Canada won three bronze medals on the final day of the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships on Sunday.
Steven Dubois (1500m), Courtney Sarault (1000m) and the women’s 3000m relay team took third place on the podium.
Dubois, of Lachenaie, finished second in the 500 on Saturday.
Dubois, who was granted a place in the A final by the officials after he was pushed off the track in the semi-finals, found himself stuck in fifth place until the penultimate lap of the race.
A crash from Italy’s Pietro Sighel opened the door for him, so he sped up and took an outside route around the final corner in hopes of surprising South Korea’s Kyung Hwan Hong and claiming bronze. He succeeded, by 0.002 seconds.
South Korean Ji Won Park won, ahead of Belgian Stijn Desmet (1:27.974) and Dubois (1:28.069).
Sarault took bronze in the women’s 1,000m. It was the fourth time that the athlete from Moncton won a medal at the World Championships, she who had won three in 2021, en route to the title of vice-world champion.
Sarault skated at the front of the field in the A final until the sixth lap of the race, when she passed her the Dutch Xandra Velzeboer. The Canadian looked to protect her back afterwards but was again overtaken, this time by South Korean Minjeong Choi, and had to settle for third place.
Velzeboer (1:29.361) claimed his second title of the weekend after winning the 500 on Saturday. Choi (1:29.679) took silver, ahead of Sarault (1:29.794) and another Canadian skater, Claudia Gagnon (1:34.101), who finished fourth.
“It didn’t go so well for me on Saturday in the 1,500, so I had to regroup to try and make something good this time around,” said Sarault.
“I got the position I wanted, but I don’t connect well with the ice here. I’m applying a lot of pressure and the ice was giving way too much, so I didn’t have the legs I needed at the end. »
Sarault, Gagnon, Kim Boutin and Renee Steenge would then take bronze in the women’s 3000m.
Stuck at the back of the pack for much of the race, the Canadians passed the Italians with 10 laps to go to climb into podium position.
The Dutch were crowned with a time of 4:09.056. South Korea (4:09.151) and Canada (4:09.372) followed.
The men’s relay finished fourth behind China, Italy and South Korea.
With three laps to go, a late push from Maxime Laoun during a rally caused teammate Jordan Pierre-Gilles to lose his balance and touch the blades of the South Korean skater in front of him, resulting in his fall.
Canada completed the Worlds with six medals in total.
The country concluded the 2023 season with 37 medals in six World Cup stages: 15 gold, 15 silver and seven bronze.