Canadian sprints will benefit from short-track crossover
Official aiming for dual threats
GANGNEUNG, SOUTH KOREA When Susan Auch looks at Dutch skater Jorien ter Mors, she sees the future of Canadian speedskating.
Ter Mors took a run at Netherlands’ first Olympic gold medal in the women’s long track 500 metres on Sunday. She led the field after 10 of 16 pairs, but eventually sunk to sixth when the real speed showed up.
What intrigues Auch, the president of Speed Skating Canada, is the fact that ter Mors also skated the 1,500-metre short track race here and finished fifth, but only 0.121 seconds behind Canada’s Kim Boutin, who snuck in for bronze.
With youngsters Boutin and Samuel Girard leading the way, Canada’s short track program is superb — three medals already and more to come — and Auch would love to see a proliferation of dual Canadian threats.
She thinks it’s going to happen organically, at least in Quebec, once the new indoor oval in Ste-Foy is operational.
“It gives an option to short track skaters who are more suited to long track to be able to stay in Quebec, go to university in Quebec,” Auch said. “And we’ll hold onto some of those eastern skaters from the Maritimes and Ontario as well — they ’ll have an oval close to home. That is a really exciting addition to the speedskating family in Canada.”
She said the leadership of Speed Skating Canada will also be proactive in ensuring that long trackers keep dipping their toe in shorttrack training, because it is particularly valuable to the sprint program. That was obvious to her when she saw Quebec-based long-track sprinter Alex Boisvert-Lacroix win two back-to-back 500-metre races in Calgary and Salt Lake City on the World Cup circuit this year.
“I watched him this year and saw the difference in his turns and it’s obvious it’s from short track. They’re skating a ton of short track (in Quebec).
Boisvert-Lacroix has already declared his readiness to win the gold medal here in the 500 metres. That too would be great for the Canadian program and its intentions to create a steady stream of crossover between the disciplines. Olivier Jean gave it a whirl, and Auch wants to see more of that in the future.