What to watch in Olympic sports this weekend

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The Winter Olympics officially open seven weeks from today. The big question right now is what impact this new, omicron-driven wave of the pandemic will have on the Games. But in the meantime, some smaller, considerably less-depressing questions will be answered on the fields (or rinks or slopes or tracks) of play as the medal contenders for Beijing continue to reveal themselves.

Let's go through some of those questions in our weekly guide to the key winter Olympic sports events to watch over the weekend:

Should Mikaël Kingsbury still be favoured to win Olympic gold?

This question would have sounded absurd just one week ago. The greatest moguls skier of all time had won the season opener and was considered pretty much a slam dunk to capture his 10th consecutive World Cup title and probably his second straight Olympic gold too. But then Kingsbury placed a shocking eighth in last Saturday's event, and today in France he settled for third. Japan's Ikuma Horishima won both competitions, and the 2017 world champion now leads Kingsbury in the World Cup standings. After years of running roughshod over the sport, it suddenly seems like the Canadian star might have a legitimate rival.

Last week, Kingsbury bounced back from his poor showing in the moguls event by winning the next day's (non-Olympic) dual moguls competition. He'll have a chance to do that again on Saturday. Watch the men's and women's events live at 8 a.m. ET on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem.

Is anything really separating the Canadian and U.S. women's hockey teams?

They're 1 and 1A — the Winter Olympics' version of the Spider-Man meme. Any time they meet, it's a coin flip. The Americans won their 2018 Olympic gold-medal showdown in a shootout, and the Canadians took this year's world-title game clash in overtime.

In preparation for a highly probable rematch for gold in Beijing, the duelling superpowers are currently engaged in a nine-game set of exhibition games they're calling the Rivalry Series. Canada took a 3-2 lead on Wednesday in St. Louis when Marie-Philip Poulin came through with another overtime winner (seriously, how does she keep doing this?). Three of the five games so far have been decided by one goal, and none by more than two.

Canada and the U.S. are squaring off in St. Louis again tonight at 8 p.m. ET (TSN is broadcasting the game). They'll play their final U.S. date on Monday night in St. Paul, Minn., before closing out the series with games in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alta., in early January. Then it's off to Beijing, where they'll square off in the group stage and likely again in the gold-medal game.

Which side of the podium cusp are Canada's bobsledders on?

It's tough to predict how many medals they'll win in Beijing because they seem to be on the knife's edge of the podium at just about every World Cup stop. No Canadian sled has won gold yet this season, but four of them are currently ranked either third or fourth in their standings.

The most consistent pilot has been Christine De Bruin, who ranks third in the two-woman event after opening the season with three consecutive bronze medals and then placing fourth last week. Cynthia Appiah seems to be finding her groove in the women's monobob, which will make its Olympic debut in Beijing. She took silver and bronze in the last two races to climb to third in the standings.

On the men's side, 2018 Olympic gold medallist Justin Kripps ranks fourth in the two-man event after picking up one bronze medal in three races. Gold and silver have been essentially off-limits this season, with German pilots Francesco Friedrich and Johannes Lochner finishing 1-2 in every race so far. Friedrich is also 5-for-5 in the four-man and will be heavily favoured to win double gold for the second straight Olympics (he and Kripps tied for the two-man win in 2018). Kripps also ranks fourth in the four-man after picking up a pair of bronze medals in the first five races.