Who will be the 2026 Canadian athlete of the year?

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On Tuesday, NBA star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won the North Star Award won Canadian Athlete of the Year for the second time, beating swimming phenom Summer McIntosh as voted on by sports media members from across the country.

They made the right choice. Gilgeous-Alexander had one of the best seasons in NBA history this calendar year, earning regular season and finals MVP awards, winning the scoring title and winning his first championship with the Oklahoma City Thunder. And SGA has continued to dominate this season, giving OKC a 23-1 record, leading the league in points per possession and ranking second in points per game behind Lakers gunner Luka Doncic, who has played far more minutes (the Thunder have beaten their opponents so regularly that SGA has made only 11 fourth-quarter plays in its 24 games).

However, we shouldn't just gloss over what McIntosh has achieved this year.

At the Canadian trials in June, the 18-year-old sensation became the first swimmer since Michael Phelps at the 2008 Beijing Olympics to break three different individual world records in the same event. At the subsequent World Championships in Singapore, McIntosh set himself an audacious goal – to repeat the record of Phelps, who won five gold medals alone. She came very close, winning four golds in her 200-400m comfort zone and taking bronze in the 800m freestyle – a distance she had covered just a few months earlier to challenge American star Katie Ledecky (the only woman to win four golds at a single world championships) in her signature race. In the 200m butterfly, McIntosh came within 0.18 seconds of what was once considered an untouchable world record set by China's Liu Zige in the era of time-warping supersuits.

In most cases, this is more than enough to win the North Star. The fact that Mackintosh didn't is a testament to Gilgeous-Alexander's greatness.

SGA and Summer have been trading North Star back and forth for three years. Gilgeous-Alexander won it in 2023, finishing fifth in NBA MVP voting and leading the Canadian men's team to its first Olympic berth in a quarter century and a historic bronze at the FIBA ​​World Cup. McIntosh received it last year after winning three Olympic golds and a silver in Paris.

Will they be able to maintain this duopoly? Well, Gilgeous-Alexander looks set to be in the running again next year as he continues to play like a top MVP candidate, while the Thunder look poised to repeat as NBA champions and possibly break the regular season winning record. But no one has won back-to-back Northern Star/Lou Marsh awards since Ben Johnson in 1986 and 1987, and the only athletes to win it more than twice in their lifetime are Wayne Gretzky (4) and figure skater great Barbara Ann Scott (3). Johnson would have joined them in 1988, but, you know.

McIntosh will be more difficult because there will be no Summer Olympics or world swimming championships in 2026. The closest major competitions she can compete in are the Commonwealth Games and Pan-Pacific Championships in the summer, and the World Short Course Championships in December.

So who else has a good chance of winning the North Star next year?

If history has taught us anything, it's that this will likely be a Winter Olympic champion. Canada is expected to win a lot of medals at the Games in northern Italy this February, and in 13 Olympic years this century, North Star/Lou Marsh has come up short in 12 of them. The only exception, ironically, was 2010, when Canada held its best Winter Olympics ever in Vancouver, but baseball star Joey Votto received Lou Marsh after winning the National League MVP award.

Barring a non-Olympic athlete stealing the spotlight (like Alphonso Davies when Canada co-hosts the World Championships this summer), here are some of the top candidates to be named North Star next year:

Connor McDavid: McDavid, one of the best athletes to never win the award (Gordie Howe and Andre De Grasse are also on the list), has a golden opportunity (literally) at his first Olympics. If he helps Canada regain the men's gold medal and then leads the Edmonton Oilers to the Stanley Cup, just mail him the trophy. But McDavid may not even need an Oilers figure if he succeeds at the Olympics – as he did this year, scoring the winning goal in the final of a bitter Four Nations showdown against rival United States.

Will Dangin: He's not exactly a household name at the moment, but the short track speed skating star is a good bet to be Canada's top medalist in his first Olympics. Danjinu, 24, has dominated his sport over the past two years, winning back-to-back men's overall World Tour short track titles and winning gold in seven of 12 individual races this season. Including relays, he has a chance to win five Olympic medals, matching Canadian figure skater Cindy Klassen's singles (winter or summer) record.

Rachel Homan: One of the best potential stories of 2026 will be Homan slaying his Olympic demons and winning gold in curling. She shockingly missed the playoffs when the reigning women's world champion missed the tournament in 2018 and then failed to reach the playoffs again four years later in the mixed doubles with John Morris. But with her revamped four-person team, Homan is now better than ever, going undefeated in the last two Scotties Tournament of Hearts and winning back-to-back world titles.

Marie-Philippe Poulain: The peerless captain of the Canadian women's hockey team won the 2022 North Star, scoring a pair of goals to defeat arch-rival USA in the gold medal game in Beijing, making her the only player (woman or man) to score in four Olympic finals. Poulin needs just two goals to break Hayley Wickenheiser's record for most goals in Olympic women's hockey, and at 34 years old she is still playing at an extremely high level, leading the PWHL in goals last season and winning the league MVP award.