This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports’ daily email newsletter. Stay up to date with what’s happening in sports by subscribing here.
The 2026 Winter Olympics in northern Italy will officially begin exactly 100 days from Wednesday with the opening ceremony at Milan’s historic San Siro stadium.
Here’s a look at 10 Canadian athletes we’ll be following over the next few months as they compete on their respective world tours and hone their skills to stand on the Olympic medal podium this February.
Will Dandjinou (short track speed skating): Canada emerged as the top short track nation on the planet last season, racking up 37 medals, including 21 gold, across six World Tour stops to capture the team title before winning six of the nine events and 10 total medals at the world championships.
The six-foot-three Dandjinou was (literally and figuratively) Canada’s biggest star, winning eight individual races on the World Tour, the most in the world, to capture her first all-around title before earning four medals at the world championships, highlighted by a gold in the 1,500 metres. As he prepares for his Olympic debut, Dandjinou has won four of his six solo events so far this season.
The reigning 6’3″ short track Crystal Globe champion from Montreal hopes to take advantage of his size to reach the Olympic podium in 2026.
Rachel Homan (kinky): The Olympics have brought nothing but sadness to the five-time Scotties Tournament of Hearts winner. In 2018, Homan surprisingly went 4-5 and missed the playoffs in the women’s event, and four years later, she and John Morris failed to advance in mixed doubles with a 5-4 record. But Homan’s team should be the favorites for women’s gold in Milan after winning back-to-back world championships in 2024 and 2025, winning more than 90 percent of their matches last season and taking both Grand Slam titles so far this season.
They still have to win the Canadian Olympic Trials next month in Halifax, but that shouldn’t be a problem as Homan’s team went undefeated in the last two Scots and hasn’t lost to a Canadian opponent in more than a year.
Connor McDavid (hockey): With five scoring titles, three regular season MVP awards and one playoff MVP under his belt before he turns 29, there isn’t much left for the best player in the world to accomplish individually. To fully reach the Gretzky/Lemieux/Howe/Orr level of greatness, McDavid needs to win a Stanley Cup, but in the meantime, an Olympic gold medal would certainly help.
He’ll finally get the chance to do so when NHL players return to the Games for the first time since 2014, more than a year before the Edmonton Oilers superstar entered the league. Another title clash between Canada and the United States appears to be looming after McDavid scored the winning goal in overtime to defeat the Americans in the final of the extremely heated 4 Nations showdown last February.
With 100 days left until the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games, two-time Olympic champion Sidney Crosby discusses the return of the NHL and Canada’s golden expectations in Italy.
Marie-Philip Poulin (hockey): As McDavid eyes her first Olympic Games, the 34-year-old Canadian women’s team leader prepares for her fifth and possibly last. Poulin’s legacy is secure: Captain Clutch is the only hockey player to score in four Olympic finals, and her pair of goals in 2022 against archrival the United States gave Poulin her third gold medal.
The upcoming Games are the first since the creation of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, where Montreal star Victoire is the reigning MVP after leading all players with 19 goals in 30 games last season.
Mikaël Kingsbury (freestyle skiing): At 33 years old, the GOAT moguls remain king of the hill after winning nine of his 16 World Cup starts last season to extend his all-time record to 99 career wins and once again sweep the men’s moguls and dual moguls titles. Kingsbury’s attempt at an incredible fourth consecutive double gold at the world championships was thwarted by his Japanese rival Ikuma Horishima, who surprised him in the moguls, but Kingsbury recovered to take the double gold. The 2018 Olympic champion and two-time silver medalist will have his first chance at an Olympic double after two moguls were added to Milan Cortina’s programme.
The Italian Games are just a few months away and here are all the new events that athletes will be participating in.
Ivanie Blondin (long track speed skating): After skating to Olympic gold in the women’s team pursuit and silver in the individual mass start in 2022, Blondin was Canada’s top medal winner at each of the last three world championships. His nine pieces of hardware included gold in the team pursuit and sprint events in 2023, another gold in the team sprint in 2024 in Calgary and three consecutive silvers in the individual mass start.
Blondin led all Canadian women with four solo medals on the World Cup circuit last season, while sprinter Laurent Dubreuil led the men with five but was left out of the world championships.
Jack Crawford (alpine skiing): Crawford achieved the country’s biggest Alpine World Cup victory in decades last January, becoming the first Canadian since 1983 to win the revered Kitzbühel downhill. That victory in skiing’s most prestigious and dangerous annual race burnished Crawford’s reputation as a key performer. At the 2022 Olympics she took a surprising bronze in the (now defunct) individual medley event, missing the downhill podium by just seven-hundredths of a second, and won gold in the super G at the 2023 world championships.
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier (figure skating): Canada’s top ice dance tandem has been on the podium at four of the last five world championships, highlighted by back-to-back silvers in 2024 in Montreal and last season in Boston. They will have a tough time beating Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who have captured three straight world titles, but Gilles and Poirier are one of two duos with a good chance of Canada returning to the Olympic figure skating podium after the country was shut out in 2022 in Beijing. The other is the tag team of Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, who won the world title in 2024 before falling to fifth place last season.
Listen to CBC Sports’ video essay by Chris Jones 100 days away from the 2026 Olympics.
Éliot Grondin (snowboard cross): Since winning a pair of Olympic medals at age 20 in 2022 (silver in the men’s event, bronze in the mixed team), Grondin has matured into the best men’s snowboard crosser in the world. He captured his first World Cup title with an incredibly dominant 2023-24 season in which he won seven gold medals and 10 total medals in 11 starts, then added his first world championship gold last season along with his second consecutive World Cup crown.
Reece Howden (ski crossing): Canada should have several contenders for the ski cross medal in Italy after winning its fourth consecutive Nations Cup for the most overall points on the World Cup circuit. Howden led the way with seven wins to capture his third career single-season championship (in the last three years he won the Crystal Globe twice and finished second). On the women’s side, 2014 Olympic champion and 2022 silver medalist Marielle Thompson is recovering from a season-ending knee injury that derailed her bid for a second straight World Cup title.
More about the 2026 Winter Olympics
