Canada, a speed skating powerhouse in North America, has already won nine gold medals at the Winter Olympics. At the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, Canadian Speed Skating aims to win the 10th gold to create a new milestone. Four years ago, at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Broman won the only speed skating gold medal for the Canadian team; four years later, Canadian speed skating is more balanced in each individual event, and they are looking forward to hitting more medals and even gold medals at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Recently, the official website of the International Skating Federation wrote an analysis of the Olympic prospects of Canadian speed skating.
Blohmman: Leader of long-distance projects
At the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Broman won a silver medal in the men's 5,000 meters and a gold medal in the men's 10,000 meters. Broman grew up in the Netherlands, and the 35-year-old veteran has a traditional advantage in the all-around, and in the Canadian men's speed skating team, he is more focused on long distance events than ever before.
Bloeman
Since the 2010/2011 season, Bromman has been training with Canadian speed skating coach Bart Scotton. He inspired a new generation of athletes, and Fish followed him on the long-distance path. In 2020, Fish broke Bloeman's men's 10,000m world record in Salt Lake City to become a world champion, and the student also surpassed his teacher.
In the long distance event, there are Fisher and Bloeman, and Canada has two strong contenders. However, in the first half of the season, Fish was affected by covid-19, which forced him to miss World Cup matches in Stavanger, Salt Lake City and Calgary in November and December 2021. Broman also failed to challenge world champion Nils van der Poul of the Netherlands at the World Cup, but the defending Winter Olympic champion in the men's 10,000m will not be timid in Beijing.
On December 10 last year, in the men's 5,000m final of the World Cup in Calgary, Broman finished third behind the Netherlands' Van der Poul and Italy's Giotto. After the game, he said: "In the first half of the season, I already knew that my training had been good, my body was strong, my technique was perfect, and I was confident of the second half of the season. ”
Bloemann and Fish
Dubreuil: The hope of the sprint project
Last season, at the World Cup in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, Dubreuil won the men's 500m title, continuing the Canadian tradition of short distance events. The 29-year-old from Quebec has continued his path to victory this season, breaking the Canadian national record (34.03 seconds) held by Jeremy Wasserspoon for 14 years on December 10 last year in the Men's 500m world cup in Calgary, Canada, with a time of 33.77 seconds.
Now, Dubreuil is skating better than ever. He said: "There are several main physical and psychological reasons, I pay more attention to strength training, more rest time, which makes the dream of less training but sliding faster come true." In July 2019, I became a father and I started to get better. This will reduce some of the stress because it will make things clearer. Skating until then was the most important thing in my life. If skating is not good, I feel bad, and if I skate well, I feel good about myself. But now, if I have a bad game, I don't care much. I know when I call my daughter later, she won't care. ”
Weidmann Blondan: Looking forward to achieving a breakthrough for Canadian women
Although Broman and retired Danny Morrison won medals at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Canadian female athletes have been in a medal race ever since Christina Nesbitt and Christina Groves won gold at home at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
With Weidmann leading the women's long distance and Blondan topped the table in the world cup's collective start, the Canadian women's athletes looked promising to achieve a breakthrough at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Their most promising gold medal event is probably the women's team chase, in which Weidmann, Blondan and Maltese will take part.
In December, Weidmann, Blondan and Maltese won the World Cup for the third consecutive time, and in their final match in Canada, they won the world cup season with a time of 2:52.06, thus ending the World Cup season unbeaten.
"We've been holding out for years and that gives us a lot of confidence." Weidmann said after the Calgary race. She and her teammates are looking forward to the Beijing Olympics: "We're definitely excited. The whole team was a little nervous, but we still had weeks to get things done and do some good training. Skating with these girls is always fun, so hopefully we can think of it that way. (Huang Kai)