Jean learns from speedy Dutch
Olivier Jean is perhaps best known in Canada for surviving a gruesome skate cut to his ankle that severed a tendon.
He also made i nternational headlines when American speedskater Simon Cho admitted to tampering with his blades at the 2011 world short-track team championships in Poland.
Amid little fanfare, Jean switched over to long track in 2015 with an eye to competing in a new Olympic discipline at the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea: the mass start.
Now 32, Jean credits training in the Netherlands — where speedskating is as much of an obsession as hockey is in Canada — for vaulting him onto the podium at the 2017 World Single Distance Championships. Considered an underdog in his new sport, Jean won a surprise bronze Sunday behind Joey Mantia of the United States and Alexis Contin of France.
“It’s so different in Holland — just the whole culture surrounding the sport,” Jean told Postmedia from Gangneung, South Korea. “Heerenveen is a speedskating city. There’s a speedskating café. You go to the shoe store and where they repair shoes, they also repair speedskates. Every sporting shop has speedskating equipment and skin suits. It’s just so much more present.”
Channelling that presence into sheer superiority, the Dutch won 23 of 36 medals in long track at the 2014 Sochi Games — leading their rivals to complain that such dominance is damaging to the sport.
Jean figures the best way to beat the Dutch is to join them and learn — much like European hockey players who cross the Atlantic to play junior in Canada and the U. S. His game plan: to skate 50-km marathons with his Dutch training partners to build up endurance.
As a former world short- track champion in the 500 metres, Jean once gasped for air even thinking about skating 6.4 km in the mass start. Experience in the marathons changed his perspective.
“It’s really good on the mental part to give me full confidence in my ability to sustain a hard eightminute race,” Jean said.
After winning bronze, Jean expects to return to the Netherlands for more training.
Jean already has a short- track gold from the 5,000-metre relay at the 2010 Vancouver Games.