Canadian trio in speedskating has remade the women’s team pursuit to suit their differences

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This article was published 18/12/2021 (1382 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Valérie Maltais, Ivanie Blondin and Isabelle Weidemann are such an unusual speedskating trio that they’ve had to find their own way to master the team pursuit event. And their way is working.

The top teams usually consist of skaters who are mirror images of each other. But Weidemann, at a little more than six-foot-one, is a full head taller than other skaters, almost a foot taller than Maltais and Blondin.

And yet, a week ago in Calgary, at the final World Cup before the Olympics, the Canadians raced to their third straight win on the circuit, lowering the national record to two minutes and 52.06 seconds. The Japanese women were favoured and had a good race. The Canadians still won.

Speedskating is the fastest human-powered sport on ice and the team pursuit event adds another element to the sport know for its speed, grace and one-armed swing.

“Three individuals have to perform as one,” says Remmelt Eldering, a long-track coach for Canada’s national team. “That is the most beautiful part about the team pursuit.”

For years, Japan has led the women’s event. They are the defending Olympic champions and hold the world record at 2:50.76. As they come down the straightaway, they look like a single skater, epitomizing the synchronous look this event is best known for.

But the Canadians, who are determined to beat the Japanese at the Beijing Olympics in February, don’t try to compare themselves to that top team. There would be no point.

Blondin knew in the early days that she and her teammates could make it to the podium but she wondered if they would truly challenge the top teams. Blondin, Weidemann and Josie Morrison were fourth at the 2018 Olympics.

“Initially, I was like, well, that’s a way faster team because they’re all the same height and there’s just so much benefit to that,” Blondin says. “There was a little bit of doubt.”

Weidemann had more than a little doubt; she assumed she was just a placeholder until someone who was a better fit with the others came along.

“I’m a little bit of an outlier,” she says, with a smile.

The 26-year-old from Ottawa is strongest over distances longer than the six laps of a team pursuit event. She heads to the Olympics ranked No. 1 in the world in the 3,000 and 5,000 metres.

“I was always thinking that if someone else came along that could be faster, I would step aside,” Weidemann says. “We built this team around the idea that somebody else would come in and fill my deficits.”

Instead, they remade the entire event to suit their differences.

Maltais, who won a short-track relay medal at the 2014 Olympics, leads off and gets them to 600 metres, a lap-and-a-half around a 400-metre speedskating oval. Blondin takes over for the next 600 metres.

Then it’s Weidemann’s turn at the front and she stays there for the final three laps, an unusually long time. Affectionately known as a “diesel engine,” she takes more time to get up to speed and while she doesn’t have the same top speed as the others, she can keep going longer.

While in front, Weidemann is breaking the wind for her teammates who save energy drafting behind her. They return the favour by providing a hand push from behind.

Their uneven laps and pushing technique has turned out to be “quite a bit faster,” Blondin says. “So we’ve kind of taken our weaknesses of all being different heights and different shapes and formulated the perfect combination on the ice.”

Weidemann realized she wasn’t the alternate-in-waiting when they started consistently making the podium and Eldering, then a new coach to the team, wanted to focus on the event and be dominant in it. Again.

When the event was introduced at the World Cup level in 2004, Kristina Groves, Clara Hughes and Cindy Klassen were the fastest team in the world and they won a silver medal at the event’s Olympic debut in 2006.

Heading into the 2010 Vancouver Games, Groves, Christine Nesbitt and Brittany Schussler were the world record holders but came away without a medal. The 2014 and 2018 Games also didn’t go Canada’s way in this event.

For their part, Maltais, Blondin and Weidemann all say they’re focused on making sure each race is a little better than their last one rather than the result itself. But there’s no doubt, given their results this season, that Canada is once again a medal favourite in Beijing.

“Japan is the favourite still,” Eldering says. “They have the world record and they’ve won the most events.”

But three years ago, this team was almost eight seconds behind that world record. Two years ago, at the world championships, they were four seconds back. Now, they’re less than one-and-a-half seconds away.

“Sometimes the lion at the top of the hill is not as hungry as the lion that climbs the hill,” he says. “We’re in the underdog position but we’re coming.”

And, just as the skaters want, they are improving with each race. Japan raced its gold medallists and world record holders in Calgary and, while the Canadian trio didn’t look quite as tidy and in sync, they were faster.

“That was definitely our cleanest race,” Maltais says. “Our focus was on keeping close together, being in good synchronization. We went to the line saying, ‘Stay together, stay together.’ ”

Their coach agrees it was a good race but not a perfect one. And that’s a good thing. To be so fast, to beat the world’s best and still have room for improvement is a confidence boost of the highest order with the Olympics just seven weeks away.

The group leaves its training base at the Calgary oval Monday for a new oval in Quebec City to continue it preparation.

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“That ice is on sea level,” Eldering says. “We’re going to use that ice to train on and familiarize ourselves to ice that will be similar to Beijing.”

Canada’s women are not the only team doing something different in team pursuit and finding success with it. Earlier this month, at the World Cup in Salt Lake City, the U.S. men’s team broke the world record and Joey Mantia stayed at the front for all eight laps with his teammates, Emery Lehman and Casey Dawson pushing from behind.

But Eldering still hears countries complain that the event is hard because they have different sized skaters.

“We have different skaters,” he says. “It’s still possible. If you believe, you can make it work. That’s pretty much what’s going on here.”

Kerry Gillespie is a Toronto-based sports reporter for the Star. Reach her via email: kgillespie@thestar.ca