Student AI-trained machine model predicts Olympic men’s hockey gold for Canada

Students at Edmonton's Norquest College work on models using 100 years of data to predict how Canada will perform at this year's Winter Olympics.

Students at an Edmonton college are using computers, artificial intelligence (AI) and a century of data to predict how Canada will do at the Winter Olympics in Italy.

Spoiler alert: their model is 96.7-per-cent confident our home and native land will win a medal in men’s hockey and 74-per-cent certain it will be gold.

Over the last two weeks, David Barahoni and some of his fellow students in NorQuest College’s machine-learning analyst program have been analyzing data to develop the model.

They looked strictly at medal wins over time to come up with their model.

“We trained it with all the countries,” Barahoni told media on Friday. “We didn’t choose it to be this medal. It just shows Canada as the winner.”

Stephanie Husby, the chair of technology at NorQuest, said the aim of the Winter Olympics exercise is to have students practise their machine-learning skill given AI and data science are at the forefront of major modern technological development.

“The more we can work on real-world data and the messiness that comes with that, the more experience they get,” Husby told media.

“AI is all the hype right now. We’re seeing AI and data science being used across all industries, so students learning in this space and growing in this space is super important for the next steps of careers and industries.”

The student modelling also predicted that Canada would win 17 gold medals overall. So far at Milano Cortina 2026, Canada has claimed seven medals, none yet gold.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Darcy Seaton