HAMAR, NORWAY – Ivanie Blondin, Valérie Maltais and Isabelle Weidemann put their early season struggles behind them and skated to a well-deserved bronze medal in the women’s Team Pursuit on Friday at the ISU World Speed Skating Championships in Norway.
Skating in the first pair of the evening, the veteran trio laid down a time of 3:00.74 and hung on until the very end to secure the final spot on the podium, behind Japan (2:58.55) and Netherlands (2:56.09). It marked the fifth World Championship medal for Blondin (Ottawa, Ont.), Maltais (La Baie, Que.) and Weidemann (Ottawa, Ont.) since they were grouped together to start the 2020 season, having previous earned gold in 2023, silver in both 2021 and 2024, and bronze in 2020.
Friday’s podium performance was the first of the season for the defending Olympic champions, who ranked fifth in Nagano, sixth in Milwaukee and seventh in Heerenveen. It was a truly uncharacteristic World Cup campaign the Canadian women, who have earned 14 medals on the international circuit over the past five seasons.
“I feel like we rolled around on the bottom of the standings for a little bit as we tried to figure it out and it was really challenging. I’m really proud of us for sticking with it and for believing in our team. We went to the line today and gave it everything we had. We needed some fire for the summer, and we will take this medal for sure,” shared Isabelle Weidemann.
Looking to bounce back from their recent struggles, the trio adopted a new strategy for the season-ending race in Hamar, dropping skater exchanges and settling on a push strategy where Blondin led the pack from start to finish. Despite only having a week to put it in place, the bold move paid off for the Canadians.
“We’re really happy with what we did today considering how things went for us the rest of the season. We went back to the drawing board after the World Cup in Heerenveen and knew we had to try something completely different, and this was the strategy we thought suited us best for this weekend. Going into next season, we will have a lot more time to practice and we’re looking forward to building all the way up to the Olympic Games,” said Ivanie Blondin.
“It feels good to be back on the podium! I’m really proud of us for coming back and adapting this strategy. It was our first time using it, so we knew it wasn’t super clean, but it was a good first step. This year, I felt we were behind and were looking at the Japanese and the Dutch to see what they were doing well. We’ve tried a lot of strategies over the years and I’m sure we’re going to come up with something else. We’re Olympic champions for a reason and I believe we can fight for that title again in one year, ” said Valérie Maltais.
Canada’s top sprinter, Laurent Dubreuil (Lévis, Que.), finished just off the 500m podium on Saturday. The 32-year-old’s time of 34.53 seconds was fourth fastest of the day, only +0.01 behind American Cooper Mcleod’s bronze medal mark (34.52). Dutch speedster Jenning De Boo broke the longstanding track record in Hamar with a time of 34.24 to upset two-time defending World Champion Jordan Stolz of the United States (34.38), who settled for silver.
The ISU World Speed Skating Championships continues Saturday with the women’s 1000m and 5000m, as well as the men’s 1000m and Mass Start. Races will be live streamed on CBC Sports and Radio-Canada Sport digital platforms beginning at 9:00am ET. CBC will also provide television coverage starting at 1:00pm ET.
Results
Women’s 500m
- Rose Laliberte-Roy: 20th
- Brooklyn McDougall: 22nd
Men’s 500m
- Laurent Dubreuil: 4th
- Christopher Fiola: 20th
- Anders Johnson: 21st
Team Pursuit
- Women’s: 3rd
CONTACT
Alain Brouillette
Speed Skating Canada
communications@speedskating.ca
613-601-2630