Skating on thick ice

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/12/2020 (1974 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Members of Canada’s national long-track speedskating team are getting creative.

Faced with the restrictions of living in Alberta — currently an overheated COVID-19 zone — and the closure of the Olympic Oval due to mechanical problems, skaters such as Winnipeggers Tyson Langelaar and Heather McLean are heading for the hills to get their on-ice workouts.

The 21-year-old Langelaar and his training group travelled to Gap Lake near Canmore on Monday and Wednesday last week before switching to Ghost Lake on Friday and Saturday and, by the looks Langelaar’s dizzying video posted on social media, skating circles at 40 to 45 km/hour on a mountain lake can be quite harrowing.

Fun day with the boys! Finding ice and using what we can. ���� @TeamCanada pic.twitter.com/WpG5bDPzWN

— Tyson Langelaar (@TysonLangelaar) November 30, 2020

Langelaar doesn’t mind the sometimes bumpy surface.

For these conditions, the long-trackers have switched to short-track skates because rocker at the bottom of the blade isn’t as flat and therefore, more safe.

"It’s thick enough ice that we can skate ensuring safety and then also it’s the smoothest lake ice we found and it’s only, I want to say, a 40-minute drive for us," he said from Calgary via telephone.

"Anything near Canmore is an hour-plus. So basically skating on the lake, that’s really the only opportunity we get right now to put on our skates and actually touch ice, which has been frustrating. But it’s also the only thing we can kind of do right now."

While the global pandemic has wreaked havoc with the World Cup circuit, the national team suffered another major blow when the ice plant at the Olympic Oval, home to the sport for more than 30 years, went on the fritz with no quick solution at hand.

“It’s thick enough ice that we can skate ensuring safety and then also it’s the smoothest lake ice we found and it’s only, I want to say, a 40-minute drive for us” – Tyson Langelaar said from Calgary

Although the building has reopened for inline training, the restoration of a fully operational ice plant may still be two months away. At first, the entire team opted for short-track training at another facility but an upsurge in COVID-19 case prompted the health authority to shut everything down, putting the national team training exemption under review.

McLean, 27, believes lake training is a decent training option. The international season, already delayed, may go ahead in late January and early February with two World Cup events and world championships all to be hosted employing a hub concept in Heerenveen, Netherlands. The Canadian championships, usually held in October, have already been scrubbed.

"I’ve been out there a couple times for some recreational outdoor hockey and as well for a training session," said McLean of lake training. "We’ve been able to explore a little bit more in our own backyard because we haven’t been traveling the world, we’ve spent a lot more time using our local resources."

Conditions are crucial to training outside. Weather in Calgary was balmy last week, rising to 12 C. Mountain lakes tend to be colder and windier.

“I left Winnipeg to skate inside and now it’s back to our roots.” – Tyson Langelaar

"I left Winnipeg to skate inside and now it’s back to our roots," said Langelaar with a laugh. "It all really depends on the weather. If we can find a nice sheet, we can stay out there all day. Now that we found a lake that’s smooth enough, we can actually train on it, it’s even better because it’s something new. It’s a little fun and then you still get a workout in while you’re out there."

Langelaar and his teammates had a short reprieve during the last week of October and first week of November when they travelled to Fort St. John, B.C., to train at an indoor facility there before health restrictions forced them to return home.

"It felt amazing," said Langelaar. "It felt like all of us felt like we were pretty in pretty good shape so that was kind of a relief and a nice feeling to have but then we come back and we’re skating on lakes and doing dryland (training) in our apartments. So it’s definitely been an emotional roller coaster, to say the least."

Langelaar, who has a stellar junior career before joining the senior national team full time in 2019-20, is hoping competition will help him build on a rookie season in which he finished sixth overall in the 1,500 metres, with a ninth-place finish at the world championships.

His best individual finish was a fourth in a World Cup event; he also added two medals in team pursuit and one medal in a team sprint event.

Next month, Langelaar is planning to show what he learned in his first years. He said sticking with race plan is casualty of inexperience.

 

"I think a big one is as a young skater you kind of got to limit the rookie mistakes that you make," said Langelaar. "Last year I did an OK job limiting them but I think that’s one thing, especially when nerves are kicking in and you’re kind of restless on the road, it’s really easy to let some let your focus slip for sure."

A highlight of his first year was a silver medal earned in team pursuit at a World Cup in Kazakstan with veterans Ted-Jan Bloemen and Jordan Belchos.

"On the start line I was I was terrified because I was still tired from my (1,500) race (an hour earlier) and then also in the back of my head I’m thinking I can’t let these two guys down," said Langelaar. "It was a moment where you’re like, ‘OK, when teamwork, hard work, execution all comes into place, it works.’ "

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14