Silver medallist Ivanie Blondin celebrates during the venue ceremony for the women's speed skating mass start event during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on Feb. 19, 2022.SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/Getty Images
Ivanie Blondin says some of those old dark thoughts crept into her mind early in the Beijing Winter Olympics. One of Canada’s best speed skaters had been feeling like a failure again and spent two days alone in her room before finding her way back into the light.
In the moments after earning her second medal at the Beijing Games on Saturday – a silver in the women’s mass start – Blondin had both huge smiles and sombre expressions. The Ottawa skater beamed with pride and happiness about the two medals she’s leaving Beijing with, but she was also candid about the difficulties she experienced during these Games.
During the first week, she said, she’d been consumed by the disappointing results in her first two races, and she revisited a familiar dark place in her mind.
Saturday’s silver medal was huge redemption for Blondin, who had crashed in the semi-finals of the mass start at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, her signature race. She’d left South Korea empty-handed, and since then has suffered with depression, including feelings of intense failure.
The highs have been huge at these Games. The 31-year-old also earned a gold medal in the women’s team pursuit last week with Isabelle Weidemann and Valérie Maltais. The trio set a new Olympic record while winning Canada’s first medal in that event at the Games in 16 years.
Irene Schouten of the Netherlands, Ivanie Blondin of Canada and Francesca Lollobrigida of Italy race to the finish line during the women's speed skating mass start finals on Saturday in Beijing.Sue Ogrocki/The Associated Press
But Blondin also had lows in Beijing. She admitted on Saturday that those dark feelings of failure had returned when she placed 14th in the 3,000-metre race and 13th in the 1,500 metres.
“There was a lot of internal stuff going on,” Blondin said. “I just wasn’t very nice to myself in the first couple days.”
She said she locked herself in her room in Beijing after her two early distance races and didn’t talk to anyone. She wanted only to be alone. At training, she put on headphones. There was a point where she just wanted to go home.
“I’ve made this mistake before going into that deep dark hole of feeling like you’re a failure. … It was hard and I was pushing people away that were close to me,” she said. “At the last Olympics it just get kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse. [At] these Games I was able to kind of flip that switch and make kind of like a little comeback.”
She said she eventually took comfort in the people around her – especially the support staff on the speed skating team and Canadian figure skaters Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.
Blondin nearly took gold in Saturday’s mass start race. She made a brilliant push in front of the 17-woman field in lap 15 of the 16-lap race – an almost roller derby-style event with skaters jockeying and pushing for position.
Dutch superstar Irene Schouten overtook the Canadian right at the finish line of their thrilling race around the oval at Beijing’s Ice Ribbon, beating her by just six one-hundredths of a second.
Schouten was unstoppable in Beijing, also striking gold in the 3,000-metre and 5,000-metre events, both in Olympic record time. Italy’s Francesca Lollobrigida earned bronze in the mass start event. Maltais also made the final for Canada and placed sixth.
From left, silver medalist Ivanie Blondin of Canada, gold medalist Irene Schouten of the Netherlands and bronze medalist Francesca Lollobrigida of Italy celebrate during a medal ceremony for the women's speed skating mass start on Saturday.Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press
It is totally different from other speed skating races. Most races around the 400-metre oval use a time trial format. In mass start, the skaters line up together in a pack and take off in a chaotic race to the finish line.
The mass start has often been described as “NASCAR on ice,” and Blondin is well-suited to it – comfortable skating in the pack, motivated by the pushing and jostling that takes place, and furnished with quick finishing skills at the end.
Throughout the high-octane event that lasts 6,400 gruelling metres, skaters bump one another, draft, shove, pass on the inside, and finally sprint to the finish line. Blondin said she got grabbed by the hips toward the end of the race and pulled backwards. Unbothered and laughing about it afterward, she said she just kept skating. In the end, she said she was happy to share the podium with two stars of the sport.
With the Games over, Blondin is excited to reunite with the pets she keeps at home – Gizmo, the African grey parrot she and her husband, Konrad, keep in their living room, and Brooke, the lively young Saint Bernard-Pyrenees mix who accompanies her on mountain runs near her training base in Calgary.
“I’m just grateful at this point to just step up to the podium and also just have fun, you know, like it’s the Olympic Games – you’re meant to have fun here,” said Blondin. “I wasn’t having fun in the first week but to be able to turn it around and have fun at the end of the day, I think it’s a big accomplishment.”
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