Mikael Kingsbury was golfing with NFL player Laurent Duvernay-Tardif near Montreal in late June when his mobile phone in his bag began chiming and binging like a casino.
Kingsbury pulled out his phone at the turn to discover almost everyone he knew wanted to tell him that dual moguls would be an Olympic event in 2026 in Milan-Cortina, Italy.
The 2018 Olympic gold medallist and three-time men's world moguls champion says euphoria from that revelation carried him through the back nine.
"I was pretty happy. I just didn't care about golf," Kingsbury told The Canadian Press. "I was hitting without thinking and that was probably better. I was kind of loose."
Men's and women's dual moguls were among eight new events added to the 2026 Winter Olympic Game menu as the International Olympic Committee attempts to achieve gender balance while maintaining a cap of 2,900 athletes.
The IOC projects 47 per cent of the athletes in Italy will be women.
Canadians already excel in many of those new events, with Kingsbury at the top of the list in dual moguls.
The 29-year-old from Deux-Montagnes, Que., has won three of the last four world dual titles and swept all four World Cup races this past season.
Dual moguls is head-to-head racing between two competitors in a knockout bracket. Skiers are still judged on turns, aerial tricks and speed as they are in moguls, but with the added pressure of racing another skier to the finish line.
Skiers can conceivably win a round finishing second if judges rank their turns and tricks significantly higher.
"Dual moguls has always been probably my favourite event in moguls skiing," Kingsbury said. "I just have another gear when I ski a dual.
"We were waiting for this. It deserved to be at the Olympics. It's great for our sport. It's a great show. I think on TV it's easier to tell who is going to win than singles."
If Kingsbury wasn't fully committed to another four years of training and competition after earning Olympic silver in Beijing in February, that isn't in question now.
"Yes, it changed a lot for me, I guess for the motivation," Kingsbury said. "I'm still super-motivated to go for another four years, but this definitely is like the cherry on the cake.
"If I stay healthy, I'm going to compete for four more years. It's great to have that opportunity to do at least one Olympics in dual and for me to get the chance to win two medals is great."
Kingsbury, a nine-time World Cup champion, won gold in both moguls and dual moguls in the last two world championships.
Women's doubles luge, a mixed-gender skeleton team event, women's large hill ski jumping and three ski mountaineering races will also debut in 2026.
After 62 years of men's doubles luge, the women get their own event in Italy. Doubles was labelled an open event after 1994, but only men still competed in it.
Vancouver's Natalie Corless and Caitlin Nash of Whistler, B.C., helped move the needle on women's doubles when they became the first to compete against men in a World Cup race in Whistler in 2019.
"It's tough to hold your ground against men who have been competing for longer than you've been alive, but we showed there's a lot of potential," said Corless, who placed 16th in women's singles in Beijing.
Corless, 18, and Nash, 19, earned a women's doubles silver medal in the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games.
"Now that they've announced it's going to be part of the next Olympics, the amount of women who are getting excited and getting prepared to start doing doubles is actually really crazy," Corless said.
"I've been hearing about some athletes that are even going to come out of retirement. Now they have this other opportunity to medal.
"We were kind of the first generation of these women's double teams. In four years, we definitely have a shot to be on that podium I think."
Alpine combined skiing, in which Canada's Jack Crawford won bronze in Beijing, is on the 2026 schedule only provisionally with a decision on its Olympic fate expected in 2023.
The event is the combined result of two ski races: a slalom and a super-G or downhill.
The alpine mixed team parallel race contested at the last two Winter Olympics was taken off the roster for Italy in 2026.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 8, 2022.
Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press
