22 Canadian athletes to watch at Beijing 2022 Olympics

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This article was published 31/01/2022 (1340 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada is sending one of its largest teams to the Beijing Olympics. And the most-ever women to a Winter Games. Of the 215 Canadian athletes, 106 compete in women’s events.

It’s a mix of veterans that Canadian fans will recognize — 45 are already Olympic medallists — and plenty of up-and-comers looking to break through on the biggest sporting stage in the world.

Gracenote, a data analytics company, projects the Canadian team will win 22 medals — six gold, five silver and 11 bronze. That updated projection, released Wednesday, puts Canada in a tie for fourth with the U.S., a drop from third overall in 2018 in Pyeongchang when the team had a best ever result with 29 medals.

No matter how the medal table shakes out once the action starts, there will be no shortage of Canadian hopes and talent to watch, especially at the freestyle skiing and snowboarding mountain venue 200 kilometres northwest of Beijing and the speedskating, curling and hockey rink in the capital city.

There’s a 13-hour time difference for Toronto sports fans to grapple with, so it’ll take some doing to catch them all. Here are 22 Canadian names to keep an eye out for over the next couple weeks.

Mikaël Kingsbury

Deux-Montagnes, Que.

Moguls skiing

Kingsbury is the most dominant moguls skier in history, having won everything there is to win, including two Olympic medals (gold in 2018 and silver in 2014), world championships, nine consecutive Crystal Globes and 100 World Cup podiums. At 29, the King is far from done. He’s favoured to win gold in Beijing.

Marie-Philip Poulin

Beauceville, Que.

Women’s hockey captain

Captain Clutch, a three-time Games medallist (gold in 2010, 2014 and silver in 2018) leads a team looking to reclaim the Olympic title. The 23 players — 13 veterans and 10 first-timers — hail from seven provinces. They battled through the demise of the CWHL and COVID, which stripped them of competitive opportunities, but they still won the 2021 world championship with Poulin, 30, scoring the overtime goal to beat their U.S. rivals.

Laurent Dubreuil

Lévis, Que.

Long-track speedskating

The 29-year-old sprint specialist didn’t miss the podium in any of his eight 500-metre World Cup races in the lead-up to these Games. In December he became the first Canadian to go under the 34-second mark with a national record time of 33.77 seconds — the second-fastest ever recorded for the distance — making him a medal favourite.

Kim Boutin

Sherbrooke, Que.

Short-track speedskating

She was the only Canadian to win three medals at the 2018 Games and was Canada’s flag-bearer at the closing ceremony. There were challenges, too, as she received death threats from supporters of a South Korean skater disqualified in the rough-and-tumble racing. She went on to set the world record in the 500 metres after the Games and, at 27, is a multiple medal favourite.

Mark McMorris

Regina

Slopestyle and big air snowboarding

The high-flyer from the flatlands has Olympic bronze medals from 2014 and 2018, but is still looking for the gold he really wants. The 28-year-old has been one of the top snowboarders in the world for a decade, but this is the first time he’ll go to an Olympics at the height of his powers rather than hampered by rushed comebacks from injuries.

John Morris and Rachel Homan

Ottawa

Mixed doubles curling

Morris is the only Canadian man to win two Olympic gold medals in curling. In 2018, he won the debut of mixed doubles curling with Kaitlyn Lawes, and in 2010 Vancouver he was part of the men’s champion rink. Now, at 43, he’s back looking to defend his mixed doubles medal, this time with Homan, 33. She represented Canada in the women’s team event in 2018 and led her rink to sixth overall.

Valérie Maltais, Ivanie Blondin, Isabelle Weidemann

Saguenay, Que/Ottawa/Ottawa

Long-track speedskating team pursuit

Maltais, 31, Blondin, 31, and Weidemann, 26, are not only ranked No. 1 in the world, they’ve remade the event to suit their differences, especially Weidemann’s height and distance specialty. As a team they’re looking for the top step of the podium. Beyond that, Blondin is favoured in mass start, the event that led to heartbreak in 2018 when she fell in the semifinals. Weidemann is top ranked and a medal favourite in the 3,000- and 5,000-metre distance events.

Justin Kripps

Summerland, B.C.

Bobsled

In 2018 he piloted Canada to an Olympic gold medal in the two-man event, in an incredible tie for gold after four runs down the track. Now entering his fourth Olympics, 35-year-old Kripps is ranked second in the world in the two-man and four-man events, just behind Francesco Friedrich of Germany — the pilot he tied for gold last time.

Max Parrot

Bromont, Que.

Slopestyle and big air snowboarding

The 27-year-old won silver in slopestyle at the last Games and is among several Canadians on the team looking for gold. His legendary drive to succeed, which had him mowing neighbours’ lawns to buy his first snowboard as a kid, saw him through a cancer diagnosis in December 2018. Just two months after chemotherapy treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he won gold in big air at the X Games in Norway.

Cynthia Appiah

Toronto

Bobsled

The last Olympics were a heartbreaker. She was an alternate after pushing Canada’s top two-woman sled to multiple World Cup medals. She came back with a vengeance by becoming a top pilot in time to chart her own course for Beijing. As a Black athlete in winter sports, the 31-year-old is hoping to inspire others. Her best medal shot comes in the new women’s monobob event.

Charles Hamelin

Sainte-Julie, Que.

He’s the first Canadian short-track speedskater to compete at five Games, and his five medals are tied for the most by a Canadian male Winter Olympic athlete. He says he’ll retire after these Games, so this is his last chance. At 37, he’s the reigning world champion over 1,500 metres and a key member of the 5,000-metre relay.

Cassie and Darcy Sharpe

Comox, B.C.

Halfpipe skiing/slopestyle and big air snowboarding

At the 2018 Olympics, she put on a master class and won Olympic gold in halfpipe skiing, while he just missed making it to those Games with his sister in his events, slopestyle and big air snowboarding, because of an injury. This time around, Cassie, 29, and Darcy, 25, are Beijing bound together — both after overcoming left knee surgeries, no less.

Rachel Karker

Erin, Ont.

Halfpipe skiing

She hasn’t missed a World Cup podium in almost three years. The last time she was fourth was March 2019. The 24-year-old’s first World Cup podium result came in China in 2018 and she’ll be relying on those good memories and her big tricks and incredible consistency to tackle a strong Olympic field that includes rarely beaten teenager Eileen Gu, who competes for China.

Marion Thénault

Sherbrooke, Que.

Aerials skiing

She was a gymnast about to retire when she was discovered and recruited to aerials skiing through the talent identification program RBC Training Ground. The high-flying 21-year-old, who is studying aerospace engineering, is hoping to defy the odds and hit the podium in her first Olympics the way Kelsey Mitchell, another Training Ground find, did in cycling in the Tokyo Games.

Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier

Toronto/Unionville, Ont.

Ice dance

They’ve been skating together for over a decade, and the 30-year-olds achieved a career highlight stepping on to the podium for the first time at the world championships last year. They won a bronze medal in their first competition in over 13 months because of the pandemic. They’ll be looking to deliver again in Beijing.

Jennifer Jones

Winnipeg

Women’s curling

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At 47, she’s the oldest member of Canada’s team at these Games and no doubt hoping to show age is no impediment to winning. She’s already a gold medallist from Sochi 2014, where her rink went a perfect 11-0 record to win Canada’s first women’s curling gold since Nagano 1998. Hers was the first women’s curling team to go undefeated in Olympic competition and, more recently, they won the 2018 world championship.

Brooke D’Hondt

Calgary

Halfpipe snowboarding

At just 16, she’s the youngest member of Team Canada in Beijing. But she’s no stranger to the spotlight having made her debut at the X Games, the second-biggest event in the sport, when she was 14. She draws inspiration, she says, from American Chloe Kim who, at 17, became the youngest woman to win Olympic gold in snowboarding in this event at the 2018 Games.