Ever since speed skaters Ivanie Blondin, Valérie Maltais, and Isabelle Weidemann skated to team pursuit gold at Beijing 2022, the rest of the world began working on a way to catch them.
With the next Winter Games looming, Canada’s defending Olympic champions know that resting on their laurels is not an option.
Blondin, Maltais, and Weidemann are in Salt Lake City for the first World Cup event of the long track season, albeit an abridged version because of Milano-Cortina 2026 in February.
The trio arrived at the Utah Olympic Oval a few days earlier than the rest of their Canadian teammates for a team pursuit-focused camp “to get the band together again,” Maltais said. They’re here to work on a new strategy the Canadians hope can once again put them on top of the podium.
They’ve skated together twice before in the run-up to the 2025-26 season, but this one is different. It’s the first time they’ve held a camp singularly devoted to the discipline that they won Olympic gold in nearly four years ago. Since then, they’ve seen their competitors eclipse them, spurring a change in race tactics.
CBC Analyst Kristina Groves breaks down the team pursuit in long track speed skating, which sees three athletes competing together to push each other to the fastest time.
In the women’s team pursuit, two teams of three skaters each begin simultaneously on opposite sides of the 400-metre oval, skating a total of six laps. Team members often take turns leading, with their teammates close behind to take advantage of lower wind resistance and the clock only stops when all three skaters have crossed the finish line.
When Blondin, Maltais and Weidemann first teamed up at the 2019 world championships, they skated to a surprise fourth-place finish despite one member having zero experience in the discipline and race tactics that they still question today.
“It was my first team pursuit ever, and we finished fourth. And we were doing one gazillion, million exchanges,” Maltais said. “I don’t even remember exactly what we did. Like I couldn’t do much…”
“I don’t think any of us could do much,” Weidemann said, laughing.
“No, I honestly don’t really remember, our strategy was crazy,” Maltais said. “It evolved and changed, and even this year, it’s gonna be a new strategy.”
Blondin said that race showed that the new partnership could become something special.
“We were super pumped because we were like – it was our first one together, you finished fourth at worlds and we were super close to the podium. We were like, ‘this is something we can work with,’” Blondin said.
Speed skating is fundamentally an individual sport, but the team pursuit requires athletes to work in tandem, utilizing precise strategy. With races routinely decided by mere fractions of a second, every slight time advantage could mean the difference between winning and losing.
The three skaters are individual stars in their own right. Weidemann, 30, took home silver in the 5,000m and bronze in the 3,000m in Beijing. Blondin, 35, also won mass start silver at those Games and also owns silver medals in the mass start from the last two world championships. Maltais, also 35, began her career in short track and owns a 2014 world championship bronze in the 1,000m. She is the current national champ in the 3,000m.
After their 2019 debut, the trio got to work on team pursuit tactics that would work best for their individual attributes.
“We really came back to the drawing board [saying] ‘what can we make better?’” Blondin said. “The plan that we knew we could skate the fastest with was having Val do the first lap and a half, I would take over the next lap and half. So that brought us to three laps. Then Izzy would do the last three laps with Val and I in the back pushing.
“That was the golden recipe at the time.”
They used that method to skate their way onto the top of the podium at Beijing 2022, setting a an Olympic record in the final against Japan. Weidemann often thinks about that moment because it’s where the team has set the bar which every future performance is measured against.
“I feel like that’s a moment that’s really defined our team up to this point,” Weidemann said. “We have more chapters to write, but I think it’s a moment that we think about a lot and the standard that we want to push [to] and the results that we want to accomplish again.”
WATCH | Canadians skate to Olympic gold in Beijing:
After Beijing, the trio utilized that winning formula to earn a world championship title in 2023. Then, it seemed like the rest of the world began to catch up. The Netherlands won gold to the Canadians silver at the 2024 worlds, and last season saw them slip to bronze-medal position, behind both the Dutch and Japanese.
“After [the Beijing] Games, there was kind of a shift of teams, kind of playing around with keeping one person in the lead, and having the two skaters behind just pushing the entire race,” Blondin said. “With exchanges you actually lose… 0.2 [seconds] at each exchange.”
Blondin said the new strategy benefitted teams that could push well, keeping the lap times high throughout the entire race and having a faster time at the end.
“We were a little bit slow [to change] because we had so much success with our previous strategy that we were kind of slow adapting to that new technique…we were still dominant. And so…we continued with our strategy,” she said.
“Eventually, everyone kind of just caught up to us a little bit – like, the other teams [were] getting closer, and then we were getting beat here and there. And we’re like, ‘alright, like, we got it, change something.’”
The Canadians may be changing things up in a bid to find an extra gear needed to return them to the Olympic podium, but their expectations remain the same.
“I think our goal is to post some fast times to skate together to…showcase that we are a team to beat and maybe to challenge ourselves and explore the unknown a little bit,” Weidemann said. “I think all of us want to figure out how fast we can go as a team.
“I don’t think we’ve ever done that before and or ever [met] our full potential. I think that’s the goal, to see if we can find that this year.”
Maltais expects the team to fight for a spot on the podium at Milano-Cortina, but she doesn’t seem to feel that the team’s performance at the last Games adds any extra pressure or expectations they wouldn’t already have of themselves.
“Defending a title is showing up to the line and being the most ready to fight and see what race we can do at our best,” Maltais said. “Even if it’s a podium, it’s a gold medal, a silver, or third – I think at the end of the day, it’s like defending that title [is] delivering the best performance that we can do.”
The strategy off the ice will also remain the same for the Canadians, who believe that staying connected is key to their success – and something else that takes practice and dedication.
“I think just like connecting with each other outside of the oval a little bit [is important],” Weidemann said. “So for us, going to get coffee after practice is a big one. And just talking about things that don’t involve speed skating, and just checking in with each other. We’re three very different individuals and different athletes.”
“Like Val said, to get to the line and get the most of each other, we need to be there to support [one another]. I think we’ve tried hard to make sure that we’re all on the same page for that.”
“I think communication [plays] a big role in that as well,” Blondin added. “We’re learning. And it’s still an ongoing process.
“It’s never been perfect-perfect, but we’re all still working towards that.”
CBC Sports will live stream all the action from the World Cup speed skating season opener at the Utah Olympic Oval beginning on Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Coverage continues on Saturday (2:30 p.m. ET) and on Sunday (3 p.m. ET), which also features the team pursuit events.
For full information on when and how to watch speed skating events this season, visit the CBC Sports broadcast schedule by clicking here.
Source link
