Mikaël Kingsbury celebrates his gold medal in the men's freestyle skiing dual moguls finals on Sunday at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.Gregory Bull/The Associated Press
After the gold medal was slung over his neck and the sounds of O Canada brought the spectators to their feet, as if they were soldiers at attention, Mikaël Kingsbury clutched his precious hardware, pushed it over his heart and closed his eyes.
At that precise moment, he wasn’t smiling. It was hard to tell if he was feeling joy, relief, patriotism or astonishment for having earned his second medal of the Games, taking his tally to five in four Olympics – Sochi 2014, Pyeongchang 2018, Beijing 2022 and, now, Milan Cortina 2026. Two of them were golds.
He was probably feeling a mix of all those emotions. I was watching him and my guess is that relief was the biggie. His win in the dual moguls (a new Olympic event, by the way) marked the end of his long Olympic career – he’s heading into retirement – and he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. He had won silver in the single moguls event on Feb. 12 and was clearly disappointed by missing gold.
Athletes reaching their expiry dates – Kingsbury is 33 – naturally want to end their careers on a high and silver, in Kingsbury’s case, was simply inadequate, even a mark of failure.
Inevitably, Kingsbury will be labelled one of Canada’s best-ever athletes, maybe even the best, some sports fanatics may argue.
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He’s not the all-time best – that argument can’t be made. What about speed skater Cindy Klassen, with six Olympic medals and a bucket of championships? Or swimmers Summer McIntosh and Penny Oleksiak, each with bathtubs full of Olympic medals? Or Andre De Grasse, with seven? And we haven’t even talked about the hockey heroes like Gordie Howe or Mario Lemieux.
You can be a superb, brand-name athlete without having climbed the Olympic podium (though Lemieux did lead Team Canada to Olympic hockey gold in Salt Lake City 2002).
But let’s agree that Kingsbury, if not the greatest, was consistently good to great – stress on the latter – over a sports career that lasted an astonishingly long time. It began in earnest in 2010, when he won his first of a record 100 World Cups. His ever-reliable podium finishes made him the undisputed King of Freestyle and a household name in his native Quebec and much of the rest of Canada.
Not only that, he has spent much of his career saving our national bacon in four Olympics, lifting Canadians’ spirits when, at times, the medal count was low or fairly low, as it’s been at Milan Cortina (as of Sunday night, Canada had picked up only nine medals, five of them bronze, putting us in 15th position overall; The Canadian Press had predicted we’d win 26 medals, seven of them gold, which now seems like sheer fantasy).
From left, silver medalist Japan's Ikuma Horishima, gold medalist Canada's Mikael Kingsbury, and bronze medalist Australia's Matt Graham.Gregory Bull/The Associated Press
What’s more, Kingsbury lifted our spirits fairly early in the Games, handing us upfront emotional and psychological buzz that kept us glued to the TV coverage. He won silver in moguls in Sochi three days after the official start of those Olympics. Another early medal came in Pyeongchang, where he won Canada’s second gold. He won silver in Beijing on the first full day of the medal events.
In Milan Cortina, he hauled Canada’s butt out of winter snowdrifts once again, though, this time, his moguls events came about halfway through the competitions, not near the beginning.
Kingsbury was also creative, daring, experimental – always pushing the aerial envelope. While he did not invent the cork 1440 – four rotations with an-off axis component – he was one of the stunt’s most successful pioneers and came close to perfecting the dazzling manoeuvre (as did Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris, who has landed backside, triple-cork 1440s).
While Kingsbury didn’t always win, he never let us down. His passion to succeed, and to train hard to make sure he did succeed for almost two decades, inspired young Canadians everywhere and made us flag-waving proud at the Olympics and the World Cups.
“I felt unreal, what a feeling, the best feeling in the world,” he told reporters after he won gold on the dual moguls. “I was happy I got to break [the medal drought] and get the first gold medal for our country.”
A generation of Canadian athletes and non-athletes grew up in awe of Kingsbury. Milan Cortina marks the end of a truly extraordinary era in Canadian sports history. Inevitably, as a coach or as an instructor (his freestyle school in Quebec is set to expand beyond Canada), he will mentor future champions. But his big air on the slopes will be missed, big time.
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