Ivanie blondin biography for kids

By Dan Plouffe

Ottawa’s Ivanie Blondin kicked off her international speed skating season with a sparkling four-medal performance at the Nov. 15-17 ISU Four Continents Speed Skating Championships in Japan.

Blondin is noted for packing her schedule with many more races than most skaters, and her excellence has presented a bit of a problem: she barely has a moment to collect one medal before she goes out to win the next.

On the opening day of the event, the Gloucester Concordes athlete won gold with Canada in the women’s team sprint competition, and then earned an individual bronze shortly after that in the women’s 1,500 metres.

“I feel pretty good about my 1500m,” Blondin said via Speed Skating Canada. “I was not able to warm down following the team sprint as we went straight to the medal ceremony, which took a while, and by the time that was over, I had to put my skin suit on and get back on the ice. I did a three-lap warm up and went to the start line.”

The Canadians won the team sprint by a comfortable 1.39-second advantage over South Korea in 1:27.87, and then Blondin finished 3.13 seconds back of world-record holder Miho Tagaki and .48 ahead of another Japanese skater for the final place on the 1,500m podium in 1:57.99.

“Technically, the race felt really good,” Blondin added. “The team sprint took a little bit out of my start – I didn’t have the pop that I normally would – but midway through the race I realized things were going well and my legs were actually feeling pretty decent. I was happy with the end time.”

Blondin went on to win a medal on each of the next two days of the meet as well. On the second day of competition, he was sandwiched between Ottawa’s Isabelle Weidemann and Canadian teammate Valérie Maltais in third place in the women’s 3,000m. That trio competed in the team pursuit event on the final day, but the reigning world championships silver medallists did not fin

Biography

Ivanie Blondin won two medals during her third Olympic appearance at Beijing 2022. She captured gold in the team pursuit alongside Valérie Maltais and Isabelle Weidemann, setting an Olympic record time in the process. She then added a silver medal in the mass start. 

Blondin is an eight-time medallist at the ISU World Single Distances Championships. That includes two world titles (2016, 2020) and three silver medals (2015, 2019, 2021) in the mass start, a bronze in the 5000m (2017), as well as a silver (2021) and a bronze (2020) in the team pursuit. 

Blondin has twice won the overall World Cup title in the mass start, in 2014-15 and in 2019-20. She finished second overall in the event in 2015-16 and 2020-21 and third overall three times (2012-13. 2016-17, 2017-18). 

In addition to her multitude of World Cup medals in the mass start, Blondin has also had success in the more traditional speed skating distances. She has won World Cup gold medals in the 1500m, 3000m, and 5000m. In 2017-18, she finished the season ranked second overall in the combined 3000/5000m standings and was third overall in those distances in 2019-20. 

Blondin made her Olympic debut at Sochi 2014, just four years after converting to the long track from short track. In her second Olympic appearance at PyeongChang 2018, she posted top-six finishes in the team pursuit, 3000m, and 5000m but had an unfortunate fall in the mass start semifinal that prevented her from advancing to the final.

Coming home from PyeongChang without a medal when she had been a podium threat in multiple events was tough for Blondin and she found herself battling depression. Though she won a mass start medal at the 2019 World Single Distances Championships, she wasn’t as confident in the other individual distances. She helped improve her mental health through medication and therapy, but also by being a foster parent for animals. 

Blondin rebounded strongly

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This time last year Ivanie Blondin was feeling burned out.

She had trained too hard in the summer of 2013 and was suffering a skater’s version of dead arm, the affliction that baseball pitchers get when they have over-worked.

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“I was the only girl in my training group last season. I got really strong, but by October I was burned out. I was always tired and my heart rates were all off. It was hard to even qualify for the Olympics. I suffered from mono three years ago. It felt like that. Every morning, getting up was a chore. It didn’t matter how many hours I slept.”