Long track speed skater Ivanie Blondin won her second medal of the Beijing Olympics early Saturday, taking silver in the mass start event after winning gold in the team pursuit.
Well ahead in the final sprint to the home straight, the athlete from Ottawa was beaten by 6 hundredths of a second by Dutchman Irene Schouten (8:14.73), now a quadruple medalist in these Games, three times gold.
Italian Francesca Lollobrigida completes the podium with a time of (8:14.98).
Quebecer Valérie Maltais is not to be outdone, she who equaled her best performance of her career for this event with a sixth place. Her points in the intermediate sprints pushed her up the rankings, despite a slower cumulative time than Japan’s Ayano Sato and Belarus’ Maryna Zueva.
Mention to Germany’s Claudia Pechstein, who, three days shy of her fiftieth birthday, finished ninth.
A first gold medal for Belgium at the Winter Olympics since 1948
On the men’s side, Belgium’s Bart Swings (7:47.11) won his country’s first gold medal in any sport at the Winter Olympics since 1948. Two South Koreans, Chung Jae-Won (7:47,18) and Lee Seung-Hoon (7:47,20) take silver and bronze. The triple world champion, the American Joey Mantia, finds himself at the foot of the podium.
Albertan Jordan Belchos and Quebecer Antoine Gélinas Beaulieu finished 13th and 15th. Although classified at the halfway mark, they could not keep up with the pace of the peloton.