Olympics Edition — Day 5: Anyone know where we can find a Nutella keg?
From The GIST (hi@thegistsports.com)
Leveling The Playing Field
Happy hump day!
As if we needed an excuse to grab a little treat, the Olympic Nutella keg and viral chocolate lava cake (chocolate muffins are so 2024) have us drooling. Embracing the sugar rush as we dig into all the deliciousness from Milano Cortina.
Country | 🥇 | 🥈 | 🥉 | Total |
| 🇳🇴 Norway | 6 | 2 | 4 | 12 |
| 🇨🇭 Switzerland | 4 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
| 🇸🇪 Sweden | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
| 🇨🇦 Canada (13th) | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
🏒 Canada women’s hockey suffered their worst Olympic loss yesterday, falling 5–0 to Team USA while playing without injured captain Marie-Philip Poulin. The red and white struggled on offense without MPP, resulting in Canada’s first-ever shutout loss at the Games. Luckily, there’s plenty more hockey to go.
🥈💨⛸️ The Canadians nabbed silver in the short-track speed skating mixed team relay yesterday, an especially gratifying moment of redemption for Florence Brunelle, who was disqualified from the same race at the Beijing Games.
⛸️ American Ilia Malinin leads the men’s individual figure skating competition following yesterday’s short program. Malinin notably still has not performed his signature quad axel, the most difficult jump in the sport, in Milan. Perhaps he’s saving it for Friday’s podium-deciding free skate.
- Meanwhile, Canadian Stephen Gogolev landed in 10th despite his terrifyingly loose skates. Slack laces aside, it’s an impressive result considering the 21-year-old nearly gave up skating entirely just two years ago.
🏂 Canada’s Elizabeth Hosking is through to the final round of the women’s snowboard half pipe after soaring in this morning’s qualifiers. Stay tuned: The men’s qualifying round begins today at 1:30 p.m. ET.
👀⛸️ The 2024 Canadian world champion pairs team of Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are heading to Milan after all. The duo missed the team event due to Stellato-Dudek’s recent head injury, but the 42-year-old’s been cleared to compete this Sunday. Phew.
⛷️ The women’s freestyle skiing moguls final — featuring Canada’s Maïa Schwinghammer, Laurianne Desmarais-Gilbert, Jessica Linton, and Ashley Koehler — is set for today at 8:15 a.m. ET. Permission to be late to your 9 a.m. meeting, granted.
🏅🎿 Sweden swept the podium in yesterday’s women’s cross-country ski sprint, marking the first podium sweep of the Milano Cortina Games.
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Nordic combined
🎿 Holding out for a hero
The GIST: The first of three men’s Nordic combined events is currently underway, but their women counterparts weren’t even invited to the Olympic party. That’s right, Nordic combined’s the only current winter Olympic sport exclusively contested by men. Certainly don’t love that.
🤔 What exactly is Nordic combined?: The unique dual-sport event is a combination of ski jumping and cross country skiing. First, athletes compete in one round of ski jumping. Those results determine where they start the 10km cross country race that follows. The staggered start ensures the athletes who jump the farthest receive a time advantage.
- So, why isn’t there a women’s event at the Games despite the sport being part of the Olympic program since 1924? Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but it seems to be rooted in assumptions that the women’s event isn’t worth investing in. Hmm.
With some help from friend of The GIST, Finnish-American skier Annika Malacinski (whose brother is competing at these Games), let’s dispel two misconceptions:
1️⃣ There aren’t enough women competing: Yes, Nordic combined is a niche winter sport, but Malacinski said there are 30 Olympic-caliber women from nine different countries, not far off the field for today’s individual normal hill men’s event that features 36 athletes from 15 countries.
- What’s more, there’s regularly scheduled international competition every year, meaning there’s already a pipeline in place for the women’s side to continue to grow, an opportunity that would only flourish with the inclusion of the sport at the Games.
2️⃣ Viewership and interest will be low: People aren’t watching the men, but that doesn’t mean the same will be true for the women. Malacinski’s fight for equality has gone viral, while other sports — take U.S. women’s soccer, for example — have proven that low metrics for the men aren’t predictive for the women. Including women just might save the sport, actually.
Event | ⏰ | 👀 |
| 🛷 Luge women’s doubles final | Today at 11 a.m. | 🇨🇦 Kailey Allan & Beattie Podulsky |
| 💨⛸️ Speed skating men’s 1,000m | Today at 12:30 p.m. | 🇨🇦 Laurent Dubreuil, David La Rue, Anders Johnson |
| 🥌 Men’s curling round robin | Today at 1:05 p.m. | 🇨🇦 Canada vs. 🇩🇪 Germany |
| 🥇⛸️ Ice dance final | Today at 1:30 p.m. | 🇨🇦 Piper Gilles & Paul Poirier |
♥️ The Official Dad of Milano Cortina 2026
Have you met The GIST’s newest media correspondent? GISTer Beks snagged Olympic tickets for their women’s sports–loving dad while he’s vacationing in Europe, but Richard wouldn’t accept such an extravagant gift from his child…so Beks told him their “connections” had given the tickets in exchange for on-the-ground coverage. Enter: The GIST.
- Richard’s now our official man on the ground, providing live footage of and commentary on the aforementioned USA vs. Canada women’s hockey game yesterday. Even Team USA women’s hockey captain Hilary Knight is absolutely locked in on DadView.
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