Rachel Homan’s third bid for an Olympic medal off to a positive start at Milano Cortina 2026

Rachel Homan’s third bid for an Olympic medal got off to a positive start Thursday morning with a 10-4, seven-end win over Denmark in the opening draw of women’s curling at Milano Cortina 2026.

Supported by third Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew and lead Sarah Wilkes, Team Homan stole four in the fifth end to pull ahead of a determined Danish squad that had been pressuring Canada through the first four ends. Another three in the seventh encouraged Denmark to shake hands.

Playing in her third Olympics, Homan was looking to avoid a similar costly 0-3 start to her first Games appearance in 2018 when her team became the first Canadian foursome to fail to make it to a medal game. Homan also missed a in 2022 when she played mixed doubles with John Morris.

“A great start, great to get the first one under our belts,” Homan said after the impressive showing. “A real great performance by our team.

“We made a pile of shots early. It felt real comfortable, the ice was really good. Obviously, a few shots here and there we’ll take and learn from. On every surface there’s going to be new lines you have to learn and that was part of that game.”

Fleury, the former skip from Sudbury who joined Homan for the 2022-23 season, said the team was prepared and ready for their opening game.

“I think we came out confident and fairly calm for our first game here and got a good handle on the ice and I think that really helped,” she said. “We were communicating with each other really well. The fifth end we got our rocks in really good spots and put a lot of pressure on them.”

For her first time on Olympic ice, Fleury said she and her teammates including Wilkes, the team’s other Olympic rookie, were pumped to finally hit the ice after a week of training about an hour away from the Cortina Olympic Stadium.

“It was more excitement than nerves for now I would say,” Fleury said. “We love the venue here and to be able to finally get on the ice and compete it was more excitement. We tried to focus on our process and into making shots and block out the distractions.”

Team Canada began well, scoring two with hammer in the first end when Denmark skip Madeleine Dupont’s last-rock double got only one Canadian stone.

It was Homan missing a double in the second that allowed Denmark an easy draw to tie the match.

Denmark began applying pressure in the third, stealing one when Canada got caught by straight ice on two consecutive shots. That allowed Dupont to hide shot stone that Homan couldn’t get at.

Dupont and her teammates – third Mathilde Halse, second Jasmin Holtermann and lead Denise Dupont – continued to be aggressive in the fourth. Skimming guards with three shots and positioning their stones had Denmark sitting five when Homan threw her first rock. The Canadian skip had perfect weight to draw the button and eventually escaped with a single.

Precision shooting by Wilkes, Miskew and Fleury built the pivotal fifth end. Two missed runbacks by Denmark and two well positioned draws by Homan left Dupont trying simply to eliminate some Canadian counters. She managed to move some stones but not enough to prevent the steal of four.

Denmark had a chance at three in the sixth until Homan, aided by strong sweeping by Miskew and Wilkes and a great line call by Fleury, slid a perfectly placed freeze and forced Dupont to draw for one.

Looking shaken by the turn of events, the Danish team gave up another three to Canada in the seventh when Dupont’s desperation try for a wide triple got only one and left Homan an open house draw to end the game.

Other first-draw games saw Sweden (Anna Hasselborg) beat Japan (Sayaka Yoshimura) 8-4; the United States (Tabitha Peterson) defeated Korea (Gim Eun-ji) 8-4 and Switzerland (Silvana Tirinzoni) defeat host Italy (Stefania Constantini) 7-4.

Canada will next play the U.S. on Friday morning. The 10 teams each play nine round robin games with the top four then advancing to the semifinals on Feb. 20. The bronze medal game is set for Feb. 21 followed the next day by the gold-medal match.