Other than the occasional pat on the back from strangers and the odd checkout line conversation – usually about the Kiss – life hasn’t changed all that much for Canada’s Olympic darlings over the last eight months.
The chief perk for short-track speed-skaters Charles Hamelin and Marianne St-Gelais, whose rink-side embrace after Hamelin’s gold medal in the 500-metre final at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games was the stuff of legend, is they’re able to afford a nicer apartment.
But otherwise the pair has returned to a familiar routine: skate, work out, rest, skate some more – not that they’re toiling in quite as much anonymity.
“We get recognized a lot more, I thought it would die down a month after the Games, but it’s kept going … people come up and say, ‘Thanks so much for those memories.’ All you can say is: ‘You’re welcome,’ ” said Hamelin, 26, who also won gold in the 5,000-metre relay. “It’s fun, and it just makes you want to keep skating.”
Post-Olympic seasons can be a downer, but both immediately committed to taking a run at the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia.
Besides, it’s not like success has gone to their heads.
“you have to turn the page at some point on the Olympics, I had a great experience, but you can’t live in the past,” added St-Gelais, who won a silver medal in the women’s 500 on her 20th birthday, and won a second silver a few days later in the relay.
After taking a few weeks off, Hamelin and St-Gelais hit the ice with their teammates in may, to begin the four-year training program they hope will lead to Russia.
And this weekend, the World Cup circuit kicks off with a meet at the Canadian team’s home rink, the Maurice-Richard Arena (the season’s second race is in Quebec City next week).
The weekend competition will unfold without the all-powerful South Korean team, which is still suffering the aftershocks of a race-fixing scandal at their national trials, and American stars Apolo Anton Ohno and J.R. Celski.
Disappointing for race organizers, certainly, but the quality of the opposition isn’t really the point for the Canadian team at this stage, nor is there any pressure for results.
“This is just the beginning of the process to get to the Olympics, it’s not about podiums, but improving in every race situation,” said Hamelin, who added: “I want to make my life more difficult” by trying out new strategies and letting other skaters take the lead.
The team that is undertaking another punishing four-year Olympic cycle is markedly different from the group that brought five medals home from Vancouver after a slow start.
On the men’s side, the flamboyant Olivier Jean has decided to try his luck at long-track skating, and the women’s team bid farewell to veteran and three-time Olympic medalist Tania Vicent, who retired, and explosive 24-year-old Kalyna Roberge, who is taking a year’s sabbatical.
St-Gelais is the brightest prospect in a women’s squad that includes fellow young Olympian Valerie Maltais, and established skaters like Marie-Eve Drolet, who returned to the sport last year after abruptly retiring in 2002 at age 20.
The men’s team has several key returnees, including relay gold medalists François-Louis Tremblay, Guillaume Bastille and François Hamelin, who is Charles’s younger brother.
Tremblay, who is enrolled in business school, turns 30 next month – old by short-track standards – and spent the summer renovating a decrepit duplex he bought with a friend, but nevertheless has his sights set on competing in his fourth Olympics in Sochi.
“It’s made easier by the fact I don’t really feel that age is slowing me down yet,” said Tremblay, who won 2010 Olympic bronze in the 500 metres and gold in the relay.
Were he to make it to the Games, the Alma, Que., native should stand an excellent chance of becoming the most-decorated Canadian Olympian of all time (he owns five medals, one short of long-track speed-skaters Cindy Klassen and Clara Hughes).
“It’s something to think about, for sure, but I’ve never skated for medals or results,” he said. “Passion’s got me this far, I don’t see why it wouldn’t carry me through another four years.”
eight months, line conversation
No comments:
Post a Comment