Five medals for Canada at Short Track World Tour season opener in Vancouver
The Canadian Ice Maples captured five medals–two gold and three silver—on home ice at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver to open the 2026-27 ISU Short Track World Tour.
On Sunday, Courtney Sarault won the gold medal in the women’s 1500m and silver in the women’s 500m, while the men’s 5000m relay captured silver.
In the 1500m, the four-time Olympic medallist finished ahead of Belgian Hanne Desmet and South Korean Choi Min-jeong, with a time of 2 minutes and 28.091 seconds.
That came not long after her runner-up finish in the 500m. Dutchwoman Xandra Velzeboer beat Sarault by about four tenths of a second, while the Poland’s Kornelia Wozniak took the bronze.
“I did a lot of work during the Olympic season, and as much as I thought it would be lost after taking the summer off, I think that I still had that training in my body. I think it just shows that a break is okay and you are allowed to reset, especially after an Olympic year. If I came back to skating earlier in the summer like I typically do, I don’t think my performances would’ve been what they were this weekend,” said Sarault.
In the men’s 5000m relay, Mathieu Pelletier, Maxime Laoun, Steven Dubois and Félix Roussel had the upper hand over China, but were overtaken by South Korea following an overtaking maneuver on the last lap.
On Saturday, the quartet of Florence Brunelle, Sarault, Claudia Gagnon and Danaé Blais won the gold medal in the women’s 3000m relay.
The Canadian women, who were in third place going into the last lap, benefited from a collision between the Netherlands and Italy. The Italians were penalized, allowing South Korea to take silver and the Netherlands to claim bronze.
“I feel like that’s short track! All the teams were still in contention going into the last few laps. There was a lot of movement in that race and we tried to get to the front, but it didn’t really happen the way we wanted it to. We kept believing and kept our speed, and that put us in the best position to fight in those last few laps,” said Brunelle.
The other Canadian medal won on Saturday came from Laoun, who took the silver medal in the 500m.
The Canadian finished the final in 40.725 seconds, just behind the Dutchman Jens van ‘t Wout, who crossed the finish line in 40.551 seconds.
The bronze medal went to Furkan Akar of Turkey after Jeongmin Lee of South Korea was penalized for an infraction against Canada’s Dubois. The other Canadian in the final thus finished just off the podium.
Before the final, Laoun had finished first in his qualifying waves in both the quarter-finals and semi-finals.
This competition marks the return of international short track speed skating events to the Pacific Coliseum and Vancouver, which had not hosted them since the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
