By Dan Plouffe
Ottawa natives produced a unique podium sweep in the women’s 3,000-metre race at the Oct. 23-26 Canadian long-track speed skating fall World Cup trials in Calgary.
Gloucester Concordes-bred skaters Ivanie Blondin and Isabelle Weidemann finished 1st and 3rd respectively. Sandwiched in the middle was http://sportsottawa.com/content/after-losing-father-als-missing-olympics-speed-skater-returns-canada%E2%80%99s-world-cup-team Ottawa Pacers alum Lauren McGuire, who completing a comeback of sorts following a trying season where she lost her father to ALS and missed out on qualifying for the Olympics.
“Having us finish 1-2-3, that was pretty cool,” Blondin smiles. “It was really great and it goes to show, I guess, that Ottawa has really good programs for kids growing up. We’ve produced really good athletes.”
Blondin was dominant in the distance events at the Canadian trials, posting a winning time of 4:07.70 – nearly 6 seconds ahead of McGuire in second place. It was Blondin’s second-best performance of all-time, coming on the heels of a 4:04.99 clocking a few weeks earlier. That remained the fastest time skated in the world this season, as of the trials’ conclusion.
“I think I surprised myself there, and a lot of people too. It was a good time not just nationally, but internationally,” notes the 24-year-old. “It’s really a confidence-booster to know I got those PBs and am starting the year off well.”
Blondin also won the mass start event at the trials and recorded the second-best time of her season and career in winning the 5,000 m handily. She narrowly missed out on 1st place in the 1,000 m, but still earned opportunities to race in the distance at the fall World Cups (Nov. 14-16 in Obihiro, Japan, Nov. 21-23 in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 5-7 in Berlin, Germany, and Dec. 12-14 in Heerenveen, Netherlands).
“I’m really excited to see how the season’s going to go – long distance or sprint distance, the mass start, and team pursuit,” adds Blondin, noting the team pursuit could be a struggle without 2014 Olympians Christine Nesbitt or Brittany Schussler on the team this season. “We’re going to have to rebuild for the next four years.”
Blondin is feeling refreshed after a somewhat disappointing Olympic season, which included 24th and 14th-place finishes in the 3,000 m and 5,000 m in Sochi. She feels like she hasn’t been training as hard as last year, which is perhaps a key to her success since peak performances didn’t materialize last season on tired legs.
“I was really strong up until October, and then I just went into burn-out. It just wasn’t good from then on,” reflects Blondin, who was Canada’s lone top female distance specialist headed to the Olympics and wound up in a training group with five male distance skaters.
“Because I was training with the boys, I think the intensity was too high most of the time,” adds the Garneau high school grad. “For those easy training sessions, instead of being easy, they were medium. It kind of just packed on from day to day and I think it was just a little too much for me.”
Blondin felt no post-Olympic season letdown this year, she says. After some time to rest back at home with her parents, Blondin returned to her Calgary training base motivated to come back stronger this season.
Due to poor results last season in the 3,000 m and 5,000 m, Blondin will begin the year in the ‘B’ group, but wants to quickly improve her ranking and move up to the ‘A’ group, and then shoot for top-10 performances.
The former world junior competitor in both short-track and long-track is always a strong threat in the mass start discipline, having collected three World Cup medals in the past two years, and with her newfound versatility, could also be a solid entrant for the March 7-8 ISU World Allround Championships in Calgary.
“I’m kind of almost the leader now in long-track speed skating for the girls,” Blondin says with more than a hint of amazement in her voice. “I feel great. I haven’t felt this confident in a really long time.”
Weidemann declines World Cup entry
Coming off summertime ankle surgery, confidence wasn’t as high for Weidemann, although she got a big boost from her performances at the trials nonetheless. The 19-year-old set personal-bests in both the 3,000 m – with a 4:13.85 mark that was over 15 seconds better than her time at last fall’s trials – and the 1,500 m, in 2:01.73.
Weidemann earned Canada’s final available World Cup quota positions in both disciplines by placing 4th in the 1,500 and 3rd in the 3,000, but ultimately decided to pass up her team berth in favour of more time training in Calgary.
“I still haven’t been on the ice very long,” explains Weidemann, whose first race of the season was the trials. “The team is gone for five weeks, and all the people going are ready for that. I think I’m a little behind them in training, so hopefully this will allow me to catch up.”
In consultation with her coach, Crispin Parkinson, and directors with the Calgary oval program and Speed Skating Canada, Weidemann determined that the potential pitfalls – illness or poor performance without a proper fitness base built, especially harzardous with an intense travel schedule in Asia and Europe – outweighed the gains of competing in the four World Cups, which would have been her debut.
“It was left up to me to decide, but I think they really recommended that, and I think it’s a good decision,” signals the full-time University of Calgary geology student. “Right now it’s about building from the bottom and hopefully improving as the year goes on.”
Weidemann missed a good portion of her regular summer conditioning season while in a cast recovering from ankle surgery at home in Ottawa.
“For any athlete, I think that’s really hard,” recounts the Calgary Dinos varsity cross-country runner who originally hurt her ankle in a steeplechase race. “It’s really hard to sit there all day and not do anything physical, especially when so much of your routine is based on that.”
Midway through September, Weidemann was able to get back on skates following a few weeks of dryland training in Calgary. She still feels a bit of inflexibility and lack of power on the ice, but “so far, it’s night and day from last year,” she says.
With little time to prepare for the season, Weidemann entered the trials with no expectations of making the World Cup team.
“It took a little bit of the stress off of it, and maybe allowed me to perform a little better,” highlights the Colonel By Secondary School grad. “I just wanted to go out there and see how fast I could go.”
Weidemann’s best performance came in the 3,000 m, where she was paired with McGuire, her new training partner under Parkinson as of this season. The local pair wound up finishing within .2 seconds of one another to earn podium finishes and World Cup qualification positions.
“We work really well together, and I guess that was the showcase of it,” Weidemann indicates. “It’s not really a rivalry because we train together all the time. Her and I pull each other a little bit, especially when we race against each other.”
Weidemann plans to race on the Canada Cup circuit this season, leading up to the January qualifier for the ISU World Junior Speed Skating Championships. Returning to the Feb. 20-22 world juniors in Warsaw, Poland is a main target of hers since she had to withdraw after two races in her international debut at last year’s competition due to her ankle troubles.
“I went there last year to kind of experience the whole thing, but I didn’t actually race. It would be nice to combine the two and actually race,” Weidemann details, noting the trials performance has boosted her in that quest. “It’s really, really exciting because it’s a big step in the right direction.”
De Haitre glides to top of Canada on bike & skates
A third Concorde was also surprised by a standout performance at the trials. For Vincent De Haitre, his dual victory in the 1,500 m and 1,000 m was unexpected since he’s spent most of his summer cycling.
The 20-year-old competed for the Canadian track cycling team at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, and as soon as he got off the plane from Scotland, he was back training with the speed skating group mere hours later.
“Maybe that wasn’t a great decision, since it was about 1 a.m. my time,” De Haitre laughs. “My legs weren’t quite ready for a 2 1/2–hour jump program, but my coaches were happy to see that I was committed to the sport and I didn’t want to miss anything.”
In advance of the Sept. 5-15 UCI Pan American Track Championships, De Haitre continued cycling once or twice a week at the velodrome in Calgary, modifying a few elements of his speed skating training program to accommodate some time on the bike.
“Other skaters would have a weight training or a jump program in the afternoon for speed work,” De Haitre details. “I would go and do a similar workout but on the track.”
The formula proved successful, with De Haitre smashing the Canadian record in the 1,000 m time trial at the Pan Ams in Mexico, placing 5th overall with a time of 1:00.589.
“I’ve never set any record before,” notes De Haitre, who feels a sub-one minute ride remains within his grasp. “I tried to go for the provincials record when I was a kid in speed skating and I couldn’t do it, so yeah, I was pretty happy.”
While De Haitre’s sporting pursuits are fairly complimentary, there are some differences he needed to adapt to when returning to the ice. The stride motion is slower in skating compared to the quick pedal rotation in cycling, and some stabilizing muscles specific to speed skating hadn’t been used as much on the bike.
While his fellow speed skaters worked to build a solid aerobic base with a lot of volume in the summer, De Haitre was focused more on race-specific work – an element he says he’d like to tweak in future summers. The Sochi 2014 Olympian had no trouble matching his Canadian team counterparts during training sessions on the stationary bike, but on skates, it was a different story.
“I had a really hard time keeping up with the other guys for a solid two weeks,” recounts De Haitre, whose #1 priority remains speed skating despite World Cup cycling races taking place this fall and winter. “But I knew the training group I was in, they’re the top guys in Canada, and I felt I could still perform. Once we got into some racing, I was more comfortable since I’d been racing all summer.”
De Haitre produced big results at the trials, unexpectedly earning a World Cup position in the 500 m, and topping the field in the 1,500 m as well as the 1,000 m, which he won in 1:07.71 – .27 seconds ahead of Denny Morrison, the reigning Olympic silver medalist in the distance.
“Deep down, I was kind of hoping we’d be paired together so I could have that little ‘rookie vs veteran’ rivalry,” smiles De Haitre, who wound up becoming the 43rd skater in history to go under 1:08 one race after Morrison posted his best time of the past two seasons.
“When I looked up and saw the time, I had a little celebration crossing the line,” De Haitre adds. “I was really happy to see I could perform and set not only a personal-best, but it’s still standing as the fastest time in the world skated so far this year.”
The Calgary ice is known as one of the fastest tracks in the world when it’s in its best shape, so De Haitre isn’t sure what to expect when he faces the planet’s best skaters.
“I’ve had a hard time setting goals actually,” says the 1,000 m 20th-place finisher in Sochi. “I had one person ask me, ‘So what are you thinking Vince? A World Cup medal?’ And I was like, ‘Woah, woah, woah, I wasn’t thinking of that.’ And they’d say, ‘Well, you beat an Olympic silver medalist, I think a World Cup medal is in the crosshairs.’
“How about we start with a top-10? That would be a nice goal to achieve.”
De Haitre’s main objective is to solidify his position in the ‘A’ group early on, and then perhaps work towards the top-5 by the end of the season. The Béatrice-Desloges high school grad recognizes that those goals are quite ambitious for an athlete of his age, but he hopes the upward trend will continue considering he’s only entering his third season with the national team in Calgary.
“I’d rather pretend that plateaus don’t exist,” smiles De Haitre, a rising dual-sport Canadian star still without a major sponsor. “I’m going to keep on pushing as hard as I can. The guys in my group, I’m 3 or 4 years younger than the next youngest skater in my training group, so there’s definitely a big age difference, and the number of years they’ve been training at this high level.
“I hope I never hit a plateau, but I know it’s part of the sport. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and hope that it keeps happening the way it is.”
5th Ottawa skater close to World Cup grade
Pacers alum Leo Landry was just under 4 seconds away from earning a World Cup race position, placing 4th in the men’s 5,000 m. The 24-year-old also finished 4th in the 10,000 m and 12th in 1,500.