In a triumphant return of the ISU Speed Skating World Championships to the world’s fastest ice, aka Calgary’s Olympic Oval, after a 25-year hiatus, Canadian speed skaters leaped to the top of the country rankings on day one of competition.
Team Canada took a pair of gold medals in the Women’s and Men’s team sprints on Feb. 15, while fan favourite Isabelle Weidemann took silver in the Women’s 3000-metre race.
The Women’s sprint team was made up of racers Carolina Hiller, Maddison Pearman, and Ivanie Blondin, who captured a 0.9 second lead over Team USA with a 1:25.14 finish.
Canadians Anders Johnson, Laurent Dubreuil, and Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu clinched the Men’s team sprint finish, and a new world record, with a photo-finish 0.002 second lead over their Dutch rivals at 1:17.17.
“When we came across the line, there was a bit of a delay before the times were posted, but when I saw we were first it was an exhilarating moment. I cannot describe the feeling,” said Gélinas-Beaulieu.
The Olympic Oval has been home to several world records over the years, including that of gold medal Olympian Catriona Le May Doan, who had her own world record year a quarter century ago by becoming the first woman to break the 37.9 second barrier in the 500 metre sprint, and then breaking it again by setting a blistering fast time of 37.55 seconds.
She set an even higher record time of 37.22 seconds in 2001, again in Calgary.
Le May Doan said that it’s a bittersweet thing for a record to be broken—but reflected that while records are supplanted, athletes never cease to be champions.
“It’s nice to have your name in a record book, but you know, you’re also never a former Olympian. You’re always an Olympian. You’re always world champion,” she said.
Although Le May Doan’s record in Calgary was eventually beaten 20 years later by Japanese speed skater Nao Kodaira during the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, she still holds the Canadian Women’s record.
“It’s funny, because even before this weekend, I said to my kids, well, maybe mom’s Canadian record will be broken because it’s been going since 2001. They said, ‘well, hopefully not.’ It’s funny from their perspective, but you want to see that continued growth within the sport, and in the women’s 500 is probably one area where we’ve struggled a little bit.”
Calgary's own speed skater Yankun Zhao competing in his first World Championship
Canadians Heather Carruthers, Carolina Hiller (who was also on the gold medal-winning spring team on Thursday), Laurent Dubreuil, and up-and-coming Calgary athlete Yankun Zhao will be competing in the 500-metre races on Friday afternoon.
"This is my first World Championships, and I'm having a breakout season. It's very special to be able to have my first world championship in front of the home crowd, and I'm happy to have home fans cheering for me and having the support from everybody out on the bleachers," said Zhao.
Zhao had his first gold medal finish in Division B 500 metres at the ISU World Cup in Quebec earlier this year. Calgary is his first World Championships competition in the top division of skating.
"I'm not sure what to expect, but I know I will be doing my best, especially in front of my home crowd, and since I was a kid. I've seen a lot of athletes that I've looked up to, they're competing out on the ice, they've trained here," he said.
"Feel very lucky to have this opportunity to train alongside and be competing on the same level as they are."
For Le May Doan, that lucky feeling of getting to be about as close as you can get to some of the best athletes in the world is one of the draws for the competition at the Oval.
"The fact that you are just within the sport, you see the athletes right here you can move around, it's a big open facility, and it's welcoming," she said.
"You'll just watch the best in the world, but it's pretty neat that these athletes will be the ones that you see in two years time in Italy, racing for our country."
She said that for many people who watched the last Olympics, this was the opportunity to take the sport off of the television screen and into real life.
"What you see on TV, that's actually who is here. And what's fun is Weidemann who won three medals and carried our flag at the closing ceremony. She's standing on the podium, and she's racing, and she'll high-five anybody as she runs by."
Live results and schedule of all of the races for the ISU Speed Skating World Championships in Calgary are available at live.isuresults.eu/events/2024_CAN_0002/schedule.
Photos from Day 1 of the ISU Speed Skating World Championship
