Canadian speedskater Ivanie Blondin wins another silver medal in mass start

“It is an incredible last Olympics,” Blondin said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

Blondin excels in the 16-lap, cat-and-mouse mass start that is a test of nerve, speed and tactics.

“My entire life has been chaos. I just don’t back down from a fight,” Blondin said. “The grit is what has defined my entire career and defines how I race as well.”

She’s also won eight world champion medals, including two gold, in a race in which body contact and falls are common, and regularly involves a furious multi-skater sprint to the finish.

“It’s a hard race to kind of nail down, and sometimes it takes people a really long time to figure it out,” Blondin stated. “It goes well and it goes bad, but the consistency I think, for one I think my body’s kind of built for that race.

“There’s also like the mental game of being highly competitive and knowing where to place myself.”

Blondin was second to winner Marijke Groenewoud of the Netherlands. Mia Manganello of the U.S. took bronze.

Blondin feels she’s had more lows than highs in her career.

“But every single time, I pick myself back up again and strive to be the best that I can be,” she said.

“The amount of failures that I’ve had is probably 10, 20 times more than the amount of times that I have won.”

Falling in the 2018 semifinal in Pyeongchang, South Korea, nearly quitting sport altogether as a teenager when short track wasn’t working for her and when she developed an eating disorder were among the lowlights in Blondin’s career.

But moving to Calgary to give long-track a try at 16 got her back on blades.

“Being close to the mountains, I’ve always been very much like a country girl,” she said. “And growing up, I’ve always been hands and feet in mud, kind of the wild child, so Calgary is very fitting for me.

“If I can be out in the outdoors and fishing, camping, all that stuff, I’m in my happy place.”

Blondin produced Canada’s fifth speedskating medal of the Milan Cortina Games.

The 35-year-old Maltais won bronze medals in the 3,000 and 1,500 metres in addition to pursuit gold in her final Olympic Games.

Laurent Dubreuil of Lévis, Que., was a bronze medallist in the men’s 500 metres.

Maltais fell early in the mass start, but recovered to catch up to the pack and place fifth.

“I hit my blade with someone and there was nothing I could do in the moment,” Maltais said. “It was like nine laps left when I caught up to them.

“For sure, it cost me like energy doing that, but what else could I do? I didn’t want to give up.

“Being my last Olympics, having three podiums, finishing fifth today under these circumstances where I just gave my best, why would I be disappointed?”

Maltais also said celebrating with Blondin for her silver medal was “a great moment.”

Mass start’s unpredictability surfaced in the men’s race, when Jorrit Bergsma of the Netherlands and Denmark’s Viktor Hald Thorup took off on an early breakaway and worked together for gold and silver respectively.

That left a mad dash in the trailing pack for the bronze medal, which Italy’s Andrea Giovannini claimed. Antoine Gélinas-Beaulieu, of Sherbrooke, Que., was sixth.

Blondin is a professional cyclist in the summer. She also loves animals.

She and husband Konrad Nagy have a 16-year-old parrot named Gizmo, a foster-fail cat, Boo, and a dog, Brooke.

“My goal is to have a hobby farm in the future,” Blondin said. “Eventually there’ll be some sheep, maybe cows and goats or something.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 21, 2026.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

Canadian speedskater Ivanie Blondin wins another silver medal in mass start

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