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As Canada’s most successful Olympic team with 42 Olympic and over 150 world championship medals through the years, the expectations are always high for the Canadian speed skating team.
Italy holds a special place in the heart of Canadian speed skaters. At the Torino Games 20 years ago, Canada won eight medals, anchored by five from the great Cindy Klassen.
Will there be the same kind of magic at Milano-Cortina 2026?
Through five events this World Cup season, Canadian speed skaters have pulled in 18 medals (two gold, nine silver and seven bronze). In the last Olympic cycle, they’ve also been successful at the world single distance championships winning seven medals in 2023, a record 10 in 2024 and four in 2025.
Internationally, the Netherlands – the birthplace of speed skating – will once again field a team of contenders across all disciplines. The Dutch won 12 medals in Beijing four years ago, half of them gold.
Jordan Stolz is a name you will hear frequently during Milano-Cortina. The 21-year-old wunderkind from Kewaskum, Wisconsin, is expected to contend for four individual gold medals in Italy, which would put him in Eric Heiden territory (the American who won five individual gold in Lake Placid in 1980).
Canada’s short-track speed skating team held a practice in Montreal less than two weeks before the Winter Olympics kick off in Italy. Considered Canada’s strongest team in decades, the athletes are processing the growing pressure to win gold at Milano Cortina 2026.
Stolz competes in 500-metre, 1,000m and 1,500m and will add the mass start to his schedule, too.
One of the big questions of the competition is what will the ice be like?
The Milano Speed Skating Stadium is the first indoor temporary speed skating oval. It’s built inside the Fiera Milano Rho exhibition centre, a trade-fair hall in the outskirts of the city.
Given the undertaking, there was only one person organizers wanted for the job and that was Mark Messer, ice maker of six Olympic speed skating ice surfaces and the ice technician at the Calgary Olympic Oval.
“It’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in icemaking,’’ Messer told The Associated Press.
Here’s what you need to know about Team Canada and the speed skating competition in Italy:
Veteran experience
Ted-Jan Bloeman is the oldest member of the Canadian team at age 39.
The two-time Olympic medallist from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games was off the podium at Beijing 2022. But since then, he’s won two medals at the world single distance championships (silver in 10,000 in 2024 and bronze in 10,000 in 2023).
This season, he picked up a spirited World Cup silver in the 5,000 on home ice in Calgary.
Laurent Dubreuil of Levis, Que., is the most successful male sprinter since Jeremy Wotherspoon with over 50 medals on the World Cup circuit to his name. Heading to his third Olympic Games, the Olympic 1,000m silver medallist from Beijing, is aiming for a medal in his signature 500m distance.
At 34, he takes pride in being the oldest competitor on the line in his event.
On the women’s side, Valerie Maltais heads to a remarkable fifth Olympic Games and second in long track after representing Canada in short track at Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018. Fun fact: she is one of a handful of skaters to win a medal at both disciplines.
The 35-year-old from La Baie, Que., is enjoying a terrific World Cup season with five individual podiums to go along with three more with the team pursuit.
Ivanie Blondin, 35, from Ottawa heads to her fourth Olympics as one of Canada’s most decorated speed skaters of all time. She took home two medals in Beijing and is looking for more Olympic hardware, especially in her signature event, the mass start.
And of course, Isabelle Weidemann, also from Ottawa, a triple medallist from Beijing four years ago enters her third Games in top form, fresh off finishing second in the World Cup long distance standings. She’s also a key member of the reigning Olympic champions in team pursuit with Maltais and Blondin.
These veterans will be relied up for leadership, especially with eight Olympic rookies on the team.
It’s the fastest human-powered winter sport and Canadians are leading the charge. The CBC’s Omar Dabaghi-Pacheco laced up his skates and took the ice to find out how hard speed skating really is.
Olympics bloodlines
Five members of the team have Olympian parents.
Dubreuil is the son of two Olympians, Robert (Albertville 1992) and mother Ariane Loignon (1988 Calgary 1988).
Béatrice Lamarche’s father, Benoît, was a two-time Olympian in 1984 and 1988.
Siblings Laura and Daniel Hall are following father Mike, who competed in 1994 in Lillehammer.
Cédrick Brunet is the son of ice dancer Michel Brunet, who competed at the 1998 Nagano Olympics in Japan and the nephew of two-time Olympic medallist and Canadian chef de mission, Jennifer Heil.
Overcoming hardship
Carolina Hiller-Donnelly makes her first Olympics, but with a heavy heart after losing her mother to cancer last year.
She wrote on Instagram after being named to the Canadian team: “She wanted this for me just as much as I wanted it for myself. At the beginning of the season, I didn’t think I could compete without her. But she always told me to be brave. So I showed up to every start line and did it.”
David La Rue had always wanted to be an Olympian. He missed his chance four years ago with the cancellation of the 2022 Olympic skate off due to the pandemic.
This time around looked in jeopardy, too. After a severe cycling accident in late 2023 left him with a brain hemorrhage, La Rue was forced to take a year and a half away from the World Cup circuit (during which time he passed his CFA exams).
He returned last season determined to make a run at qualifying for his first Olympics and at the Canadian trials in January secured a spot in the 1,500.
Antoine Gelinas-Beaulieu, a 2022 Olympian, is the type of athlete fans will want to cheer for. He was a junior short track star, but suffered from overtraining and burnout, stemming from a toxic relationship with a former coach.
He stepped away from the sport for four years before turning his talents to long track.
After a sensational three-medal performance at the 2024 world championships in Calgary (gold in the team sprint, silver in the mass start, and bronze in the team pursuit), he didn’t feel right when he returned to training that spring.
With the support of the national program, he took a hiatus and was later diagnosed with a mood disorder, cyclothymia. He credits the support of his wife, family and coaches to getting him back to where he is today – ready for his second Olympics.
“I didn’t receive an ounce of judgment from them,” he told La Presse. “The world missed me. They were just eager for me to put my skates back on and be able to train and compete with them again.”
2 training centres equals success
The Canadian team trains out of two facilities – the Olympic Oval in Calgary and the Centre de Glaces in Quebec City.
For years, athletes had to move west to pursue their Olympic dreams, but now with an additional world-class facility in the east, skaters are able to stay closer to home.
Fun fact, Canadian Olympic legend Gaeten Boucher still skates at the Centre de Glaces multiple days a week.