Hamelin on track, hits gold again
Short-track speedskater wins in Netherlands
With 37 world championship medals in his sport, Charles Hamelin has now won as many as Russia, Hungry, Australia, Poland and Belgium combined.
He has been to 17 world championships and owns almost 18 per cent of Canada’s impressive 207-medal historical output, which ranks second only to the powerhouse Koreans with 254.
So the 36-year-old from Sainte-julie, Que., has established his numerical standing in the fast-paced, rough-andtumble world of short track speedskating, and when he says the absence of Chinese, Korean and Japanese skaters from this year’s world championships does not diminish the 1,500-metre gold medal he won on Saturday in Dordrecht, Netherlands, he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
“Well, for sure it’s a different world championship because they’re not there. The Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese are really strong skaters in world championship competition,” Hamelin said Sunday during a Zoom call with Canadian media.
“As I said before, there was still a title to go get and I was there to get it. I’m 100 per cent sure that I would have been as successful with all the other skaters (in attendance) because the people who were here that won other distances and won the world title overall, they beat the Korean and the Chinese every now and then. So if I can beat them, I can beat the Korean, I can beat the Chinese.”
He beat the Liu brothers of Hungary, as Shaolin finished fourth and Shaoang was seventh in the 1,500 metres. They came back to get the best of Hamelin in the 1,000-metres, however, as Shaolin took gold and his brother silver. Shaoang had the last laugh, however, finishing ahead of his brother in the overall to give Hungary its first championship.
Since 2000, Korean skaters have won 14 men’s overall titles at the worlds. The others went to China (two), the U.S., Hamelin in 2018 and now Hungary. On the women’s side, Korea has dominated with 11 overall titles since 2000, China has seven, the Netherlands two and Great Britain one.
Courtney Sarault of Moncton finished a surprising second overall in the women’s competition on the weekend, collecting silver in the 1,500-metres and 3,000-metres and a bronze in the 1,000-metres, her first ever worlds medals.