Canada wins gold in men's speedskating pursuit

Team gets redemption after week without medals

Last Updated: Saturday, February 27, 2010 | 9:11 PM ET

By Malcolm Kelly, CBC Sports

There's nothing like a gold medal to wipe away a week of angst and anger.

Shut out on the Richmond Olympic Oval so far and with just one more chance at the top of the podium, Canada's men's speedskaters pulled off a strong victory over the United States in the team pursuit on Saturday afternoon.

The team of Denny Morrison, from Fort St. John, B.C., Lucas Makowsky, of Regina and Mathieu Giroux of Montreal beat the Americans by 21-100ths of a second over the eight-lap, 3,200-metre event.

"We went into these Olympics with high expectations for our men," said coach Marcel Lacroix. "It didn't come true, but at least we're able as a team to say let's put this behind us."

Morrison had been disappointingly far back in his specialty, the 1,500 metres, a week before, and afterwards had blamed his training program and Own the Podium — the program developed in Canada to win the medal race.

He apologized afterwards.

"Denny was disappointed and all that," Lacroix said. "After he did clear up the statements like that, he was like, 'OK, we've got a medal to win and we know we can do that.'

"That's heart."

U.S. rallies

Canada jumped out on the American threesome of veteran Chad Hedrick (a four-time career medallist in his last race), Brian Hansen and Jonathan Kuck quickly, building a 73-100ths of a second lead by the end of two laps.

But Hedrick helped lead a U.S. rally and that was down to 28-100ths of a second with three laps left.

That was as close as the Americans would get however, and the gap began to spread again over the final 400 metres.

Canada's winning time of 3:41.37 was faster than the day before, when Canada upset Norway in the semifinal.

A disappointed Dutch team pulled itself together after being upset the day before by the U.S. and beat Norway for the bronze medal.

Led by star Sven Kramer, who had hoped to win three golds at these Games but came up with one, the Netherlands went out quickly and held the lead the whole way, finishing .56 ahead.

German women by a skate

On the women's side, Germany won the gold medal by beating Japan by less than the length of a skate blade.

That was hardly the only excitement for the eventual gold medallists on the day.

In the semifinal against the United States, Anni Frieseinger-Postma fell coming down the final straight and wound up sliding on her belly towards the line, arms waving back and forth. She finally stuck her skate out to trigger the timer.

"I nearly messed it up," she said. "The only thing I could think was, 'I'm falling, I'm falling!'"

Katrin Mattscherodt took the now-four-time Olympic medallist's place in the final, and teamed with Stephanie Beckert and Daniela Anschutz Thoms for the win.

Poland won the bronze against the U.S.

Canada's team had come in as the favourites, but was upset by the United States in the quarter-finals.