Canada had big goals in short-track. What happened? What can we learn?
MILAN — Canadian speedskater Félix Roussel just stood there, motionless, while his colleagues were explaining why they missed the podium in the men’s 5,000-metre relay race.
They had made it to the final, and they had a decent chance of getting on the podium. But a few mistakes were made, and they slipped to second, then third, then fourth. The Netherlands won gold, South Korea silver, and Italy bronze. Canada came back from the competition empty-handed.
“Quite honestly, it’s not really fun right now,” blurted out Roussel.
In some respects, the results in short-track speedskating on Friday have really mirrored what has happened to the Canadian delegation in Milan-Cortina — a great history of high performance, but some bad luck mixed with some disappointing results.
“The ice is a mess”
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) February 20, 2026
Speed skaters were going down one by one during the women’s 1500m semifinal ???? pic.twitter.com/nIkBF6xcie
Canada’s Courtney Sarault was hoping to earn her fifth Olympic medal that night, but she slipped in the semifinals of the women’s 1,500-metre race because of a crack in the ice, as did Dutch skater Xandra Velzeboer in that same turn, on that same crack.
Sarault and Velzeboer were relegated to fighting for eighth place in the “Final B” — a humiliating turn of events for the skaters who are widely seen as the cream of the crop.
“I’m not someone that falls down like that normally. I’m actually pretty sturdy,” Sarault said after the fact.
She explained that she also hit someone else’s blades at the start of the race, which stripped the edge of her blade and made her less stable on one foot. When her one stable foot took that crack, she said there was no centre of gravity to recover from the mishaps.
“It was kind of just shock and heartbreak all at the same time, and I’m still processing it,” she said. “But yeah, it’s a bittersweet way to end. I wanted to go down with a fight.”
Friday evening in short-track was equally as bittersweet for her female teammates. Danaé Blais fell back to the last position in the “Final B” after a mistake, while Kim Boutin, who was competing in the last Olympic race of her career, was eliminated in the semifinals.
Head coach Marc Gagnon had set the ambitious goal for the short-track team of winning a total of seven medals in Milan-Cortina. They are ending the Games with five.
“Am I disappointed? Yes, of course, I would have liked for the group to succeed in getting to that point. But I can’t be disappointed to go back home with five medals,” he said.
“If we had gone home with less than four medals, I would have been (disappointed),” he said. “But (with) five medals, honestly, I can say ‘mission accomplished.’ ”
Going into Friday’s event, Gagnon said he was convinced they could get two more and get to his goal of seven medals total. But he said Sarault got unlucky and the men’s relay team made some mistakes. The ice was also not that great, Gagnon said, which made it difficult for the skaters to bypass others.
Canadian speedskater Steven Dubois said the team was “on track” to win two more.
“It just didn’t go well today. It’s too bad,” he said. “It could have been a beautiful story to win seven medals.”
His colleague Maxime Laoun said there wasn’t a day where the team did not give its all.
“We could have won 10 medals. We’re ending up with five. It remains that these were still super good Games, and there are incredible individual results. I think it hurts right now, but let’s not try to bury the beautiful accomplishments we’ve achieved as a team.”
Gagnon agrees: “The reality is we’re not going back empty-handed. There were incredible things that happened in these past two weeks.”
He listed Blais, who earned her first Olympic medal, Florence Brunelle (who won two), and Boutin, who added two more medals to her collection with team events. Sarault is leaving with four medals in total, while Dubois finally won his coveted gold medal.
Sure, there are disappointments too — the main one being that William Dandjinou, a world champion in short-track speedskating, did not manage to make it to the podium in individual races despite having been part of all the finals in the events he took part in.
Dandjinou said his experience in Milan-Cortina has felt a bit like a “sick joke” to have been so close to his goal of becoming an Olympic champion in individual races. He still earned a silver medal with his teammates in the mixed relay race.
Yet, he remained composed after his team’s crushing result on Friday. “It’s just really disappointing. We’ll go through it for a couple of days, then we’ll bounce back.”
The team will have a chance to do just that when, three weeks after their Olympic experience, Montreal will host the short-track world championships .
National Post
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