Five Olympic rookies to watch
Kim Boutin — short track speed skating
The 23- year- old was a medalwinning machine on the World Cup circuit this season. She hit the podium at all four stops and accumulated two gold, four silver and two bronze.
Back injuries put her on the shelf for parts of the 2015- 16 and 2014- 15 seasons, but Boutin is healthy and in top form headed into Pyeongchang. She’ll skate the 500-, 1,000-, 1,500- metre races and the team relay event here and it’s not much of a stretch to predict three medals for her.
Alex Boisvert- Lacroix — speed skating
He lowered his personal best in the 500 metres to 34.15 at a World Cup in Salt Lake City, and that wasn’t even the best news of the day.
He did it while winning back- toback 500 races for the first time in his career, following up on a victory at a World Cup in Calgary.
“It’s a very, very tight distance,” the 31- year- old said then. “Every day is a new winner or new guys on the podium. I think the last guy to do this, back- to- back wins, was ( Russian) Pavel Kulizhnikov, who holds the world record. So it’s nice to be in the same league as him, I guess. He’s considered to be one of the best skaters in the 500 in history, so I guess I have to look at what he did and what I can do and be happy.”
Boisvert- Lacroix also earned a bronze in Erfurt, Germany in the 500 metres at the final World Cup before the Olympics.
Alysia Rissling — bobsleigh
She will likely have Olympic gold medallist Heather Moyse in the back seat as they speed down the Alpensia Sliding Centre track here.
Rissling, 29, knows and drives the tricky course well, finishing third at a World Cup here in 2017. It was Canada’s best finish in women’s bobsleigh at that event. Rissling didn’t manage to hit the podium this season but she finished with some promise, sliding to a fourth at St. Moritz and fifth at Konigssee, Germany to send her into Pyeongchang with a decent level of confidence.
Cassie Sharpe — freestyle sking halfpipe
The 25- year- old from Calgary has loaded up her run with a series of tricks that might be unrivalled on the day of the final here. She’s the only woman on the World Cup tour doing a switch cork 700 and one of very few doing a cork 1080.
“I feel strong, I feel prepared. My tricks are just coming easier than ever. I feel that I’ve put in so much time on everything that it’s just all coming together really nicely.”
She won World Cups in New Zealand and Snowmass and comes to Pyeongchang as a gold medal threat.
Evan McEachran — freestyle skiing slopestyle
The 20- year- old from Oakville hit the podium on both the World Cup and Grand Prix circuits this year.
“For me it’s huge just for the confidence,” he said in mid- January after finishing third at a Grand Prix in Aspen. “I’m really happy with my skiing and happy the judges are liking it.”
He went from there to Mammoth for a World Cup and put up another bronze- medal performance. Despite the consistent success, he had decided to tweak his runs for the Olympics by adding some new tricks. But he wasn’t going to share too much information on the substance.
“It’s nice to have nobody else go out and do the same thing. It’s also a good tactic to be able to surprise the judges. I think that’s huge, actually. If you pull out something they’re not expecting to see, you’ll definitely get rewarded for it.”