Valérie Maltais, Isabelle Weidemann and Ivanie Blondin have won everything on the international stage: gold at the Beijing Olympics, gold at the World Championships in Heerenveen in 2023 and a total of eight World Cup gold medals during the last years.
The Canadian trio is always trying to innovate and absolutely does not want to sit on its laurels. On Saturday, on the second day of competition at the Long Track Speed Skating World Cup in Obihiro, Japan, the Canadians used for the first time a completely new strategy which consisted of keeping the same skater at the front during the six laps of the track.
It was Maltais who had the duty of leading her teammates during the event, followed in order by Weidemann and Blondin. This new strategy makes it possible to avoid losing significant fractions of a second.
Maltais and her teammates ultimately posted the second-fastest time of the day, stopping the clock at 2:59.25. The Japanese were the only ones to be faster than the Canadians with their time of 2:58.03.
Even though they are accustomed to the top step of the podium, Maltais, Weidemann and Blondin are extremely happy with this second place, knowing that it was the very first time they implemented this racing formula.
“It went really well. We finished second, but that’s really positive! We just have to find where we need to put our intensity and adjust our start. Clearly, I could have given more because after the race, I was still in good shape, so we can go even further. We are able to get the gap with first place without problem,” mentioned Valérie Maltais after her day of competition.
Maltais was also in action in the 1500m on Saturday, an event she did not compete in at last season’s World Cups. Summer training paid off for the La Baie athlete who managed to place 10th (3.22 seconds) over the distance.
The Japanese Miho Takagi won the top honors of the event, being accompanied on the podium by the Dutch Antoinette Rijpma-De Jong (1.69 seconds) and the American Kimi Goetz (2.02 seconds).
On the men’s side, David La Rue joined Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu and Connor Howe in the team pursuit, who had Hayden Mayeur as a teammate over the past year.
“David has shown a lot of enthusiasm to practice the distance in the last few weeks, it feels good to have new blood in our team and to be able to continue our good momentum from last year with new players,” said Gélinas -Beaulieu at Sportcom before Saturday’s team pursuit.
The Canadians finally took sixth place in the event (4.46 seconds) which was won by the Norwegians.
La Rue and Gélinas-Beaulieu were also on the track individually during the 1500m where they respectively ranked 14th (1.12 seconds) and 18th (2.15 seconds).
For her part, Béatrice Lamarche finished seventh in Group B in the 1500m, trailing the winner, Czech Martina Sablikova, by 2.11 seconds.
Sunday, on the last day of activity in Obihiro, Laurent Dubreuil will participate in the second 500m of the weekend where he will want to improve on his seventh place obtained on Friday. Valérie Maltais will also take part in the 3000m in group A while Béatrice Lamarche will take part in the 3000m in group B.
Finally, Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu will participate in the mixed relay with Ivanie Blondin.
