2026 Olympic Games: Mikaël Kingsbury snags Canada’s 1st gold of the Olympics in men’s dual moguls

Kingsbury is up in dual moguls final

Mikaël Kingsbury is coming up in the men’s dual moguls finals and you can feel the tension building for the showdown. He’s competing against Japan’s Ikuma Horishima, who won bronze in men’s moguls this week, finishing behind Kingsbury in that event.

Kingsbury came painfully close to winning his second career Olympic gold on Thursday in the traditional moguls event, losing out to surprising Australian Cooper Woods on an arcane tiebreaker after the judges awarded them the exact same total score. That left the GOAT with his third Olympic silver.

In the past, that would have been it for Kingsbury. But this time, he gets another shot at gold in the dual moguls, which is making its Olympic debut. The big difference from the regular moguls is that two athletes ski side-by-side, and whoever gets the highest score advances to the next round.

Kingsbury has won five world titles in the dual (one more than he has in traditional moguls), including the last four in a row. So he has a great chance to give Canada its first gold medal of these Games in what is likely the final Olympic performance of his unparalleled career. 

Looking to spoil Kingsbury’s swan song is his Japanese rival Ikuma Horishima. He won the dual world title in 2017 and took silver at last year’s world championships, where he upset Kingsbury for the regular moguls gold. Horishima picked up his second consecutive Olympic bronze in the traditional event on Thursday.

Canada’s Julien Viel crashed in the 1/8 final earlier and didn’t move onto the final. Viel, in his Olympic debut, placed sixth on Thursday and won a World Cup dual gold last month at Quebec’s Val St-Côme.