Long track: Team Canada golden in team pursuit, Dubreuil wins 500m silver
Canadian long track skaters added two more medals on Saturday at the ISU World Cup in Stavanger, Norway.
After medals from Connor Howe and Isabelle Weidemann on Friday, Laurent Dubreuil added to the total with a silver in the 500m, and the women’s team pursuit skated to gold in the first long track World Cup event of the season.
The team of Ivanie Blondin, Valérie Maltais, and Isabelle Weidemann are just nine months removed from skating to Olympic gold in Beijing, but they picked up where they left off in the women’s team pursuit.
With a time of 3:01.81, they finished nearly half a second better than the Netherlands trio (3:02.30), while Japan grabbed bronze with a time of 3:02.91.
READ: Taking it one step at a time, Canada skates to Olympic team pursuit gold
For Dubreuil, he comes into the season as the defending champion in the 500m discipline after finishing the 2021-22 season first in points.
On Saturday, he came in just 0.05 seconds behind Japan’s Yuma Murakami (34.708 seconds) for second spot on the podium. Jun-Ho Kim rounded out the podium with a time of 35.017.
READ: Laurent Dubreuil skates to 1000m silver at Beijing 2022
In other results from Saturday, Ivanie Blondin nearly added a second medal of the day after finishing fourth in the women’s 1500m.
The action concludes tomorrow with the men’s and women’s 1000m races, and mass start events.