Historic expectations await Canadian women speedskaters
Team can make history in Vancouver
Last Updated: Sunday, February 7, 2010 | 1:36 PM ET
By Malcolm Kelly, CBC Sports
Canada's Kristina Groves, left, Christine Nesbitt, centre and Brittany Schussler celebrate a world-record time after winning the womens team pursuit event at a World Cup competition in Calgary last December. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press) Pick a superlative-laced nickname: The Golden Girls. The Magnificent Eight. How about Clara and the Jets?
Whatever you might call them, by the time the 2010 Winter Games have closed in Vancouver, the eight women who make up Canada's long-track speedskating team may lay claim to being the best collection of athletes we've turned out in the Olympics.
To be sure, if this collection of talent were American, they'd be all over the front cover of Sports Illustrated, Time, or Newsweek. Not to mention starring in endless commercials hyping NBC's coverage of the upcoming quadrennial.
If these eight have a somewhat-above-average Games, they could come home with seven medals, equalling the team output of four years ago in Turin.
What makes this group different, however, is at that time four medals, and one more in the team pursuit, belong to one athlete — Cindy Klassen.
This deep group, with the home crowd behind it, may win as many as 10 medals, some observers believe.
Only one previous Canadian team could sniff in that direction — the 1976 women's swimmers — who won a silver and six bronze at Montreal but who were cheated out of what could have been four more.
View from Lake Placid
Flag-bearer Clara Hughes can have a big influence on the other Canadian women. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)Patrick Kelly knows all about what it takes to be a successful athlete, both from his own career as a two-time Canadian Olympic speedskater, and as the son of hockey legend Red Kelly.
He's been watching the progress of the women's eight from his home in Lake Placid, the legendary site of the 1980 Winter Games, where Eric Heiden set the world on its ear by winning five individual gold medals on the outdoor track.
What Kelly sees is a well-balanced Canadian women's squad, with experience and youth.
"I think that the team is probably better than the team from the last Olympics because they've got the experience you can't beat," he says.
"You've got so many on the women's side that have been there, done that, that can push all that pressure aside and say 'It doesn't matter.'"
Canadian flag bearer and team leader Clara Hughes, 37, especially, can have a big influence.
"Just because she's there and can probably go about it like 'This is just another meet — I can do this' … If she performs as well as she could, [the] others will fall in line like that."
Early success will also be a key, Kelly believes.
"If any one of them does well, the rest of them will follow."
View from Calgary
Over the last 10 World Cup races Groves has failed to medal just one time. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)Canada's Catriona Le May Doan, who mined her own Olympic gold back in 1998 at Nagano and in 2002 at Salt Lake City, approaches the subject with caution at first, but can't help but warm up to the possibilities.
"I'm never comfortable doing the assumption part in a sport," she says, over the phone from her Calgary home in mid-January. "The two things I'll never do are I'll never predict medals, and I'll never assume."
But she does see the speedskaters as right in the competition for best women's team ever. Even following, as they do, the seven won by the women at Torino in 2006, five of them by Cindy Klassen.
"Kristina Groves has a chance to win the same number [as Klassen]," Le May Doan says. "One of the things is team pursuit, so four individual [medals].
"We have Christine [Nesbitt], Cindy, Clara — I mean altogether it's absolutely incredible. There's Brittany [Schussler] …"
Putting a number on it
How do you quantify something as ethereal as potential, especially when predictions are usually a mug's game? One way may be to check the World Cup standings coming into Vancouver.
- In the 1,000-metres, Christine Nesbitt is first overall, and seems a cinch to at least medal. Kristina Groves is seventh but has two Top 6s in the four races so far. In 2009, she medalled four times and won once on the World Cup circuit.(Score two potential medals)
- In the 1,500-metres, Groves is first overall and has two golds and four medals in five events. Over the last 10 World Cup races she has failed to medal just once. Nesbitt is second in the 1,500-metre standings. And Brittany Schussler is sitting in fifth, with three podium finishes in the last six races back to last season. (Score three potential medals).
- At 3,000-metres, Groves is ranked fourth overall, with Clara Hughes seventh, having bounced back well from a tough season before, and Schussler ninth. (Score one potential medal).
- At 5,000-metres, Groves is fourth in the World Cup standings but has medalled in five of her last 10 races at this distance. Hughes is seventh but does not race this one a lot and is always around the medals when she does. (Score one potential medal).In team pursuit, Canada is first overall and the current world record holders. (Score one potential medal).
That's eight, without tossing in the wild card — Cindy Klassen.
One of the greatest Olympic athletes this country has ever seen, her five Olympic medals at Torino in 2006 were spread across the distances (gold in the 1,500, silver in the 1,000 and the pursuit, bronze in the 3,000 and 5,000).
She's 30 now, and missed the entire 2008-09 season due to knee troubles before working her way back to the Olympic team this year.
Klassen's results have been all over the board over the past months, but at Germany in November she turned out a silver medal in the B Final of a 1,000-metre with a competitive time. Is there one more special moment for such an extraordinary performer?
The fix was in
Ranked No. 1 in the 1,000 metres, Nesbitt seems a cinch to at least medal in her signature event. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)There are great teams that have come before, and the list must include the seven medals won by Alex Baumann (two gold), Victor Davis (gold and a world record), Michael West, Cam Henning, Sandy Goss and Tom Ponting in the pool at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
That year, the Soviet Bloc countries, minus Romania, boycotted, but their absence did not diminish the competition in the pool as it did many other events.
But a fair vote for best ever goes to the East German women's swim team at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, one that also took seven medals (one silver and six bronze) under what would turn out to be dark circumstances.
In 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 15 after Montreal, former East German officials admitted the government had put the entire Olympic team on an anabolic steroids program designed to "prove" communist superiority.
When they began pumping their athletes full of what was then a virtually unknown performance-enhancing drug around 1973, people became immediately suspicious at the rapid rise of East German athletes, especially the women swimmers.
But there was no drug testing. And led by the improbably muscled Kornelia Ender, they walked off with nine of the 11 gold medals in women's events.
If you remove the East German results (something the International Olympic Committee refused to do), the Canadian team would have won 11 medals, including two golds from 14-year-old Nancy Garapick and one for Cheryl Gibson.
That team, also including Becky Smith, Anne Jardin, Susan Sloan, Robin Corsiglia and Wendy Hogg, was magnificent.
In not too many days, we'll find out if the Belles of Montreal can be bested.
