HIGH ACHIEVERS: Blondin, Weidemann win multiple medals at speed skating worlds

By Martin Cleary

The world single-distance, long-track speed skating championships last weekend in Calgary proved to be the perfect way to toast an end to the season for Ottawa athletes Ivanie Blondin and Isabelle Weidemann.

After a gruelling World Cup circuit, Blondin showed she had the potential to win as many as three gold medals at worlds. And she came close, earning the women’s team sprint gold and silvers in the team pursuit and mass start.

Weidemann, who had a disappointing start to her season and returned home to overhaul her strategic plan, showed great signs of improvement in her rebound and won silver medals in the women’s 3,000 metres and the team pursuit with Blondin and Valérie Maltais.

Canada opened the worlds with a pair of gold medals on Thursday in the men’s and women’s team sprint races, which are non-Olympic events.

Blondin, Carolina Hiller and Maddison Pearman sprinted the three-lap race, which sees one skater drop out after the first and second laps, to a winning time of one minute, 25.14 seconds. They raced against the United States, which placed second in 1:26.04.

“Those girls, they’re very patient with me off the start in which, thank God, they do hold back a tiny little bit in the first 50 metres,” Blondin told the International Skating Union. “As soon as I’m in the corner, I can always crank it.

“I would say I’m really good at drafting, so as long as I can get myself up to speed and draft, I’m always able to crush it. I train with the boys constantly, so I’m always doing overspeed.”

The women’s team then watched the men’s squad of Anders Johnson, Laurent Dubreuil and Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu capture their team sprint in a world record time of one minute, 17.17 seconds. The Netherlands originally broke the world record a few minutes earlier at 1:17.17, but the Canadian trio responded with a time that was a few thousands of a second faster. The official results didn’t show times down to thousandths of a second.

The previous world record was set in 2017 at 1:17.31 by Canadians Dubreuil, Vincent de Haître of Cumberland, ON., and Gilmore Junio.

“It’s a great start getting two world championship titles,” added Blondin, who warmed up for the team sprint by placing fifth in the women’s 3,000 metres in 4:03.14. “I think it just brings the mood of the team up. We’re all a very big family, so it was nice to be able to celebrate everyone together.”

The celebration didn’t last too long as Blondin, Weidemann and Maltais were first up on Friday in the team pursuit, a race they have owned for many years.

The Netherlands team of Joy Beune, Irene Schouten and Marijke Groenewoud raced first against China and put down a time that wouldn’t be beat for the six-lap race, 2:51.20. The Canadian team had a relatively slow start, but posted faster readings at the later time intervals before moving into second place in the last half of the final lap and stopping in 2:54.03.

Canada was the defending champion, but altered its race plan by making changes to the front of the team.

“We need a new kind of goal and new things to work on,” Weidemann said. “The strategy in the team pursuit really changed. Nobody is exchanging anymore, so we’ve been trying that and we’ve been working on that all year.

“Today, I think we nailed our race plan. It wasn’t as fast as the Dutch, and that’s a little bit sour, but that’s OK. We got to build on this and the goal is not necessarily this weekend. The goal is the future (2026 Olympic Winter Games).”

Weidemann, a triple-medal winner at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, has pointed herself in the right direction for another possible medal run on Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, ice in two years.

In the women’s 3,000-metre event, Weidemann started her worlds on a positive note Thursday by winning the silver medal in 3:58.01.

She finished 0.91 seconds behind race champion Schouten, but that didn’t affect the huge smile on her face. It also was her first individual medal at the world single-distance championships.

“The season has not been ideal, a little bit of a whirlwind, so that I got to skate my best race of the season at these championships is really awesome,” Weidemann proudly said. “I was racing really poorly in the fall. I didn’t feel like I was racing to my full potential and training was not going great.

“So, my coach and I sat down and we made this sort of last-minute decision to go home, after the first two World Cups and take a bit of a pause and reset. We rewrote the training program to see if we could kind of jumpstart the season again.”

The gamble paid huge dividends and showed it was working when she returned for the final two World Cup meets in Salt Lake City and Quebec City.

“As skaters we tend to do a lot of volume, a lot of training all the time,” she continued. “I’ve done that for (more than) 10 years, and didn’t really take a break after the Olympics, so it adds up for sure.

“I think I was feeling that, for the first time in my career, where I was like, I’m very deeply exhausted. It didn’t take very long, just a week for me to feel better. But I’m really glad we made that decision.”

Weidemann’s time stood until the final pairing, when Schouten finished in 3:57.10.

On Saturday, Schouten would take the gold away from Blondin in the mass start, a race that brings out the best in the non-stop Canadian.

Schouten fell in the first half of the mass start, but rebounded to work her way back into the race, battle with Blondin and try to tire her out for the final sprint.

In the finishing sprint, Blondin passed Groenewoud on the inside to secure second place behind Schouten, who later announced her retirement in a social media post on Tuesday.

“It was pretty chaotic, but at the same time I think it was a really exciting race for everyone, including myself,” Blondin explained. “There was a lot going on and I had to close a lot of gaps and in the end that takes a little bit away from my sprint legs.”

Blondin concluded her worlds by placing sixth in Sunday’s 1,500 metres in 1:53.41, which was only 1.12 seconds off the gold medal. Weidemann’s final race was the 5,000 metres, which saw her finish fifth in 6:55.47 and 7.75 seconds behind Beune.

Ottawa’s Jake Weidemann, the younger brother of Isabelle, was 15th in the men’s mass start. Gélinas-Beaulieu thanked the newcomer to the discipline for his support in what was a silver-medal performance.

“He worked for me a lot in the race. This medal is also his medal because it’s kind of a team event when you’re able to be two,” Gélinas-Beaulieu told The Canadian Press. “He was always there to help me move through people.”

Weidemann also was the reserve skater for Canada’s team pursuit squad, which picked up the bronze medal in 3:36.72 and was 1.72 seconds behind the Italian gold medallists.

De Haître placed 19th in the 1,500 metres in 1:45.93 and 21st in the 1,000 metres in 1:08.43, which was his fastest time of the season.