Canadian males win crew dash gold at 4 Continents pace skating championships

Canadians received two of the 4 occasions on the opening day of the 4 Continents pace skating championships on Friday, a part of a three-medal haul on the Utah Olympic Oval.

Yankun Zhao joined Olympians Laurent Dubreuil and Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu atop the lads’s crew dash podium, whereas Connor Howe adopted it up with a gold medal of his personal within the males’s 1,500 metres.

The Canadian trio skated to gold in a season-best time of 1 minute 18.54 seconds, profitable the occasion by over three seconds in Kearns, Utah, close to Salt Lake Metropolis. Kazakhstan positioned second in 1:21.71, adopted by South Korea (1:22.01).

The 20-year-old Zhao crammed in for Anders Johnson, who was compelled to withdraw because of a last-minute damage.

Fellow Canadian Olympian Howe topped the rostrum with a time of 1:43.19. The 23-year-old from Canmore, Alta., completed forward of American Emery Lehman (1:44.03) and Japan’s Ryota Kojima (1:44.40).

Vincent De Haître of Cumberland, Ont., was twelfth in 1:47.69.

Canada opened the competitors with bronze within the ladies’s crew dash, as Carolina Hiller, Maddison Pearman and Ivanie Blondin completed simply 0.41 seconds behind the US whereas setting a Canadian document (1:25.41). Japan captured gold in 1:24.32.

The Canadians bested the earlier mark of 1:25.73 from December 2022.

In different Canadian outcomes, Laura Corridor and Alison Desmarais completed seventh (2:00.61) and eighth (2:00.77) within the ladies’s 1,500.

Watch reside protection of the 4 Continents pace skating championships on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports activities app and CBC Gem, persevering with Saturday at 4 p.m. ET with the ladies’s 500m.

Ottawa’s Isabelle Weidemann will look so as to add to Canada’s haul within the ladies’s 5,000m and three,000m — the occasions she took silver and bronze in, respectively, on the 2022 Olympics. She’ll additionally be part of Blondin and Valérie Maltais to reunite the gold-medal trio within the ladies’s crew pursuit.

Weidemann skipped the World Cup’s two European stops final month to organize for the closing North American leg of the season. It contains World Cup meets on the Utah Oval and in Quebec Metropolis the following two weeks earlier than the world championships in Calgary in mid-February.