Canada’s short track speedskating team felt the dejection on Canada’s first day without a medal.
After Canada’s blowout, skater Michael Gilday says short track calls for accepting the unpredictable
SOCHI, Russia
With the wreck of the proud Canadian men’s relay team still smouldering on the ice, Canadian short-tracker Michael Gilday stepped up and tried to explain the essence of his inexplicable sport.
“We all like the adrenalin and the rush of racing against people,” said Gilday. “In short track, if you’re not prepared to accept the unknown and the unpredictable, there’s another speedskating sport where it’s just you and the clock. You can go over to that.”
Where it might not be as much fun, but it has to be easier on the nerves.
On Thursday, the Canadian relay team was bounced from its 5,000-metre relay semifinal when François Hamelin stepped on one of the disks that marks the course and crashed spectacularly into the boards. The spill effectively ended any hope the Canadians had of defending the gold medal they won in Vancouver four years ago.
But Hamelin’s mishap was hardly the end of the craziness.
In the other men’s relay semifinal, the top-rated American team crashed with the Koreans and finished fourth. Upon further review, the judges disqualified the Koreans and advanced the Americans to the gold-medal final in a week.
The women’s 500-metre final, meanwhile, was highlighted by a three-skater pileup that left an easy gold medal for China’s Jianrou Li. Great Britain’s Elise Christie was disqualified.
“It’s difficult to get past that,” said Canadian star Charles Hamelin.
“But you have to go through the high emotions. Tomorrow we will be back on the ice and we have to make sure the focus isn’t on what we did today but what needs to be done in the next few days.” Even if this one will leave a mark. Three days before François Hamelin’s crash, the Canadian team was celebrating his brother Charles’s gold medal in the 1,500 metres and envisioning a fourmedal performance for the Quebec skater.
It now seems the speedskating gods had other plans.
Halfway through the semifinal, Francois Hamelin seemed to wipe out without any contact from another skater. After the race, with his eyes still red with emotion, he said he lost his place on the course and didn’t see the disk.
“He’s crushed,” Gilday said. “There’s no other way to describe it.
The relay mishap wasn’t the only bit of bad news for the Canadians at the Iceberg Skating Palace.
Earlier, Marianne St-Gelais, the silver medallist from Vancouver over the 500, finished third in her semifinal and failed to qualify for the final. Unlike the men’s relay team, there wasn’t any great drama to her defeat. On this day, there were two other skaters who were better.
“It wasn’t enough,” St-Gelais said. “That’s why I came in third.”
She finished third in the B final, leaving her seventh overall.
François Hamelin looked utterly defeated when he left the ice. StGelais started to cry while speaking to a group of French-language reporters. When asked if the tears were for the men’s team or herself, she said: “Both.”
“You don’t have any margins at the Olympics,” said Charles Hamelin.
He has described the Canadian short-track team as his family.
In the case of François and StGelais, this is literally true, but the three-time gold medallist said that closeness is a blessing after a day like Thursday.
“We are family and we understand exactly what people feel at every moment,” Charles said.
“It just makes it easier to pass through it and make sure everyone is well and they can come back strong.
“If you have a disappointment, you have to make sure you’re not destroyed by it. You have to come back and focus on what you need to do. For me, I have the 1,000 metres and the 500. I’ll be focused on what I have to do to get back on the podium.”