Canada cross-country ski coach Julia Mehre Ystgaard has high hopes for her team at the Milan Cortina Olympics. And she’s not afraid to say it.
“I strongly, strongly believe that we can medal. And it’s a ballsy statement, I know,” the Norwegian said with a chuckle. “And I think people are scared to say such a thing … But I’ve seen what these athletes can do. And I’ve seen what they bring out in each other. And that’s why I know that it is possible.
“The team events are, for sure, our big focus,” she added, referencing the men’s relay and the women’s team sprint.
Canada has won just three Olympic cross-country skiing medals, all by women.
Beckie Scott, now CEO of Nordiq Canada, won gold in the women’s 10-kilometre pursuit event in 2002 in Salt Lake City (she finished third but was upgraded to gold after Russians Olga Danilova and Larissa Lazutina failed drug tests). Scott then won silver with Sara Renner in the team sprint in 2006 in Turin.
Chandra Crawford won gold in the free sprint in 2006.
At Milan Cortina, Mehre Ystgaard is in charge of a team made up of a few key veterans and a lot of young talent who have turned heads at the junior level.
The average age of the Milan Cortina team is 24 1/2, with eight of the 12 team members 23 or younger. The other three are 25-year-old Remi Drolet, 27-year-old Antoine Cyr, 30-year-old Katherine Stewart-Jones and 33-year-old Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt.
At 20, Alison Mackie is the youngest.
“It’s a very young, promising team,” said Mehre Ystgaard. “They do well at world junior events, and now they’re also starting to really believe that they can be good on the bigger stage. And that’s showing in their racing too.”
Only Drolet, Cyr, Stewart-Jones and Bouffard‑Nesbitt have Olympic experience, having competed four years ago in Beijing.
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Stewart-Jones was 12th in the team sprint and helped the Canadian entry to ninth in the relay four years ago. Mehre Ystgaard praises the veteran for how she supports her younger teammates and, on a personal level, how she makes the adjustments to improve her racing.
Cyr and Graham Ritchie, an alternate this year, finished fifth in the Beijing men’s team sprint for Canada’s best-ever Olympic result in the event in classic technique.
“An exceptional classic skier,” Mehre Ystgaard said of Cyr. “When you put him at a classic mass start, he goes into beast mode.”
The Canadians have had some good results en route to the games.
Mackie, a two-time World Junior Championships bronze medallist, posted a career-best fifth place in Stage 3 of the Tour de Ski on Dec. 31 in Toblach, Italy. That same day on the men’s side, Cyr finished 11th, while Xavier McKeever and Max Hollmann achieved personal-best World Cup finishes in placing 13th and 14th, respectively.
The Canadian team’s final Olympic preparation was at an altitude camp in Switzerland’s Engadin Valley. The Olympic course is some 830 metres above sea level.
“Some people would maybe see that it is a bit of altitude. We do not consider it altitude,” Mehre Ystgaard said matter-of-factly. “It would have to be above 1,400 (metres) approximately before we would actually consider it altitude racing. But for sure, we use altitude training in preparation to be as ready as possible there.”
The Olympic cross-country skiing events will be held some 300 kilometres northeast of Milan at the Tesero Cross-Country Skiing stadium in the Val di Fiemme region. The venue, which boasts 19 kilometres of groomed trails, will also host the Nordic combined events.
The Olympic course is largely familiar to the athletes, given they race it every year during the Tour de Ski competition.
“The courses will be a bit new for the games,” said Mehre Ystgaard. “They made some alterations to make it a bit more games-friendly.”
She likes the course, saying it is a bit more tactical contest with climbs in the existing terrain as opposed to the more manufactured course four years ago in Beijing.
“As a team, we generally really like Val di Fiemme. We usually do well,” she said.
That means the team also knows the snow there, expected to be a mix of artificial and the real thing.
There isn’t much Mehre Ystgaard hasn’t done with the Canadian cross-country ski team, having previously served as an assistant coach, high-performance coach, wax technician, technical services coordinator and World Cup lead.
Mehre Ystgaard originally came to Canada as an exchange student while working on her bachelor’s degree at the Norwegian School for Sport Sciences. She landed in Alberta after Googling the University of Calgary and discovering photos of Canmore.
“I figured I wanted to go there,” she recalled.
Erik Braaten, who had coached Mehre Ystgaard in Norway, was coaching the Canadian team at the time and invited her to help at a camp prior to the world junior championship in 2019. That led to a job offer from the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA), a training centre for high-performance cross-country skiers.
Mehre Ystgaard combined school and coaching, and six months turned into three years on the job. Along the way, she became fluent in English and French.
In 2022, she switched to working with the World Cup team. And in May 2024, based out of Oslo, she became the lead of the World Cup team.
Cross-country skiing, at least for men, has been part of the Olympic program since the first Winter Games in Chamonix in 1924. Women’s competition was added in 1952 at Oslo.
Canada Olympic Cross-Country Ski Team
Men
Antoine Cyr, Gatineau, Que.; Remi Drolet, Rossland, B.C.; Max Hollmann, Thunder Bay, Ont.; Xavier McKeever, Canmore, Alta.; Tom Stephen, Calgary.
Women
Olivia Bouffard‑Nesbitt, Morin Heights, Que.; Jasmine Drolet, Rossland, B.C.; Liliane Gagnon, Shawinigan-Sud, Que.; Alison Mackie, Edmonton; Sonjaa Schmidt, Whitehorse; Katherine Stewart-Jones, Chelsea, Que.; Amelia Wells, Victoria.
Alternate
Graham Ritchie, Parry Sound, Ont.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 8, 2026
