Canada at the Beijing Olympics: What to watch Wednesday night, Thursday morning

Canada’s men’s hockey team will make its debut at the Beijing Winter Olympics on Thursday, while athletes seek medals in figure skating, snowboarding and speed skating.

For Canadian fans, events will begin Wednesday evening and continue overnight into Thursday morning.

Here’s when you can see Canada compete (all times Eastern).

Events with multiple matches are marked with the start time of the earliest match. Medal events are marked in bold.

This post will be continuously updated as more events are confirmed.

Keegan Messing will seek a medal in men’s singles when he competes in the free skating event starting at 8:30 p.m. ET Wednesday.

Messing, the ranking Canadian champion, placed ninth in the short program on Tuesday with a score of 93.24. That score will be combined with the free skate score to determine his final ranking.

Elizabeth Hosking and Brooke Dhondt will go for gold in the women’s halfpipe final, with the first of three runs starting at 8:30 p.m. ET Wednesday.

Hosking and Dhondt finished ninth and 10th respectively in the qualifying round on Tuesday.

At 10:15 p.m. ET Wednesday, the men’s snowboard cross kicks off with two seeding runs, which will whittle down the athletes through three more rounds until the finals at 2:15 a.m. ET Thursday. Eliot Grondin, Kevin Hill and Liam Moffatt will race for Canada.

In the 1/8 finals at 1 a.m. ET that start the elimination rounds, Grondin will race in the first heat, followed by Moffatt in the fourth and Hill in the seventh.

Blake Enzie will race for Canada in the first two competition runs in men’s skeleton, which kicks off at 8:30 p.m. ET Wednesday.

The second run will start at 10 p.m. ET.

The men’s alpine combined final will see athletes race through both downhill and slalom runs starting at 9:30 p.m. ET Wednesday. The aggregate time from both runs will determine the medal rankings.

James Crawford, Broderick Thompson, Trevor Philip and Brodie Seger will all race for Canada.

A double dose of curling action for Canada begins at 1:05 a.m. ET Thursday, when the men’s team faces Norway in the latest round-robin session.

Then at 7:05 a.m. ET, the women’s team will make its first appearance at the Beijing Games, taking on South Korea in round-robin play.

Cendrine Browne, Dahria Beatty, Katherine Stewart-Jones and Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt will race for Canada in the women’s 10-kilometre classic at 2 a.m. ET Thursday.

Canada is among six countries competing in the mixed team aerials final at 6 a.m. ET Thursday, with the top four teams advancing to the medal final at 6:50 a.m. ET.

Marion Thenault, Miha Fontaine and Lewis Irving will represent Canada on the course.

Isabelle Weidemann will race for gold in the women’s 5,000-metre final at 7 a.m. ET Thursday.

Her teammate Ivanie Blondin pulled out of the event, the Canadian Olympic Committee said on Wednesday, to “maximize Team Canada’s performance in the upcoming team pursuit event.”

Weidemann is seeking her second medal in Beijing after taking bronze in the women’s 3,000 metre on day one of the Games.

The men’s hockey team makes its Beijing debut when it faces defending silver medallists Germany at 8:10 a.m. ET Thursday.

Team Canada is looking to reclaim gold after being forced to settle for bronze at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang.

This will mark the second consecutive Winter Games that will not see NHL players compete, with the league citing the disruptions to its regular-season schedule due to COVID-19 for not participating.

The team relay competition at 8:30 a.m. ET Thursday will see countries run three consecutive heats — women’s singles, men’s singles and doubles — with the first two runners hitting a touchpad that opens the next runner’s starting gate.

The fastest time after all three sleds have completed their runs will win the gold.

For Team Canada, Trinity Ellis will race first, followed by Reid Watts and the pair of Tristan Walker and Justin Snith.