How learning to trust others helped push speedskater Isabelle Weidemann to the top of the Olympic podium

Opinion

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This article was published 16/02/2022 (1301 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING It wasn’t always easy. Isabelle Weidemann loved sports but she was so tall, gawky, not in control of her limbs. She was smart but her brain ping-ponged off the walls of her classroom, moving too fast, trying to get out. Her family was terrific, but nobody could really help her with any of that, not really. Isabelle had to do it herself.

“I did learn very quickly that if I worked harder, if I did more, it could be better,” said Weidemann, 26. “And so I think that started to build this idea that I could just trust myself, and I could just bring that all back to myself. And I think the idea has also helped me quite a bit.

“But it can also be very detrimental.”

Weidemann spoke with three Olympic medals around her neck, one of each. The Ottawa speedskater was the anchor of Canada’s team pursuit squad with teammates Valerie Maltais and Ivanie Blondin that won gold Tuesday. The six-foot-two Weidemann was only the second Canadian to win gold, silver and bronze in the same Winter Olympics: speedskater Cindy Klassen did it in 2006. There are currently three candidates to carry the flag in the closing ceremony: Weidemann, short-track speedskater Steven Dubois (who joined Weidemann and Klassen Wednesday evening in completing the medal trifecta) and snowboarder Max Parrot.

Weidemann did this the hard way, in many respects. It took her until high school to figure out that if she put in extra hours of study, the blurry world of the classroom came into focus. Working harder in sports, meanwhile, meant Weidemann would sometimes push herself to tears: an extra run, some more time on a bike, maybe puke on the side of the road. As she bounced between skating coaches — she moved from Ottawa to Calgary as a teenager, where people started to notice the tall kid who tried and tried — self-reliance became a defence mechanism. At practice people would ask how she was and Weidemann would say fine, I’m fine, always fine. She wouldn’t share what she was doing with teammates. She would push herself over the edge. It was up to her family and new coach Remmelt Eldering to pull her back.

But you can’t just try harder in long track. The sport is almost a search for a painful sort of Zen, seeking perfect control while pushing your body to the limit.

“It’s this weird kind of zone where you don’t hear anything,” Weidemann said. “You’re just feeling the ice. I honestly don’t feel a lot of my body either. You’re just, like, going with it. It’s crazy, and you don’t find it very often. You fight, you fight, you fight for it. And then when you’re least expecting it, it happens.”

She was already on a better road last summer when Maltais took Weidemann to a summer lunch. She asked about willingness to change, about trust. Weidemann realized it wasn’t accusatory; it wasn’t threatening. It was someone trying to help.

“I think she was also getting at, do you like what you do?” Weidemann said. “Are you happy in speedskating?”

Maltais is the emotional centre of the trio, and she said Weidemann’s shell was the toughest one to crack. From there Weidemann trusted her teammates more; they set their sights to Beijing. Remmelt had already decided she couldn’t say she was fine or not fine anymore; she had to use the words in between. Weidemann stopped thinking about needing a medal, as she had in Pyeongchang, and found a place where she could just be happy with herself, and her best.

Here she is. She won bronze in the 3,000, silver in the 5,000, but it is perhaps notable that Weidemann’s gold came as part of a team. She nearly cried at the press conference following the gold medal when her teammates spoke about her. I told her Steve Nash once said he had to relearn how to process emotions late in his NBA career, because he had always mashed them down to focus on the sport. Weidemann nodded.

“I 100 per cent agree,” she said. “You know, sometimes you just get on this train and you just don’t want to get off. You’re training. You’re on a mission. Don’t get off. Just trust the process and don’t feel anything, don’t think anything, just do.

“And it’s very unsustainable. It’s been a lifelong lesson for me, I think, at this point. I’ve always struggled to share those kind of tough moments with other people. And it’s been a really big learning curve. It’s something I’m very proud of, to start expressing myself a little bit more, and trusting other people with those emotions.”

It was suggested that if she was happier, skating in that Zen zone may not be a coincidence.

“Maybe they’re correlated,” she said. “I don’t know. Trying to figure that out.”

In the meantime, the afterglow is shared. Her family awaits her. She will reach out to Canadian legend Clara Hughes, who has been enormously supportive, and her friend Nils van der Poel, the Swedish champion, to put it in perspective. In the meantime, she and Maltais and Blondin get a victory lap, together. This belongs to all of them.

“We talk about it that sharing it at all, the three of us, is something that will tie us together for life,” said Maltais. “And I think it’s a really special moment and thing to share right now, and have this together.”

“Thank you, Izzy,” said Blondin.

“You know, when you don’t trust other people, when you don’t share, then who are you going to celebrate with at the end of the day?” Weidemann said. “This medal is just so much better because I get to stand on top of the podium with my teammates and we get to sing ‘O Canada’ together.”

So now comes the next thing. Weidemann has been balancing her university career with skating for nine years now, since she was 17, and she graduated in the spring with a degree in biology and geology. She used to want to be a veterinarian. She job shadowed one in the spring.

“I loved it,” she said. “I was like, I could totally do this, 110 per cent.

“And somebody recommended that I maybe just try a few other things, and I ended up volunteering in the emergency room in a Calgary hospital (during) COVID. And I was blown away. I was like, this could be it.”

She wore full PPE, painstakingly donned. It was mostly COVID patients but there were traumas too, or people showing up sicker than they should have due to the pandemic. Weidemann helped move patients between rooms and wards, screened visitors once visitors were allowed in, and generally tried to fill the gaps as nurses and doctors tried to save lives. It changed hers. She will apply to med school. She brought homework to Beijing.

“I feel the same passion and the same energy as I do from sport, which I never thought I would find anywhere else,” Weidemann said. “I think I would love being a vet. But I think I would love working in a hospital even more.”

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Why? What made her fall in love with it?

“The ability to give back,” Weidemann said, eyes bright, medals clanking. “Sometimes in sport we’re so focused on ourselves, and I spent the last 12 years or however many years in speedskating just building myself, and not trusting other people, and not working with other people.

“And it’s a terrible way to live. And I don’t want the rest of my life to be to be focused on that. And I think the health care system is the best way I can think of giving back to the community.”

It’s never been easy for Isabelle Weidemann, and that could make for a lonely road. But people can change.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur