Bloemen’s draft only takes Blondin so far
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— In her foggy brain, an almost Zen-like detachment from the punishment her body was absorbing, Ivanie Blondin was having this quasi-hallucination.
She imagined Ted-Jan Bloemen directly ahead, chasing him.
A teammate, a buddy, a training colleague because Blondin prefers gruelling it out with the men, and 24 hours earlier Canadian victor in the 10,000-metre final, knocking 2.21 seconds off the Olympic record.
“I kept picturing Ted in front of me, like I was the bunny and he was my carrot.”
Just as she’d fallen in behind him at the Gangneung Oval, before his memorable race, tracing his warmup laps.
She’d been awed and inspired by what Bloemen had accomplished.
“He’s a great mentor and one of my best friends on the team. It’s such a great feeling, an honour, to be so close to an Olympic gold medallist, an Olympic champion.” But it was, after all, just a fantasy. And that was Claudia Pechstein with whom she’d been paired in the final of the 5,000 on Friday evening, the illustrious German skater, making her bid to become only the second athlete to claim six medals in a single event at the Winter Games.
Pechstein, a police sergeant in her day job, got nowhere near her goal, visibly fading in the closing laps, clocking a time of 7:05.43, placing eighth among the dozen finalists. At age 45, the speed skating axis has clearly shifted beneath her feet. The legend endures but the clock is ticking and the body is mortal.
Blondin skated Pechstein off the Oval with a sub-seven-minute time — 6:59.38, just a flicker ahead of teammate Isabelle Weidemann at 6:59.88. Not fast enough for the podium, however, the Canadians fifth and sixth.
“It sucks, no podium,” said Blondin.
Less dismayed with her performance, though, than she’d been with sixth in the 3,000-metre event last Saturday. Still, with so fervid and aggressive a nature — the catch-meif-you-can nerviness exemplified by hair shaved to the nub on one side of her head, flowing long and loose over her shoulder on the other — sixth was hard to swallow.
“Going into today, I wasn’t feel really, really great,” she told reporters in the mixed zone afterwards, looking so much tinier off her epee blades, though far from the shadow she’d become in a darker phase of her career, in short-track days, plagued by depression and anorexia, discouraged and on the verge of quitting. Distant days of yore now.
“It wasn’t mental, it was more physical,” Blondin explained of her out-of-sorts before this race. “I just didn’t feel snappy.”
Not nervous, actually rather at ease between the ears, if not over her skates.
“So that’s a positive. Going forward I can use that to my advantage, just being really relaxed. Fifth-place finish, I don’t know. I’m definitely a competitor, probably one of the most competitive people . . . but I don’t know. It happens. I think I’m growing as a person, I’m growing as a skater.”
It’s such a long and grinding slog, the 5,000. Burning and then stupefying, like a narcotic.
She’d come out blistering in the early laps, under the best pace established by Esmee Visser — make that another gold in the Oval for the Netherlands, No. 6 in seven skating events. No other country owns a sport like the Dutch own speedskating. Czech Martina Sablikova won silver, Russian Natalia Voronina the bronze.
Too fast, Blondin speculated afterwards. “I paid for it at the end. But at the same time, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be even able to hit under seven minutes. I’m happy for that. I did the best I could and got beat.’’
Her personal best in the 5,000 is 6:57.84.
Around the last turn, heading into the home stretch, Blondin stumbled and touched a hand to the ice to keep from falling. “Just pure exhaustion. I clipped my own blade, from not having the feeling of where my blades were because my legs were so tired. It’s kind of like trying to sprint as far as you can and then at a certain point you’re going to hit a wall and then you’re going to trip yourself and fall. That’s kind of where I was at.”
She stayed upright, however, or at least crouched in that kind of Groucho Marx way that speedskaters adopt for maximum aerodynamics, pushing through the hurt.
“To be honest, once I’m crossing the line, it’s almost as if my body’s numb. There’s so much lactic acid that you can’t even think straight. I don’t even know what I was thinking at the end of that race. Trying to focus on technique, to drive me through that line. It’s an odd feeling, for sure. It almost feels like you’re about to be put under for surgery.”
For her compatriot, Weidemann, the feeling was more of disappointment than self-satisfaction at her first Olympics.
“It’s my third or fourth (sub-sevenminute race) this year. But I was kind of hoping to go a little faster today.’’ Adding: “Looking at Ted’s race yesterday, we knew the ice is pretty fast and I was hoping to hit around my personal best and I was a couple of seconds off it.’’
She too, of course, had watched Bloemen’s spectacular race. “I couldn’t fall asleep I was so excited. The whole team was buzzing.” Both Weidemann and Blondin have races remaining. There’s the team pursuit where the Canadians believe they have a good shot at reaching the podium, with one of the strongest teams in the field.
Then, what everyone is awaiting with keen anticipation — the massstart race making its Olympics debut next weekend, roller derby on ice, like short-track but with fewer rules, where just about anything short of pony-tail-pulling goes.
With her short-track background and gonzo competitive essence, Blondin — gold in the mass start at the world championships in 2016 — is pumped for that. “It’s going to be chaotic, but that’s what I like about it.”
First, though, the painful morning after a 5,000-metre race.
“Just try to sleep as much as I can and eat as much as I can and recover.”