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The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics kick off on Feb. 6.Julian Finney/Getty Images
On Feb. 2, reporters Robyn Doolittle and Rachel Brady, columnist Cathal Kelly and European bureau chief Eric Reguly answered reader questions ahead of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games, which kick off on Feb. 6.
The Games will be held across Northern Italy, with ice sports taking place in Milan, snow sports taking place in the mountain resort of Cortina and other towns such as Verona and Livigno hosting specific events. Canada will have more than 200 Olympians competing, with the largest number in Milan, which is hosting hockey, figure skating, short track and long track speed skating.
Readers asked about Canada’s best chances at winning a medal, how the world is preparing for the Games and why the competitions are so spread out. Here are some highlights from the Q&A.
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The Predazzo Ski Jumping Stadium.Alex Slitz/Getty Images
The games to watch
If the Olympics are starting on the 6th, why are some competitions starting early?
Reguly: Just because of the sheer volume of some of the events and the training required before the official start day. For instance, on Thursday, the men and women skiers (downhill, Super-G et al) will do training runs on the race courses. Ski jumping and luge, among other sports, will also have training events on Feb. 4 and 5.
Kelly: There’s a lot more Olympics these days. Curling used to be two competitions – men’s and women’s. Now they’ve added mixed doubles. The women’s hockey tournament used to be more compact. Now it goes as long as the men’s.
In order to get this all in, with reasonable breaks built in for the competitors, they either have to start it early or end it late.
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Does Canada’s figure skating team have any medal chances, especially in the second games without Tessa and Scott?
Doolittle: I’ll be covering figure skating (and speed skating). First, it’s sport, so anything can happen, but we’ve got two strong medal contenders: in pairs and ice dance, and maybe even the Team Event if our ice dance and pairs teams do well. In ice dance we’ve got Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier – I wrote about them here – P&P are the reigning world silver medalists (and subject of a new Netflix show).
How do the Canadian hockey teams match up against the U.S.?
Kelly: We could go down each of the rosters matching man for man and woman for woman. But I think the best indication is recent, high-stakes play.
The Canadian men lost to the U.S. in round robin at the 4 Nations last February, and then beat them in overtime in the championship game. The Canadian women lost twice to the U.S. at last year’s world championship – overtime again in the final.
I’d say there is less than whatever “isn’t much” means to you to separate the four teams.
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The snow-covered peaks of Santa Caterina, a popular tourist destination near Bormio, Italy, and the host of the Olympic ski mountaineering competitions, on Jan. 17.Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail
What exactly is ski mountaineering?
Brady: Ski mountaineering, or skimo, is the only truly new sport in the Milan-Cortina Olympics (dual moguls is also new, but it is based on an existing sport). Skimo’s roots go back thousands of years, when the ancient Nordics attached boards to their feet to travel from one mountain to the next, or to hunt in the winter. Today’s skimo is sort of like the biathlon, minus the guns. It involves athletes traipsing up the steep parts of mountains in their boots, then strapping on their boards to ski down them – a truly gruelling sport. Sadly, no Canadians made the cut in Milan Cortina for skimo. Ticket sales for the event have been strong.
Can Canada get back to the top of the podium in curling? Who are the teams to beat?
Brady: Yes, Canada has a shot to top the podium in curling. They endured tough and dramatic trials in Canada to earn their spots. The women’s team, skipped by Rachel Homan, has perhaps the best chance at gold. Her rink is back-to-back world champs.
Canadian skip Brad Jacobs, who won gold in 2014, returns to the Games with a very experienced team of guys who are also all Olympic medalists already. Bruce Mouat’s British men’s curling team, silver medalists from Beijing, are favourites. Defending Olympic champions Sweden, led by Niklas Edin, also a good bet.
In mixed doubles, Canada could be on the podium, too – husband-wife duo Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant. Italy is the defending champ. Mouat will also play mixed doubles with Jennifer Dodds.
What’s the skeleton course like this year? Is the crash rate as high as it was in Beijing?
Brady: I’ll be covering the sliding events in Cortina and nearly every athlete describes the track as “flowy.” Few have very much experience on it as it is an old track that closed down in 2008 and has been reopened and totally renovated for these Olympics. It didn’t open very long ago. The athletes have all had one weekend of World Cup racing and a block of raining runs on it so far. So many feel as though that levels the playing field since there are no experts on this track. The Canadians have told me there’s a big drop at the start. They all seem to like the track. The views in Cortina, they say, are spectacular.
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Milan’s cathedral and its environs have been getting into the Olympic spirit ahead of the opening ceremonies.Luca Bruno/The Associated Press
All eyes on Italy
What is the energy like in Italy right now?
Reguly: Honestly, not high. There is no real sense of the Olympics generating national pride in Italy. To be sure, there is some excitement in the north (Milan and the Alpine areas), little in the Rome area, where I live, and the south. The cliché is that Italians are only united by World Cup and European football (soccer to you and me). Having lived here for more than a dozen years, I believe that to be true. You cannot get Sicilians, who really don’t consider themselves Italians in the first place, excited about the Games. You can in the north.
What should we expect in the opening ceremony since it’s so spread out?
Brady: The decentralized Games call for a creative approach to the Olympic opening ceremony this Friday. The main ceremony will take place at Milan’s 70,000-seat San Siro Stadium while simultaneous ceremonies happen in Cortina, Livigno and Predazzo. During the athlete parade, cameras will jump between places to show each country’s athletes marching. Canada’s two flag bearers will march in Livigno.
The IOC should never have approved such huge distances between sites of the various events. Why is Canada spending and sending athletes when the team is spread over such a huge area?
Doolittle: The challenge with the Winter Olympics is always the same: you need rinks. You need mountains. So there’s almost always distance. Don’t forget that in Paris, several events (such as soccer) were spread across the entire country. And sailing was held in Marseille.
Can you tell us about the ice hockey rink? Are there concerns about injuries due to unforeseen delays in construction?
Doolittle: There is always drama at Olympics about venues not being done on time. That said, I think the answer is we don’t know.
Reguly: The main hockey rink – there are two – is called Santagiulia, on the dreary outskirts of Milan (a new building that will become a concert hall after the Games). The arena has been a big black eye for the Olympics. It probably won’t be fully completed in time for the Games, but the organizing committee insists that the ice – the important bit – is in good shape. The rink has seen several test events in the last couple of weeks and the reports are that the ice is of sufficient hardness to be game-ready. If the ice were in rough shape, you would have heard about it already from the NHL. I toured the outside of the arena a few weeks ago and it was a messy construction site, less so now.
Why is ICE going to be at the Olympics and why is Italy allowing it?
Reguly: ICE’s presence at the Olympics was a huge story in Italy and elsewhere last week and I wrote about it for The Globe. The news that ICE agents were en route triggered outrage among Italians and many politicians, most of whom, it appeared, did not know that ICE has been operating in Italy for decades. There are ICE agents at the U.S. embassy in Rome; their investigations mostly centre on ports security, i.e. tracking shipments of drugs and weapons. The Italian government was quick to downplay the story, insisting that a few ICE agents would be confined to diplomatic security roles in Milan and not carrying guns on the streets. Still, after the killings of two U.S. civilians in Minneapolis, the ICE stories did no favour to America’s image in Italy – or Europe.
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Canada’s Sidney Crosby celebrates with Scott Niedermayer after making the game-winning goal in the overtime period of a men’s gold medal hockey game against the U.S. at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.Chris O’Meara/The Associated Press
Olympics experience
How many Olympics have you covered? What’s your favourite memory from them?
Brady: This will be No. 7 for me. The Canadian men’s 4x100m relay gold in Paris was a big highlight, women’s hockey’s historic Olympic debut at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, seeing women’s boxing enter the Olympics in 2012 and witnessing Canadians celebrate hockey gold in Vancouver are moments that stand out for me.
Doolittle: This is my third Olympics, but my first Winter Games. Outside of my journalism day job, I’m a recreational figure skater, so I’m extremely excited about this one. Favourite memories: In London, I watched Usain Bolt run, I saw Serena Williams walking in the athlete village (there was like a goddess halo aura around her) and the closing ceremony was the greatest concert of all time. In Paris, I watched Simone Biles’s comeback and had to jump on the drone spying scandal.
Reguly: I have only covered two Olympics so far – London 2012 and Sochi 2014. Loved the former, not so much the latter. In London, my fave moment was in the velodrome – the oval bike racing track. The noise level was insane, the highest decibel rating of any of the Olympic sports. The Brits won three gold medals on one of the nights I was there. The place erupted. At one point I look up and saw Paul McCartney and various Royals. I came out almost deaf but buzzing with excitement.
Kelly: I’ve done them all since London 2012, so this’ll be my eighth. Very difficult to pick one memory, and most of the best ones would not be sporting. They’d be small interactions with people there, or nights out, or ridiculous screw-ups.
But if I had to pick a sporting moment, it would be the aftermath of the infamous Canada-USA women’s soccer semi-final in Manchester at London 2012. I have never before or since seen such raw, chaotic emotion from athletes and coaches.
I asked a question of then-head-coach John Herdman that got him so exercised that he came steaming off the podium after the press conference and tried to … I’m not sure, actually. Attack me? He had to be restrained.
One of my colleagues looked over as they were dragging him out of the room and said, “Best press conference ever.”
