The stage is set for the World Allround Championships in Calgary

Forty-eight of the world’s best skaters will be converging in Calgary at the Olympic Oval this weekend for the Allround Championships.

By Maria Dalton

Photo by Bert van Lobenstein

This event will surely be exciting as new faces, along with past Olympic and World Champions alike take to the ice Saturday.

Canada’s skaters feeling good heading into this weekend

Valerie Maltais, who made the switch to long-track this past summer, has been focusing on small goals throughout the season and is excited heading into her first Allround championships “I’m really excited for the weekend and I’m excited to race at home… It’s hard to have expectations for the weekend as I’m so new in the sport, but I’m feeling good.” Her transition from short to long track has been challenging and while some may think she makes it look easy she argues that it was a lot of hard work “I was talking to the girls this morning and saying how ‘maybe I make it look easy’ but you girls were there every day, and it wasn’t easy… Once you put on those clap skates it’s so different and it was hard to build the speed, and the pressure. It took a good couple months to not almost trip every time I was doing an acceleration.” Maltais is eager to continue her journey on the 400m track and we are excited to see her progress in the coming seasons.

Isabelle Weidemann, who has had an incredibly successful season so far, will be making her allround debut this weekend. Going into this season she had a goal to step onto the podium for the first time, something she has done on numerous occasions this season “it’s been so awesome to step on the podium multiple times this year, and I’m just really proud to represent Canada.” The Ottawa native feeling good as the first day of competition approaches “this is my first world Allround so I’m excited to do some sprints and just experience everything.”

Having skated a PB at time trials this past weekend, Antoine Gelinas-Beaulieu is feeling good into this weekend and is excited to race in front of a home crowd “everybody is cheering for you and expecting something out of you. I think it’ll be just positive energy for my race.” After finishing 18th last year in Amsterdam, he is looking for strong performances in the 500m and 1500m to put him into a good position to make the cut on the final day “my big strengths are in the 500 and 1500, so I’ll focus mainly on that and try to have the best 5k possible, so I can be in that top-6 to race the 10k.”

Canada’s skaters are ready to rumble this weekend in Calgary in front of a home crowd and look to continue building on previous successes this season.

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