursday's free skate. Whether she gets to keep that potential medal, and the gold she helped the ROC win in the team event, will be decided down the road when her apparent doping violation is fully investigated. As part of their efforts to get her cleared, Valieva's lawyers are now blaming her positive test for a banned heart drug in December on "contamination" from a medication her grandfather was taking.
How to watch live events
They're being broadcast on TV on CBC, TSN and Sportsnet. Or choose exactly what you want to watch by live streaming on CBC Gem, the CBC Sports app and CBC Sports' Beijing 2022 website. Check out the full streaming schedule (with links to live events) here and read more about how to watch the Games here.
If you're located outside Canada, you unfortunately can't access CBC Sports' coverage of the Games on the app or the website. That's due to the way the Olympics' media rights deals work. But if you're in the northern United States or other international regions, such as Bermuda, that regularly offer the CBC TV network, you can watch the Games there.
