Remarks collected by Jean-Michel Lachance

From the 5 skaters you coach, many have a chance of medals, what are your predictions for these skaters at the Torino games?

Knowing the high standard Olympic selection criteria and the Olympic Trial results that our skaters produced in early January, I believe that all five skaters (including one American) from our training group who qualified for Torino have medal(s) potential.

On top of that, their podium placing in the 2005 Fall World Cups have confirmed that as well. Along with the results of other Canadian athletes in practically all other winter sport World Cups (see this past weekend), the entire Canadian Team has to feel good going into these Games; we are certainly not sending a group of tourists to Italy. I know that there are no guarantees in sport in general, but our speed skaters have dedicated many many years of serious training to their sport and are certainly well prepared for this. Are think they are ready for anything and they are looking forward to it and they also know that the rest of the speed skating world took notice of their showings so far this season. And as there are always surprises at Olympic Games, maybe some of them will come from the Canadian ranks this time.

Which is the program which led these athletes to an Olympic qualification??

When I joined this senior group 3 years ago, my colleague Xiuli Wang had already established a successful program, so I had no intention of suggesting any sudden changes but we work well together (and according to the skaters we compliment one another). As coaches we closely monitor all their physical preparations, either on or off the ice, give technical feedback and support and guide them through their normal competitive season leading up to the Games and in this case also look a bit beyond Torino as the season for the all-rounders comes to a close right here in our own Oval in Calgary with the World Championships, March 18-19, 2006. It's not just the two coaches on the ice; we have an entire support group that includes a strength trainer, physiotherapists, massage therapists, a physician, a sport psychologist, a skate technician and a sport physiologist, who all contribute a great deal to the performance of this team.

You coach Clare Hughes whose past career was as a cyclist. What is the place of cycling in your training program?

Yes, Clara certainly brings a wealth of experience from cycling to speed skating. Cycling has always been a very large component of the off-ice training for all skaters and some of them are or have been competitive cyclists, a number of them doing quite well in the past.

Traditionally speed skating and cycling have always gone hand in hand, champion skaters like Eric Heiden, Sheila Young, Chris Witty (USA), Seiko Hashimoto (Japan), Jaap Eden, Henk Nijdam, Jan Bos (Ned) have excelled in both. And several Canadians have been able to compete in both sports at the highest level, Clara Hughes being the best of all. Bob Boucher, Kevin Sirois, Frank Lutdke, Peter Williamson, Mark Knoll and Kevin Crockett are all Canadian athletes who combined the two sports successfully in the distant past and in recent past (the first two also qualifying for both Summer and Winter Olympics). If anything, the two sport compliment each other; we also train on the cycling track where not only the race events have similar distances, the lap- times in training are (on our 400m outdoor velodrome in Calgary) remarkably close to the lap-times on the ice. We have a number of skaters in Canada who can skate the 1000m under 1:10, but I'm not so sure if we have the same number of cyclists who can ride the 'kilo' under 1:10. (Just don't let the cycling coaches read this!)

First part of the interview

Photo: Arno Hoogveld with Shannon Rempel warming-up for Worlds
Credit: Peter Reath, View Calgary