Canadian men zoom to team sprint gold at speed skating World Cup | CBC Sports

Canada emerged with a gold medal on the first day of the final speed skating World Cup of the season.

The trio of Laurent Dubreuil, Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu and Anders Johnson scored a team sprint win with relative ease on Friday in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland.

The Canadians’ time of one minute 19.53 seconds outpaced second-place Norway by 1.36 seconds. Japan, 1.83 seconds behind Canada, rounded out the podium with bronze.

The victory vaulted Canada to second in the overall standings, its second medal in three tries after previously bagging bronze in December in Calgary.

WATCH | Canadians grab gold in team sprint:

Canadian men skate to gold in World Cup team sprint in Poland

Anders Johnson, Laurent Dubreuil and Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu won gold in the men’s team sprint at the final ISU World Cup Speed Skating event of the season in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland.

The team sprint, in which three skaters begin with one peeling off after each of the first two laps, is not an Olympic event.

Dubreuil, the 30-year-old sprint specialist from Lévis, Que., may compete on all three days of the World Cup. The 500 metres is set for Saturday while the 1,000m, the event in which he won silver at the Beijing Olympics, goes Sunday.

Dubreuil currently leads the season-long 500m standings and sits second in the 1,000m.

Gélinas-Beaulieu, also 30, had himself a busy Friday after placing fifth in the 1,500m in the first A-Division race of the day. The Sherbooke, Que., native finished 1.24 seconds behind gold medallist American Jordan Stolz, who set a track record of 1:45.44.

Fellow Canadians Tyson Langelaar and Connor Howe placed 11th and 14th, respectively.

Johnson, 25, skated the anchor leg in the team sprint win.

4-5-6 for Canadian women

Meanwhile, it was a close call for Canadian women in 3,000m, but the trio of Isabelle Weidemann, Ivanie Blondin and Valerie Maltais wound up finishing 4-5-6.

Ottawa’s Blondin and Maltais, of Saguenay, Que., skated together in the second-last pairing. Blondin put herself in podium position by crossing the line in 4:09.36, while Maltais was just behind in 4:10.77.

However, they ended up fifth and sixth respectively when the final pairing of Weidemann and Norway’s Ragne Wiklund outdid both.

Weidemann, also of Ottawa, wound up fourth overall with a time of 4:09.11, but she failed to keep up with the wicked pace of Wiklund, who skated a track-record time of 4:02.79 to win the event by nearly three seconds.

Czech skater Martina Sáblíková took silver while the Netherlands’ Joy Buene brought home bronze.

Canada’s Carolina Hiller and Brooklyn McDougall placed 12th and 20th, respectively, in the women’s 500m.

Live coverage from Poland continues Saturday at 7:45 a.m. ET on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem.

WATCH | Full coverage from Day 1 in Poland:

ISU World Cup Speed Skating Tomaszów Mazowiecki: Day 1

Watch the first day of speed skating from the final World Cup event of the season in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland.

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