Dubreuil wins silver for second consecutive year; women’s and men’s Team Pursuit bring home silver and bronze

CALGARY, ALBERTA – Canada added three medals to their total on the second day of ISU World Speed Skating Championship action at the Olympic Oval in Calgary, as Laurent Dubreuil and the women’s Team Pursuit won silver, while the men’s Team Pursuit took bronze.

Dubreuil (Lévis, Que.) faced off against American phenom Jordan Stolz in the final pair of the men’s 500m, which ended up deciding silver and gold. The 31-year-old Canadian skated the second fastest time of his career (33.95), which included the fastest opening 100m of his career (9.45), but it still wasn’t enough to knock Stolz off his thrown.

The 19-year-old Wisconsin native set a new personal best and track record of 33.69 en route to winning his second career 500m title. The Canadian settled for silver for the second consecutive season, while Poland’s Damian Żurek rounded out the podium in bronze medal position. Dubreuil now has four career World Championship medals in the 500m, placing him behind only the legendary Jeremy Wotherspoon, who has seven.

Earlier in the day, both the men’s and women’s Team Pursuit squads reached the podium, helping Canada earn medals in all four of the team events, having won a pair of golds Thursday in the Team Sprint.

The trio of Valérie Maltais (La Baie, Que.), Ivanie Blondin (Ottawa, Ont.) and Isabelle Weidemann (Ottawa, Ont.), reigning Olympic and World Champions, captured a silver medal on Friday, their time of 2:54.03 placing them +2.83 seconds behind the gold medal winning Dutch (2:51.20). Japan finished the distance in bronze medal position with a time of 2:54.89.

It was the fourth career World Championship medal for Maltais, Blondin and Weidemann in the Team Pursuit, having captured gold (2023), silver (2021) and bronze (2020) since joining forces in 2019.

Hayden Mayeur (Toronto, Ont.), Connor Howe (Canmore, Alta.) and Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu followed up with a bronze medal performance of their own in the men’s race. Despite only skating together once this season, the trio posted a time of 3:36.72 – just shy of the Canadian record of 3:36.44 – which was good enough for a third-place result behind the Italians (3:35.00) and Norwegians (3:36.07), who took home gold and silver, respectively.

It marked the second consecutive World Championship medal in the Team Pursuit for Mayeur, Howe and Gélinas-Beaulieu, who finished in silver medal position last season in Heerenveen. The Canadian men have now earned seven Team Pursuit medals since the discipline was added to the World Championships in 2005.

The ISU World Speed Skating Championships continue tomorrow with the men’s and women’s 1000m and Mass Start. Races will be live streamed on CBC Sports and Radio-Canada Sports digital channels, with broadcast coverage also available on CBC and ICI Télé.

Quotes

“I had one of the best races of my life and I’m very, very happy with it. In the last pair, against the best skater of our generation, it’s definitely tough to stay focused. It’s been two years in a row that I win silver and Jordan win’s gold quite comfortably, and honestly I don’t mind it. We’re here to perform at our best and he’s pushing the limits of what the human body can do. His body is a bit better than mine, clearly, but it helps me push myself. For me, I’m doing the best that I can and I’m just as happy with silver as I would have been with gold.”

Laurent Dubreuil

“It feels pretty incredible! We haven’t had a lot of training together this year. We finished last season off in the Netherlands with silver at the World Championships, but I had to take the first half of the season off to focus on my health and wellness. We got the team back together at the Four Continents and now we’re here, standing on the podium at the World Championships. It was pretty incredible to win it here in Calgary. I’ve got folks in the stands that have supported me my entire career that got to watch this. Whether we were first, second or fifth, it was pretty amazing to skater in front of such a large and loud home crowd.”

Hayden Mayeur

“We changed the strategy a lot this year, where nobody is exchanging anymore. Valerie has been pushing our team from the front and we’ve been working on that this season. When you change positions, sending someone from the back to the front, you lose a little bit of speed. That’s why we adopted the new strategy and today we switched it up even more, with Isabelle and I swapping positions. I think we nailed our race plan. It obviously was not as fast as the Dutch, and that leaves a bit of a sour taste, but we’re going to build on this. The big goal was not necessarily this weekend, but to win it all at the new Olympics.”

Ivanie Blondin

Results

500m

Laurent Dubreuil: 2nd
Yankun Zhao: 17th
Carolina Hiller: 20th
Heather Carruthers: 23rd

Team Pursuit

Women’s: 2nd
Men’s: 3rd