Dal alum and former Dal Tigers hockey forward Mike Evelyn O’Higgins (BEng’19) is in Cortino d'Ampezzo, representing Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Speaking from the Toronto airport on his way to Italy, he described what it was like to get the phone call on Jan. 23 that he’d made the Olympics 2026 roster for Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton.
“You have a hunch, but when you get that call and hear those words, it’s a pretty sweet feeling. It never gets old,” says Evelyn O’Higgins, who, through the RBC Training Ground program, transitioned from hockey to bobsleigh after five years at Dal. While he originally had his sights on skeleton, at 6’3” tall and 235 pounds, his body was more suited to bobsleigh and he was made brakeman on the national team. He will compete in both the two-man and four-man events in Italy. He previously competed at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 and has been competing in World Cup bobsleigh events since 2019.
Mike Evelyn O’Higgins (left) with his fourman bobsled team (photo by Dave Holland/COC).
Savouring the moment
For an elite athlete in any sport, training and competing can be grueling, and bobsleigh is no exception. Evelyn O’Higgins, who is now 32, has been doing it all while building his career as an engineer back in his hometown of Ottawa. But he’s determined not to let it go by in a blur. The Olympics offer athletes — particularly in lower-profile sports like bobsleigh — a rare opportunity for exposure, and as much as Evelyn O’Higgins says he needs to focus on racing, he also wants to savour the entire experience.
“Having toiled in obscurity for a thousand days or so, to then be pulled into the limelight is a different kind of noise. You don’t want to tune that out,” he says. “You want to perform and execute, but also enjoy the moment, because it’s fleeting.”
Balancing engineering and elite sport
Evelyn O’Higgins played hockey for five years at Dal while he was studying engineering. He says it was the busy-ness of those years that most prepared him for his life as it is now.
“I really enjoyed my time as a Tiger but learned you can’t please everyone all the time,” he says of the competing demands on his time. Ultimately, he successfully managed both his engineering classes and practice schedule. “I had to learn what balance looked like,” he says, adding that’s been invaluable to him now as a full-time systems engineer and team lead with Searidge Technologies while also touring the world through his sport.
Evelyn O’Higgins’s goals for this tournament, he says, are simply get the best possible result. He figures his best opportunity is in the four-man event happening Feb. 20 and 21. He’ll also compete in the two-man with his close friend and fellow Ottawa-based engineer Jay Dearborn on Feb. 16 and 17.
“We have an outside chance to medal in the four-man. The goals for the two-man are to convince our funders to continue funding the team through to 2030.”
Engineering discipline meets athletic detail
Evelyn O’Higgins and his team get two days of training on the track, then will spend their final pre-competition days watching and analyzing racing videos. Bobsleigh races can be won by one-hundredth of a second thus making the team run and entry into the sled of paramount importance. For Evelyn O’Higgins, what he calls a “fixation on details” in the sport aligns well with his life as an engineer.
“Engineers love taking things apart. Dissecting and analyzing them. I take 22 steps during the push (downhill, on ice) before I get into the sled. A lot of analysis goes into how I do that precisely and effectively,” he says, adding “And I appreciate the engineering of the sled."
Troy Ryan’s leadership behind the bench
Former Dal Tigers women’s hockey coach from 2020 to the 2023-24 season, Troy Ryan, is also at the Olympics in his role as coach for the Canadian women's hockey team. Ryan was behind the bench in Beijing in 2022 when the Canadian women reclaimed hockey gold from the United States in a three-two final, and will be looking to add another Olympic gold medal to his trophy cabinet after the games in Milan-Cortina, Italy.
“It is always an honour and privilege to be in this leadership position as we set our expectations and goals for the Olympics,” Ryan told The Hockey News. “We have a tremendous coaching staff that is committed to the vision and process, and I am excited for the journey ahead.”
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