The Decibel - What’s at stake for Canada at the Milan Cortina Winter Games

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games begin on Friday. The Olympics are always a time to rally behind your country, but this year cheering on Team Canada takes on a different meaning. At a time when Canada is asserting itself as a “middle power,” how will that translate on the podium?Cathal Kelly is a Globe and Mail columnist who writes about sports. Today, he joins the show to prime Olympics superfans and casual watchers alike for what you need to know about the Milan Cortina Winter Games, where Canada is likely to excel, and how politics could shape the narrative of these Winter Olympics.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The 2026 Winter Olympics are here. The opening ceremonies take place Friday afternoon, and the drama has already begun. Injuries have taken out promising stars. Games have been postponed at the last minute. But drama aside, the Olympics are a time to rally behind your country's team. And this time, cheering on Team Canada is taking on a whole different meaning. These games are happening in the middle of U.S. threats to Canadian sovereignty, of trade wars, and high-stakes geopolitical fights.

And now we'll see those dynamics play out on the rinks, the slopes, and the podium. So today we're talking to Globe columnist Cahall Kelly. He writes about sports and has been covering the Olympics for over a decade. We spoke at around 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. He'll talk us through everything we need to know about the world. the Milan Cortina Winter Games, where we can expect Canada to excel and how the political backdrop could set the tone for these Winter Olympics. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Cahall, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.

And where are we talking to you right now? I'm currently standing in the cavernous hallway of the main press center rallying point for all the journalists as they head out to various venues. So, Cahall, you've been in Malibon. for about a day. What are your observations so far? You know, is everything up and running? I know that's usually kind of the thing when, you know, the Olympics start. There's always something going on.

So what's going on in Milan right now? Exactly as you say, usually you don't even feel that the games are on until the games actually start. Everything seems to be going great. You know, the subways work at the main press center. Nothing has collapsed. The big news out of here today is that the Canada women's first hockey game. tonight rescheduled because the team they were to play, the finish team has neurovirus.

And they were worried about spreading it amongst the players that they played. So that's going to be that puts them in a weird position where they'll now have to really compact their schedule and what they obviously hope will be a gold medal drive. Yeah, okay. I mean, on the hockey front also, I've been hearing some stuff about the hockey rink, not being the appropriate size. What's going on with that? They built it three feet small. Okay. Who knows why? Nobody's given a good explanation as to how that happened exactly. And they tried to make it a very big story in North America with the NHL players. But most of them kind of shut that down by saying that doesn't make that big a difference to them, how big the rank is.

Okay. I mean, you mentioned the NHL players. And of course, this is the first time the NHL players will be back since 2014. So it's a big deal for hockey this time in the Olympics. Yeah, it's huge. I mean, there's almost disappointing edge to it, having covered a few. games without them. Obviously, we still sent a hockey team, just wasn't an NHLers. I wonder if it's going to suck all the oxygen out of the games once it starts. It's certainly from a Canadian perspective. Like, it's hard to keep your eyes off them and see how they're doing. And I think they tend to, in some small way and obviously not their fault, obscure the other athletes who are competing. It's going to be interesting to see how people react to them, especially, as you say, 12 years on. People and people now really, really.

counting on them to win. Yeah. I mean, in the small rink, at least they'll be really close together. Lots of clusters. We'll see maybe a lot of action going on. That's right. They can spread the norovirus around.

Oh, no. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so it sounds like, you know, broadly speaking, that things are mostly working. So that's a good sign. And the other thing that's kind of, you know, in the air for this Olympics when it comes to Canada, you know, of course it's about the athletes,

having their moment on the world stage. And for the viewers, it's about national pride, right? And over the last few weeks, Canada has been, in the spotlight more than usual. I'm thinking about Carney's middle power speech at Davos. So I'm curious, Kahal, like, what do you think the stakes are for Canada at the Olympics this year? I think they're as big or bigger than they've ever been.

It was interesting to go to the Canadian Olympic Committee's opening presser this morning. And usually that's a, you know, that's a bit of a raw, raw Canada. They do thing they do where the top people talk about their goals for the games and, you know, and sort of try to highlight all the work they've done over the intervening years. And sometimes we're trying to press for cash. They're always strapped. This time, they were veiled, but they were direct shots at America. Oh, say more.

Like the moment that really stood out in COC president, Trisha Smith's speech, was a discussion about how Canada competes very hard on the field. But off the field, we are often friends, which is the inclusion of the word often. Oh, yes. Really struck me. I don't think it would have been there at the last Olympics. We would have just said, we're friends with everybody. We love everybody.

Now we don't love everybody. Or at least sometimes. I think that will come to define these games, at least from Canada's perspective, Canada, US now. Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, something we've talked about on the show before is kind of how, you know, certain things play into our, into like, you know, what we are as Canadians, right? We talked about how the arts kind of define us. And it sounds like sports also plays a role. in who we are as Canadians.

Like it plays into this larger idea of Canadian sovereignty. Yeah, I would suggest the largest because it is a truly pan-national concern. You know, the athletes are from literally all over. Every one of them, and when they win, you don't think that BC has won a medal or Calgary has won a medal or Toronto is won a medal. You think that Canada has won a medal.

The athletes really work hard to drive home that idea, that they're competing on behalf of the whole country. That's why we love the only. Olympics so much. I mean, they express something wonderful about us. I mean, you know, they're young and vibrant and they're the best of us. We like to think. They really are. Like, they're lovely. I think that now is when you talk about that middle power era, Canada has to, you know, really has to find a way to get out on the world stage. This is something we're not particularly good at. You know, and we found that out in the last year. People don't really know us. We don't have a

great brand out in the world. And when the U.S. started kicking us around, Not a lot of people like jumped up to defend us. It was just us defending us. And so, you know, in order to do that, I think in the modern age, you need to advertise just a little bit. This is a great place to do it. Yeah. So you mentioned this press conference and talking about like we're friends often, this word, you know, often being highlighted here. That sounds like a very different kind of energy this time around, like in the last even 20 to 25 years.

You know, maybe I'm picking up too much on it. These were the speeches they'd prepared. David Schumacher, the CEO, the, you know, specifically called America out, you know, with a laugh. But it's still done. We didn't used to do that. We didn't talk about other competitors from the perspective of competition. So it felt like a new tone. I think, you know, again, this could be me reading into it.

But I feel, you know, they're beginning to push for a lot more funding, most of which would be private. And they also want Canada to start pushing to host another Olympics. And I think they're beginning to understand that the button that will really work with most people is us versus the U.S. And then if you can frame it in those terms, which it obviously is going to come down to in both hockey tournaments, probably. If you frame it in those terms, those are the things people get really worked up about. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about, you know, what Canada is doing in terms of medals, right? Is there any type of investment behind an Olympic medal push?

Or is this more kind of like a rallying of morale? Like, I think it's a little bit of both. That was another thing that came out this morning. They talked a lot about their deficit funding. Yeah. About how their development has been cut. Like, there were huge influxes of money out of Vancouver 2010, because it was a home Olympics. They're saying that they just don't have that much money anymore.

And because of that, they're not going to cut at the top level with their elite athletes. They cut at the bottom. So that development now costs a great deal more. and many of the people who want to be developed, their children, they got to pay for that. And they used the example of ski cross, which is, you know, a discipline that Canada is very good at, it's pretty new.

And they're talking about some of the competitors, and most of the competitors in this Olympics were developed in 2014. And at the time to do an entire year, plus camps, where you'd be training, you know, young teenagers was $10,000. And now it's $30,000. and that would be something that they have to foot themselves. Not a lot of people got that kind of money. Whereas in other countries they like to point out,

elite athletes in development don't pay for anything. Yeah. That's entirely footed either through a private public partnership. There is also this idea of ruthless competitiveness. Can you give me an example of where we're seeing that on display for Team Canada? I mean, you saw it like a little bit in this weird skeleton controversy. Yeah. That was an instance where, you know, an American athlete accused Canada.

I don't know if cheating is the right word, but certainly rigging the system to use some very inflammatory language in a really difficult to understand controversy about Canada pulling athletes out of a junior skeleton race, which in turn reduced the number of points available within the race, which in turn meant that the American athlete who thought she would qualify to the Olympics, why that race didn't. Okay. You know, I think the reaction from Canada 10 years ago would have been a rollover, you know, just fall all over themselves to be apologetic, just the appearance that they had somehow rigged the system, even if they hadn't, which I don't know why that matters. I don't know what, you know, there's no rule that says you must compete in things.

We didn't do that this time. We kind of push back. What does that tell you? What does that tell you? And I think that's because Canada is waking up to the idea that if we don't stand up for ourselves, no way. and will. And I think that's suffusing a lot of different things we do, not just politically, that nobody's coming to help. No matter how nice we've been, people don't feel they need to be as nice back to us. And I wonder if you're going to see it at the Olympics. To me, I think it's the great story of these Olympics to see how Canada carries itself. I'm glad you kind of talked about how Canada will present itself on the world stage here. And, you know, perhaps it's going to be like,

you know, you talked about how no one's coming to our defense. So we have to do ourselves. Let's talk about the U.S. and what this geopolitical moment means for Team USA. Is the political climate going to make it awkward for the athletes? I see it's interesting. So you get into wherever an Olympics is starting to happen. And usually if you get in a couple of days early, you don't really see much. Like they really do flip it overnight where suddenly there's tons of signage and people are in the streets. It's just a normal city until that happens. The one thing I can see walking around the land yesterday in today, I could see the difference is all the American gear. Like, the Americans really, like, they come in loudly.

Like, it's just average people in their Stars and Stripes sweatshirts. They love a Stars and Stripes sweatshirt. In a way that nobody else in other countries. Like, people will wear their gear, but not quite as in your face. I wonder, like, obviously they're feeling, some of them at least, like, they're a place in the world. Like, they're really reclaiming the top spot. Maybe we're going to see a little of that at this games. also wonder if they're now suddenly the bad guys. Yeah. The Italians are not feeling particularly

warm towards them. Is anybody else in the walls? Like, has anybody's opinion of America improved over the last year? Russian's not here. If you have to pick the bad guys, and I'm talking in the old Soviet style sense that it was us versus them, I think they're in it now. I think they are the bad guys. But I'm very curious to see how people react to them and how they carry themselves. You know, it will all be dependent. If their athletes are very humble, everything will be fine. But if one or two say something silly in a mix zone, this could really kick off, I think.

So those first couple of days, I'm wondering how it's going to go for them. Yeah. And of course, I mean, the athletes are not the administration, the U.S. administration. But, you know, on the world stage, there are these kind of the good guy, the bad guy. And so that's, you know, perhaps the U.S. becomes this kind of the villain here. So that's an interesting thing to look out for.

There's been some. controversy around ice agents that will be present at the games. Can you tell me about that? I mean, this is just apparently a longstanding practice where members of various governmental agencies provide security in the Olympics. It sounds like the kind of, you know, if you get good at your job, you get this sweet gig where you get to go to the Olympics for a few days. I wonder how the Italians were really upset by it. They protested in good numbers. But the U.S. is, there's a There's no suggestion that they've backed down on this, but they've promised these people obviously are not going to be trying to enforce U.S. immigration law. They will just be providing security for stakeholders, diplomats, people around town.

Yeah, yeah. And the Italian government said that agents will be, quote, confined to diplomatic security roles. So I'm not sure how they can enforce that, by saying. But, yeah, that's, I mean, that was the thing that calmed it down. We'll be right back. Let's talk about what's different for these Olympics. Officially, these are the Milan Cortina Olympic Games, but events are taking place all across Northern Italy.

How is this going to work? That's the question. This is the first time they've tried it on this kind of scale. The way they're describing it is that the games go to the venues. The venues don't go to the games. So in the past, that means that they would, you got the Olympics, you were Rio de Janeiro, and the IOC laundry list of venues that you had to build,

the seats they had to hold, that how state of it needed to be. And in most cases, they wanted them to be brand new. Like, they wanted you to go out there and build brand new stadiums for their Olympics that would debut at the Olympics. That's not going to work. Like, they just got killed over the last 20 years when they went in and just pillaged countries that couldn't really afford to put them on, but still did. So what they're now going to do is they go to countries.

And countries like Canada started saying, we don't want these anymore. Like, we can't sell this to people, billions and billions of dollars and cost overruns. And they end up with these venues that end up being like white elephants after the games are done. Yeah. You've been in stadiums in countries and thought, who needs this velodrome? So what they now do is they come to you and they say, what do you got? We got this and that and this and that. And they say, it's fine.

No problem. You don't need to change anything. We'll go to you. Which is what they're trying out here. Like on the ground, it creates enormous and maybe insurmountable logistical challenges for someone who's trying to watch all of the Olympics. I don't even think that's possible, really, to get all the way around the country. We're talking some pretty isolated places in some cases. But, you know, the Olympics is mainly, let's face it, a TV event.

Like, it's really geared towards the many, many millions of people who can't afford to come here. So I don't think that's a problem, as long as it works for the athletes. Well, on that, there are six Olympic villages, which is uncommon. I mean, there are usually a couple of Olympic villages when it comes to winter games, but six is unheard of. How does this change the experience for the athletes? I'm assuming it's going to be just a little less like high school musical. People used to have great stories about, you know, one of my favorites was some guy being asked,

an American athlete being asked, what his favorite experience of the games was. And he said it was doing laundry beside Rafael Nidal, the tennis star. And then he said he put all, he must have never done laundry before because he put all his colors in with his whites. But, you know, that kind of stuff. off these kind of like little moments between athletes are going to be reduced because, yeah,

you're right. Now suddenly you're in a village. Most of the people in your village probably are your colleagues. You know them very well. So you're not going to have that serendipity where people meet across disciplines that has produced so many lovely stories over the years. But, you know, the other truth of it is, is mostly like these are pretty driven individuals. And also we should mention that. So when it comes to how widespread these games are, These venues span like 22,000 square kilometers in northern Italy, which is a huge, vast amount of space, right? Yeah, like, I mean, my globe colleague, Rachel Brady, is headed off tomorrow to the Cortina end of things. And in her case, like, she could practically walk to Austria.

Oh, my gosh. Like, it's going to be an entire day of travel just to get to another event space. And then she will have to wind her way around within that geographic area. It's absolutely huge. Oh, wow. Carl, you mentioned the skeleton controversy. Are there any other Canadian stories leading up to the games that people should know about? I mean, this has been a pretty incident-free lead-up, sadly, sadly for the likes of me.

No drama. Nothing terrible has happened. The story for Canada, if we're going to say, as of right now, and I don't know because his condition is being announced, it's like we have injuries are becoming an issue for Canada. The latest one is the snowboarder Mark McMorris, who is a metal favorite for Canada, is not going to be. competing in the first part of tonight's big air competition. That's a big blow if he's out for the totality of the games. Dangerous business.

So that's going to be people are looking out for stuff like that. It has become, you can feel it becoming the story of the Olympics that a lot of the athletes have been injured in the days and weeks right before. But this is what happens when you train at the very highest levels. Yeah. And of course there's Deanna Stellado Dudec, which is this 42-year-old figure skater. She also got injured during training. And that is like you get the impression that that's another yet to be determined if she will miss her entire Olympics.

She's going to miss the first part of it, which is a team event. But I get the impression that, you know, if they can strap that thing up, she's competing like this is her last chance. And I can't imagine unless she was really badly injured. That would stop her. Yeah. Okay. So we talked about injuries. Let's talk about some things that get us pumped, get us educated for these games.

Who are the exciting athletes and events to watch? I mean, there's any number of them. Canada is very strong in a few traditional areas. Like there's things that Canada just does as well or better than anybody else. Like ski cross is one that leaps to mind. If you haven't watched that, that's the one where they all go down together. And it's kind of a bumper cars on skis. There's a ski cross athlete named Reese Howden.

He'd be the one to watch in that discipline. Obviously the hockey teams. I get the feeling that once that really gets going, once the women are into the knockout rounds, that that's going to overwhelm everything else at these games. The number one Canadian athlete to watch is William Danjanoe, the short truck speed skater. We didn't make the team the last time around, and this time is on tap for as many as three medals, maybe four, which would put him amongst the truly elite Canadian competitors at any winter or summer games. I have the feeling that this is a guy who wins when he races,

he's probably going to be the big individual star out of these games. I think I used the term the summer Macintosh of the Winter Games. That's a good list. We've got Ski-Cross and Will D'anone. So these are good things to watch out for as the Olympics begin. So Cahul, we started this conversation talking about Canada, hoping to showcase its soft power. And of course, a major place where this could play out.

is on the hockey rink, especially if the U.S. and Canada meet in the finals, both in the men and women games. So can you just kind of tell us what's on the line here? I mean, this is ultimate bragging rights. The problem with being Canada in hockey is that you have to win every time. If you lose just once, then you've lost it. Canada freaks out. So enormous pressure on both the women's advanced team to win. If Canada wins both hockey goals, nothing else we do at this Olympics will matter. They'll be a success. And if we get two hockey silvers, I think nothing else we did really matters. It will have been a bit of a bummer. So that's the kind of you won't know until the very end of the Olympics, I think, because they play the hockey gold medal right at the end.

Whether this has been a great Olympics or just a good Olympics, or of course, it's always possible a terrible Olympics. I do like that about the winter games for us because it really, you're building tension all the way through. Sometimes with the Olympics, you can feel the tension start to flag at the end. Yeah. Yeah, that's something to look out for all the way to the end of the Olympics. So just to end here, Kahal, you've been covering the Olympics for more than a decade now. What's your favorite part of covering the games? That would be the emotion of it. It's not the sports. Like, you know, I don't understand half the sports. Nobody does really. Like, you can't suddenly be an expert in ski mountaineering.

having never really covered it before. So all you're really reacting to is the emotion of the athletes. That's the thing that carries you through. When you cover pro sports, you don't feel those feelings very much. They're professionals. Like they do this every day. It'd be the same things you or I get really worked up every day at work. Like you would go mad.

You would do that. But at the Olympics, these people, this is it for them. This is life-defining. For most of them, it's the one chance they'll ever have. Everything else they do will pale in comparison to whatever they accomplish here. And if they win here, that's them forever. So when you get to be there in those moments, when they won and lost, lost is probably more impactful.

I can think of one instance in which I was sent, this is years ago, to cover the world champion snowboarders from Canada named Spencer O'Brien. I didn't know anything about the event. You had to really truck up to get to it. All the news, I had to be there if she won a gold medal. She had a terrible day. She fell twice. She finished last.

Generally speaking, what they do is the athletes come off the hill, and then they go through a mixed zone and are interviewed by their national press. She skipped that part. Everybody else came through. She walked off. So we were all standing around grumbling. It's cold. We're trying to get this story.

It's pretty impossible to write the story without her comment in it. We stood around waiting, and then she was finally coaxed back. out and came out and gave the most shattered emotional speech that she cried throughout all the questioning, apologizing over and over again. And man, I still get, like I'm telling it to you now and I still get chills thinking of how petty we are like I was. And how small you feel in the face of that kind of emotion. Yeah. Just a remarkable, I thought, just remarkably brave performance, a word that get used too much in sports. But that was brave. Like if you go to an Olympics, you get that every day in every corner, at every sport, at every venue.

Those are the emotions you're dealing with. And it really is contagious. Like I had a colleague here at the Paris Games and it was her first games. And she said, you know, at all of these things, I find myself just crying, like bursting in tears. And I think it's because those emotions high and low are so contagious. So that's the best part of it. Yeah. Well, alcohol, I mean, that has really kind of set up for me.

I'm feeling excited. I feel like I have all the emotion for it. So thank you for this. And yeah, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for helping me again, Cheryl. That was Cahall Kelly, a staff columnist for the globe. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland.

Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Rachel Levy McLaughlin. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.