Canada added three more medals to its tally on the final day of the ISU Four Continents Speed Skating Championships on Sunday, with both the men’s and ladies Team Pursuit landing on the podium. Laurent Dubreuil started the medal haul for the Canadian team, picking up a silver in the men’s 1000m.
Dubreuil’s time of 1:08.546 was a mere two-thousandths of a second slower than that of gold medalist Koki Kubo of Japan. The Lévis, Que. native was sitting in first heading into the final pairing and needed to wait out the result after the clock showed Kubo’s time as identical to his. Rounding out the podium was Korean Jin-Su Kim, just ahead of Canadian David La Rue (Saint-Lambert, Que.).
“It was a good race and I am happy with my performance. I certainly would have liked to be three milliseconds faster, but I was just beat by another great skater who often finishes in the Top 10 internationally. It feels good being back on the ice after almost two months without racing. I’m starting to get my speed back, which is encouraging looking ahead to Calgary and Salt Lake City.”
The men’s Team Pursuit earned Canada’s only gold medal of the competition, stopping the clock in 3:44.261. Kaleb Muller (Cranford, Alta.), Hayden Mayeur (Toronto, Ont.) and Jake Weidemann (Ottawa, Ont.) claimed the top spot after the American team was disqualified in the final pair. The trios from Korea and Kazakhstan took second and third position, respectively.
Lindsey Kent (Winnipeg, Man.), Maddison Pearman (Ponoka, Alta.) and Alexa Scott (Clandeboye, Man.) skated to a silver medal in the ladies Team Pursuit, behind the team from the USA and ahead of the Chinese athletes. With a time of 3:08.604, they brought the total number of Canadian medals from the Four Continents Championships to eight.
The Canadian long track team will be in action again next weekend as they host the world’s best skaters at the ISU World Cup in Calgary. Twenty-seven athletes will represent Canada at the Olympic Oval.
“It’s a younger team; Lindsey and I train together, but Alexa is new to that. We didn’t really have much time to train together, but we did a really good job of communicating with each other and sticking together to pull off a good race. We have so much to learn and I think we have a lot of potential to be ‘the team’ in the next Olympic cycle.”
– Maddison Pearman
