GANGNEUNG, South Korea – Six days earlier, Ivanie Blondin could barely contain her disappointment over a sixth-place finish in the women’s 3,000-metre long-track speed skating competition. She lamented screwing up her race by letting nerves get the best of her, not skating to her plan, and she had trouble letting go of it all for about a day and a half. “I’m not going to lie,” admitted the 27-year-old from Ottawa. “I had some sad moments.”
Blondin felt a whole lot better about things after the women’s 5,000 metres on Friday night, even though she again missed the podium at the Pyeongchang Olympics. The defending world single distance bronze medallist in the event completed the gruelling 12½ laps around the Gangneung Oval in six minutes 59.38 seconds, a solid sub-seven time that on this day left her 5.40 seconds back of Russian Natalya Voronina for third.
Happy with her performance, if not the result, this time Blondin wasn’t going to beat herself up over things.
“After the 3K, it was another stage of disappointment,” she explained. “Right now, I’m disappointed I didn’t get a medal, but I’m still proud of myself for how I felt and how I executed that race. Yeah, I went a little too hard at the beginning and I paid for it at the end, but at the same time, I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to hit under seven minutes today, so I’m happy for that.
“I did the best I could today, and I got beat. That happens.”
Dutchwoman Esmee Visser claimed the gold in 6:50.23 while Czech Martina Sablikova, the two-time Olympic champion at the distance, made a late charge for silver in 6:51.85.
Blondin ended up fifth, behind Annouk van der Weijden of the Netherlands at 6:54.17, and one spot ahead of teammate and fellow Ottawa native Isabelle Weidemann at 6:59.88.
“She’s come a long way,” praised Blondin, “and for her first Olympics, that’s really phenomenal how she’s handled it and how she’s been so focused.”
These are the second Games for Blondin, who finished 14th in the 5,000, 24th in the 3,000 and fifth in the team pursuit at Sochi, and her expectations had been higher. But she found herself relearning how to handle her emotions before the 3,000 at these Olympics, unable to replicate her ability to avoid placing too much emphasis on outcomes on the World Cup circuit.
“The stress of my first race at the Olympics just got to me a little bit,” she said.
Ahead of the 5,000 – a brutal endurance test that’s second only to the men’s 10,000 metres in terms of physical cruelty in the sport – she said she wasn’t nervous at all and counted that as a positive.
5,000m long track is finished
Esmee Visser
Martina Sablikova
OAR Natalia VoroninaIvanie Blondin 5th
Isabelle Weidemann 6thhttps://t.co/lXpgMT2BLw pic.twitter.com/TlX283fqO4— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) February 16, 2018
She still has two events left in Pyeongchang, the team pursuit and the bumper-car madness of mass start which is her speciality, and some time to fully prepare herself for the races with real medal potential.
Blondin often practises with Ted-Jan Bloemen, the Canadian who won a historic gold in the men’s 10,000 on Thursday, and in Friday’s race she “kept picturing Ted in front of me, kind of like I was the bunny and he was my carrot.”
“He’s such a great inspiration, he’s a great mentor and one of my best friends on the team,” she continued. “I saw him winning and I couldn’t be happier for my teammate, such a great feeling and such an honour to be so close to an Olympic gold medallist.”
Like Bloemen, she threw every last ounce of energy she had into the race and was so exhausted at the end that she nearly stumbled to the ice in the final 100 metres when she clipped her own skate blade out of “pure exhaustion.”
“It’s kind of like trying to sprint as far as you can and at a certain point you’re going to hit a wall and then you’re going trip yourself and fall,” she continued. “That’s kind of where I was at.”
The stumble didn’t make a difference in her result, as she just didn’t quite have enough on the tank in this race. But she was content in knowing that others beat her, she didn’t beat herself, in a race that demands everything an athlete has to give.
“Once I’m crossing the line, it’s almost as if my body is numb,” is how she described the feeling of finishing the 5K. “There’s so much lactic acid, I don’t know, you can’t even think straight, I don’t even know what I was thinking at the end of that race. It’s trying to focus on technique to try and drive me though that line. It’s an odd feeling, for sure. It feels like you’re about to be put under for a surgery.
“The fact that I’m able to push myself to that extent is cool.”
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