Personally, I think the most revealing thing about Day 3 of the Milano-Cortina Paralympics isn’t the medal count at all – it’s how success and struggle are sitting side by side in the Canadian camp, telling a much bigger story about what high-performance Para sport actually looks like.
When “messy” skiing wins you a medal
Canadian Para alpine skier Kalle Eriksson and his guide (and partner) Sierra Smith picked up their second medal of these Paralympics by taking bronze in the men’s visually impaired super-G in Cortina d’Ampezzo, clocking 1:13.29 on the Tofane course.
On paper, that’s a clean result: another podium, another medal, early in their Paralympic debut. But what makes this particularly fascinating is Eriksson’s reaction – he openly said he wasn’t "super pumped" about the technical side of his skiing and called the run "pretty messy" on his end. From my perspective, that gap between the external result (a medal) and the internal feeling (dissatisfaction) is exactly where elite sport becomes psychologically interesting. It shows that once you reach a certain level, the real competition is often with your own standards, not just the clock or the field.
The gates came at them fast, he said, and yet they “committed to it” and still came out with a better result than he expected. In my opinion, that line – committing despite feeling off – is the secret sauce of so many great performances we romanticize after the fact. Fans usually assume medals come from magical, perfect days; what many people don’t realize is that a shocking number of podiums are built on athletes hanging on through chaos, trusting their preparation when the run feels anything but smooth.
A podium built on partnership, not just speed
Eriksson and Smith are not a long-established duo; they’ve only been competing together since 2022, yet they’ve already won silvers in slalom and giant slalom at world championships and racked up 22 World Cup medals.
Personally, I think the guide-athlete relationship in visually impaired skiing is one of the most underappreciated partnerships in all of sport. You’re not just skiing fast; you’re effectively sharing one nervous system at 100 km/h, connected by a two-way headset and an enormous amount of trust. If you take a step back and think about it, that’s a far more intimate collaboration than most team sports ever require. You’re asking one person to be your eyes and your rhythm, while you throw your body down an icy mountain based on what you hear, not what you see.
Smith said they came into these Games with "hopes and dreams" and now they’re on the podium in their first two races – silver in downhill, bronze in super-G. From my perspective, that phrasing matters. It underscores how Para athletes still arrive at these Games with the same childhood dream structure as any Olympian, yet often with less attention, less funding, and more logistical and medical hurdles. What this really suggests is that when they turn hopes into medals, the emotional payoff might actually be amplified, not muted, by the obstacles embedded in their careers.
A detail that I find especially interesting is that Eriksson and Smith are partners off the hill as well. That adds another layer of complexity. In my opinion, it blurs the lines between athletic performance, relationship dynamics, and communication in a way traditional sports narratives rarely explore. If things go well, you get a kind of seamless understanding that’s hard to coach; if things go badly, you don’t just have a bad race – you have a tense dinner. That dual role makes their early Paralympic success even more impressive.
The brutal other side: DNFs and dashed expectations
While Eriksson and Smith were stacking up medals, Day 3 was rough for some of Canada’s other alpine hopefuls: Alexis Guimond and Kurt Oatway both did not finish (DNF) their super-G events, and Brian Rowland also registered a DNF in the sitting category.
Guimond, a two-time Paralympic bronze medallist from Gatineau, skied off the course halfway through the men’s standing race, his second straight DNF after also failing to finish the downhill. In my opinion, DNFs are vastly misunderstood by casual viewers. People see three letters and assume failure, but for technical and speed events like super-G, skiing to the limit inherently means your margin for error hovers near zero. If you never DNF, you’re probably not attacking enough; if you DNF too often, you can’t cash in your potential. Living in that margin is psychologically exhausting.
Oatway, a sit-skier who won super-G gold back in 2018 and added downhill bronze earlier these Games, hit a gate with his outrigger ski and had to ski off. Personally, I think moments like this highlight how unforgiving Para equipment can be. Your outriggers are both your balance and your vulnerability; a tiny misjudgment becomes race-ending in a heartbeat. What many people don’t realize is that success for sit-skiers often hinges on a kind of micro-precision most of us never think about – angles, contact points, the exact way a gate brushes their gear.
This raises a deeper question about how we talk about Paralympians. We lionize the medal days but rarely give the same narrative weight to the days where everything goes sideways. From my perspective, though, the DNFs are where you see the true volatility of high-level sport: past medals offer no protection from a small mistake, and reputations don’t keep you on the course. If anything, they raise the stakes and make the fall – literal and figurative – that much heavier.
Wheelchair curling: the quiet machine that never stops
Away from the mountain, Canada’s wheelchair curling team quietly put on a clinic, trouncing Latvia 11–1 and stealing all 11 points to move to 4–0 in round-robin play.
Stealing every point in a game – meaning you win ends without having the hammer – is the curling equivalent of dictating both the script and the pacing from start to finish. Personally, I think people massively underestimate how ruthless that kind of control feels from the opponent’s perspective. It’s not just that you’re losing; it’s that you never truly get to run your own plan. Every end becomes damage control instead of opportunity, and psychologically that wears a team down faster than the scoreboard alone suggests.
Skip Mark Ideson framed their position wisely: they’ve put themselves in “a good situation” early, but reminded everyone it’s a marathon, not a sprint. In my opinion, that’s not just canned athlete-speak. Round-robin formats can seduce teams into complacency because early wins feel like confirmation that everything is perfect. What this really suggests is that Canada’s veterans understand momentum as something to be managed, not celebrated too loudly. When you’ve watched enough tournaments, you see a recurring pattern: the teams that keep saying “it’s still a long way to go” are often the ones still standing at the end.
Age, experience, and the myth of the “window”
One thing that immediately stands out is the age spread on this wheelchair curling team. On the same day Canada was celebrating undefeated status, two very different career arcs were in focus: 57-year-old alternate Gilbert Dash finally making his Paralympic debut, and 63-year-old Ina Forrest competing at her fifth Games – the first wheelchair curler ever to do so.
Dash called it the fulfilment of “all the years of practice and games,” having been close to previous Paralympic rosters through the Next Gen program. From my perspective, his story quietly challenges a deeply ingrained notion in sports culture: the idea of a narrow, early-life “window” for achieving your dreams. In many able-bodied sports, if you haven’t "made it" by your mid-20s, the narrative is that your chance has passed. Here, you have an athlete in his late 50s finally stepping onto the Paralympic stage, powered less by raw youth than by persistence and accumulated craft.
What makes this particularly fascinating is how openly Dash talks about asking, year after year, "What do I have to do to get there?" That’s not the language of entitlement; that’s the language of someone treating selection like a moving target that demands constant adaptation. Personally, I think that attitude is far more realistic in modern sport, where standards are perpetually rising. The romantic idea that talent will simply "shine through" ignores the grind of tweaking, adjusting, and reinventing yourself so that when a tiny roster window opens, you actually fit through it.
On the other end of the spectrum, Ina Forrest is chasing more history at her fifth Paralympics and played a big role in the Latvia rout. Ideson said she "got us out of any trouble" and drew "a spectacular lead." If you take a step back and think about it, sustaining that level of influence over five Paralympic cycles is almost surreal. In my opinion, we talk a lot about GOATs in flashy, commercial sports, but Para legends like Forrest redefine what longevity looks like when you factor in not just performance, but body management, evolving field depth, and the emotional wear of staying at the top for nearly two decades.
What this really suggests is that Para sport, perhaps more than many mainstream circuits, explodes the myth of age as a fixed competitive deadline. When your value is tied to tactical intelligence, consistency under pressure, and team leadership, the ceiling for "how long is too long" gets pushed further out. That’s not just inspiring; it’s structurally important, because it shows younger athletes that their careers can take multiple shapes over time – from newcomer, to star, to anchor, to elder statesperson.
A tradition of podiums – and the pressure that comes with it
Canada has reached the wheelchair curling podium at every Paralympics since the sport debuted in 2006, winning the first three gold medals and bronze at the last two Games. They’re currently ranked second in the world behind China, the two-time defending Paralympic champions, and face them next in round-robin play.
Personally, I think this long streak of podium success cuts both ways. On one hand, it creates a powerful cultural expectation inside the program: Canada goes to the Paralympics to win medals, not just gain experience. That can be galvanizing, especially for rookies who step into a structure that already knows how to succeed. On the other hand, historical dominance can become a trap. What many people don’t realize is that past golds can quietly raise the "acceptable minimum" from a sporting perspective: bronze starts to feel like underachieving, and anything short of the podium feels like failure.
This raises a deeper question about how we define success at multi-sport events. Is it about sustaining a medal streak at all costs, or about evolving the program even if that means short-term dips? From my perspective, facing China – the new powerhouse – is a symbolic passing-of-the-torch moment, or at least a tug-of-war over who gets to define the current era. It’s not just Canada defending a legacy; it’s Canada deciding whether that legacy will be nostalgic or active.
The schedule reinforces how relentless these tournaments are: games against China and Sweden on Tuesday, then Slovakia the next day. In my opinion, the real test for this team won’t just be tactical execution but emotional regulation. Staying undefeated is exciting; staying level-headed while everyone at home starts whispering "gold again?" is the real challenge.
Beyond medals: how a nation learns to watch Para sport
If you zoom out from the individual storylines, Canada’s early tally at Milano-Cortina – seven medals through three days (one gold, three silver, three bronze) – is undeniably strong. But personally, I think the more important metric isn’t the count; it’s whether people are actually watching, talking, and learning.
Day 3 also features Canada vs. Japan in Para hockey, following an 8–0 win over Slovakia in their Group B opener. From my perspective, these kinds of lopsided scores often get framed as dominance, but they also expose the uneven development of Para programs worldwide. Some nations have well-funded, deeply structured pipelines; others are still building the basics. What this really suggests is that medal tables, while convenient, are crude instruments for measuring progress. They tell you who’s winning now, not who’s building sustainably for the future.
A detail that I find especially interesting is how many of these Canadian stories hinge on communication and adaptation: a visually impaired skier trusting a guide’s voice; a wheelchair curling team orchestrating steals end after end; veterans and rookies coexisting in the same lineup; athletes learning how to bounce back from DNFs without unraveling. In my opinion, those are skills that resonate far beyond sport. They mirror how societies absorb shocks, learn new ways of collaborating, and negotiate intergenerational change.
Personally, I think the real evolution we should be looking for isn’t just in results but in the way audiences frame these athletes. Are we still primarily seeing "inspiration" and "bravery" – the old, slightly patronizing tropes – or are we finally talking about tactics, form, bad days, coaching decisions, and competitive rivalries with the same seriousness we reserve for able-bodied sport? When we start arguing over power plays in Para hockey or line calls in wheelchair curling instead of simply saying "what a brave performance," that’s when the ecosystem has truly matured.
The quiet revolution happening on ice and snow
If you take a step back and think about it, Day 3 of these Paralympics reads like a microcosm of what Para sport is becoming for Canada: messy and brilliant runs, DNFs and dominance, late-blooming debuts and record-setting veterans, all unfolding under the pressure of a nation that now expects to be relevant on this stage.
In my opinion, that’s a powerful place to be. It means the conversation can finally move beyond basic awareness into genuine critique and appreciation. We can debate whether Eriksson’s "messy" bronze reveals another gear still to come, or whether Canada’s wheelchair curlers can turn early perfection into another podium. We can question selections, celebrate resilience, and acknowledge that sometimes, even legends ski off course or miss shots.
What many people don’t realize is that this normalization – treating Paralympians as athletes first, complex and fallible – is itself a form of respect. Personally, I think the real legacy of Milano-Cortina for Canada may not be any single medal, but the slow, cultural shift in how these performances are understood back home. And if that happens, the highlights from Day 3 won’t just live as stats in a results book; they’ll mark another step in a broader, overdue redefinition of who gets to be seen as a high-performance athlete – and how seriously we take them when they are.
