Courtney Sarault isn’t from Quebec. She’s still a short-track medal contender

Opinion

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This article was published 04/02/2022 (1336 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING Courtney Sarault is an anomaly. A freak, frankly, the only non-Quebec skater on Canada’s Olympic short-track squad.

The 21-year-old often doesn’t get the media love she deserves. In a province rightly, if chauvinistically, puff-chested about its short-track luminaries, an apparently bottomless font of torquers, the focus gets blurred even when Sarault collects medals.

The girl was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., for goodness sake, which is where her father was then playing for the Ottawa Senators’ minor-league affiliate.

“I try not to let it bother me,” Sarault tells the Star, good-naturedly. “That’s them. They’re proud of their Quebec athletes. I’d say I’m more proud of myself for sticking through it, just being different. Sometimes I feel bad because the entire team except one person is from Quebec and I’m the one who ruins it all. But I’m a little bit different anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

She is the daughter of Yves Sarault, a former fourth-line grinder who actually played for the Montreal Canadiens for a couple of seasons and now coaches in Switzerland. Courtney calls him her hero, though she’s quick to extend that descriptor to mom Rhonda, too.

“My dad, just because he’s a professional athlete. I always saw his hard work and drive, always looked up to him for how strong he was mentally. He was really, really strong-minded and always gave 100 per cent. Like, in everything he did, not just sports. He’d literally do the dishes and make sure it was perfect, better than anyone else could do them.

“My mom, well, we say, ‘Where there’s a Rhonda, there’s a way’. She never gives up. So that’s what I get from my parents — my strong will, never give up. In my family, we don’t go down without a fight.”

Mom boomerangs the compliment. “She’s my hero. Her work ethic, her drive. We moved to many different cities because of my husband. It was a challenge and a surprise that she continued in one sport. Always going into a new rink, new coach, new friends, and it didn’t seem to bother her.”

In hometown Moncton, N.B., mom would schlep Courtney to Fredericton to train after school, several times a week. “Get in the car, drive to Fredericton, drive back, go to bed, go to school, repeat.” As Courtney progressed in her sport, it was a drive to Quebec on weekends for competition. Then, when she was all-in with the training hub in Montreal, they’d book an Airbnb for one school semester, go back home for the second semester, round and round.

By that time, the family was informed they had a speedskating gem in Courtney. Her coach, Marc Gagnon, told Rhonda: “You realize you have a special daughter?” Well, sure, she knew Courtney was special. “No, I mean she’s special in speedskating,” Gagnon clarified.

Another difference — or distinction — for Sarault: She’s five-foot-nine, rather stretchy for a short-track specialist. And muscularly sculpted, bigger and more powerful than most of the females in her genre.

That strength and defensive guile means she’s frequently able to charge back into a race from the rear when it looks like she’s quite out of it.

“I’m a really stubborn person. It’ll take a lot for me to give up on a race. No matter where I am in a race, I’m going to be pushing it at the end.”

That’s not just obstinance, it’s tactical agility.

“You can be at the back of the race and kind of chill, then at the end you just power through. Not a lot of people do this, because it’s more risky a decision. You’ve got to have a big punch and a lot of strength to pass the whole pack at the end. I’ve gotten way better at that strategy because my old strategy was always racing from the front.

“Short track is all about being in the right spot at the right time and I feel that now I know how to race both ways. I have two options.”

The immensely entertaining sport often looks chaotic, with skaters racing in a tight pack and aggressively jostling for position, often skidding violently into the pass as they try to pass. Its practitioners refer to tight passing gambits as “bombs,” meaning, uh-oh, something’s gonna blow up.

What blew up for Sarault, however, actually resulted from training overintensity a few years ago, causing micro-tears in her legs. “I’d pushed myself to a place that I’m not normally supposed to go,” she says. “If I actually can’t do something, my head thinks different and I’m going to do it anyway. My body just went absolutely crazy.”

An injury is a classic competition obstacle, a fact of the sporting life.

As a 14-year-old on the international circuit, Sarault “was like a little girl who was superexcited just to try.” Except she immediately made the podium, with a silver in the 3,000-metre relay at the 2015 Canada Games. Three years later, she placed second overall at the world junior championships, with silver in the 1,000 and 1,500 metres.

“My first World Cup ever, my first race, I made the A final. And then my first A final ever, a silver medal. So it was, like, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ I was not expecting that, new girl in town. I thought, ‘OK, this is pretty cool.’ But I didn’t really have the tools to make it a constant thing.”

The injury brought her back to reality: It would not always be smooth sailing. “There’s just been so much learning that I’ve done in the past couple of years, about my body, my mind. No way I’m the same person. Definitely this season I’m a lot stronger than I ever was, physically and mentally. I think I’m the most prepared I’ve ever been in my life.’’

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Sarault has collected the most hardware on the World Cup circuit over the last four years, except for team star Kim Boutin, who racked up three medals in Pyeongchang and was named flag-bearer for the closing ceremony.

The short-track team has brought Canada an impressive 33 Olympic medals since the sport was officially added to the menu in Albertville in 1992. The Beijing squad, led by the venerable Charles Hamelin, a five-time Olympic medallist, had 17 podium finishes during this season’s Olympic qualification campaign. Pascal Dion, a bronze medallist in Pyeongchang in the 1,500, claimed four of those medals and was first in the World Cup rankings.

Sarault, who will likely contend the 1,000 and 1,500 — and the relay members haven’t been decided yet either — knows the Beijing oval, having competed here last October.

“One really big thing that I noticed was that the ice was very, very fast. The races were all very fast, the lap times were super-fast … You’re going to be that much more sharp and that much more alert. Everyone’s going to fly on this ice.”

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno