Canada has gone back-to-back at the speedskating track.
Isabelle Weidemann, Ivanie Blondin and Valerie Maltais won gold for the second Olympics in a row in women’s team pursuit on Tuesday.
The Canadians beat the Netherlands in the gold-medal race, erasing an early deficit to take the lead with two laps left and crossing the line 0.96 seconds ahead of the Dutch.
“We’re a little bit in shock I think,” Weidemann told CBC Olympics. “We had two races to do today so we really couldn’t look very far ahead. After the semifinals, we weren’t even talking about silver, We were like ‘we’ve got one more to go today. We’ve got a job to do still.’ … It’s so wild.”
It is the third gold medal in as many days for Canada after the country didn’t win one event in the first eight days of competition at Milano Cortina 2026. It also is the 12th medal overall for Canada (three gold, four silver, five bronze).
Earlier, Canada crushed the U.S. by 4.22 seconds in a semifinal.
The gold-medal race was part of a riveting couple of minutes for Canadian Olympic fans. As the race was going on, Rachel Homan made the winning shot against previously unbeaten Sweden in women’s curling for the Canadian rink’s third victory in a row.
“I think we have some good chemistry,” Maltais told CBC Olympics. “Getting to celebrate that race with Canadian fans in the stands, today was wild. It was fun. I’m sure it’s going to keep going to be fun. There were a lot of people in the stands, a lot of Canadian fans. Man, back-to-back golds — I’m pumped.”
Atop the podium later, Weidemann, Blondin and Maltais put their arms around each other and belted out ‘O Canada’ as the Canadian flag was raised.
“There was a sense of calm, almost,” Blondin told CBC Olympics. “We were calm, collected, we knew what we had to get done, and we just did it.”
Maltais won Canada’s first medal in Italy with a bronze in the 3,000 metres on Day 1.
Weidemann won three medals at the 2022 Olympics, while Blondin took two.
The Netherlands won gold in team pursuit at last year’s world single-distance championships, while Canada earned bronze.
Weidemann and Blondin are Ottawa natives, while Maltais is from La Baie, Que.
