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Newsletter by Dan Plouffe, Keiran Gorsky & Martin Cleary

At the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, speed skater Kristina Groves became Ottawa’s most decorated Olympian of all-time when she won her third and fourth career medals.

Isabelle Weidemann was a Grade 10 student at Colonel By Secondary School at the time and just starting to get a little more seriously into speed skating, having finished third in the juvenile girls’ mass start long-track provincial championships at the Brewer Oval.

Today in Italy, Weidemann equaled Groves’ career medal haul with a repeat gold in the women’s team pursuit at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, as students and staff packed into the cafetorium at Colonel By to cheer her on alongside fellow Gloucester Concordes product Ivanie Blondin and Canadian teammate Valérie Maltais of La Baie, QC.

“I’m so proud. And I’m so proud of all the work the three of us have done over the last four years,” Weidemann said via the Canadian Olympic Committee, explaining they had to overcome nations that had surpassed them in the discipline since they’d been victorious at Beijing 2022.

“We changed the strategy of our team a lot,” added Weidemann, who fronted Maltais and Blondin for the full six-lap race instead of exchanging leaders. “But I think we’ve also grown as athletes. We’re four years older. We’re a team of ‘Madames’, 30-year-old women, and we have a lot of experience and we know what it’s like dealing with the pressures, and really coming to the Olympics and wanting to perform for our families in the stands and sharing this experience with them again.”

Isabelle Weidemann (left) celebrates with Ivanie Blondin (centre) and Valérie Maltais after winning Olympic team pursuit gold. Photo: Leah Hennel / COC

Weidemann’s younger siblings Jake, who fell just short of qualifying for the 2026 Games, and Lily are also Colonel By grads, while her parents John and Laurel moved to Calgary to support their kids for several years at the national long-track team’s home base.

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“The whole family is just super nice, really open and positive, helpful and supportive,” Colonel By physical education department head Pat Lacasse told the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Dan Plouffe. “I mean, it’s no wonder she is where she is, because it all starts at home.”

Colonel By Secondary School team pursuit watch party. Photo: Dan Plouffe

The watch party was spurred by the Concordes and Speed Skating Ontario. SSO vice-chair Christina Chenard was thrilled to see the magical moment they envisioned come to fruition.

“It all starts here,” Chenard highlighted. “It starts with community coaches. It starts with community support. And to see the Gloucester Concordes, the Ottawa Pacers, Speed Skating Ontario and the city really come out and support their athletes and help them build those pathways is really key.”

The year after the Vancouver Olympics, Weidemann had a wonderful and somewhat unexpected breakthrough when she placed fourth in the women’s 3,000 metres skating outdoors at the Canada Winter Games in Halifax.

She progressed onto the national team and made her first Olympic team a little earlier than anticipated at age 22 in 2018. Weidemann then made herself into a regular international podium contender come Beijing 2022 when she wound up being chosen as Canada’s Closing Ceremonies flag bearer after winning a 3,000 m bronze medal – like Groves did in Vancouver – then silver in the 5,000 m and gold in team pursuit.

Teenaged Isabelle Weidemann at a Gloucester Concordes short-track speed skating practice at Bob MacQuarrie Recreation Complex – Orléans. Photo: Dan Plouffe

Following fifth-place finishes in her 3,000 and 5,000 races earlier at the Milano Cortina Games, Weidemann now has her fourth medal to match the total of Groves, who “really fuelled me as a 13-year-old gangly kid at the Oval,” Weidemann recalled after winning her first Olympic medal. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I just want to be like Kristina Groves.’

“Hey, success breeds success,” smiled Chenard, noting neither Groves nor Weidemann owned particularly sparkling results to their names before they joined the national team program “and just progressively got better and better and better and better” in their 20s.

“It shows that you don’t have to be the best in high school and you don’t have to be the best in every sport,” added Chenard, highlighting Weidemann’s background in alpine skiing, rowing, cross-country running and even soccer with the Cougars, which helped hone her athletic abilities, develop resiliency and build friendships to help fuel her love of sport.

“It’s really exciting for young athletes to know they came from the same place,” detailed the fellow CB grad. “Being able to see someone that did the same sports that they did here at school, or took the same classes, had the same teachers, and have walked some of the same paths that they’ve walked, to see her on the top step of the Olympic podium, it’s just really cool.”

Isabelle Weidemann running cross-country for the Colonel By Cougars. Photo: Dan Plouffe

Beacon Hill-Cyrville city councillor Tim Tierney, whose daughter ran cross-country with Weidemann in high school and has remained friends with her, was on hand to watch the historic moment.

“She’s a true ambassador. I mean, the entire family is,” Tierney indicated. “It was great to see the energy in this room. This is insane. You can tell there’s a lot of pride in Colonel By, that’s for sure.

“And it’s great for the next generations that come up.”

Also among the crowd was Grade 12 student Adella Akanko, an Ottawa Pacers speed skater who recently placed second in the open women’s 500 m at the long-track provincials.

Akanko’s classmates had been quizzing her a lot in advance of their race and knew not to panic when Canada was behind to the Netherlands early in the gold medal race – as is always the case while the Weidemann engine gets fired up. But most others in the crowd were groaning early on before their excitement built as the Canadians narrowed the gap and eventually took the lead en route to a victory by .96 seconds in 2:55.81.

“It was really great feeling the energy shifting. At first the disappointment of dropping laps, and then we start cutting back on the time, the cheering and the excitement. It was pretty amazing,” Akanko recounted.

Adella Akanko (left) and Christina Chenard. Photo: Dan Plouffe

“Knowing the hard work [Weidemann, Blondin and Maltais] have put in, everything they’ve gone through, I’m really proud as a Canadian, and as a speed skater especially, to see that, and also this great community at Colonel By, everyone coming out to support them.”

Akanko, who has been accepted to study at the University of Calgary in city design and innovation, hopes to join the development program at the Olympic Oval next season.

“Isabelle has been a big inspiration for me,” she underlined. “A lot of us will be going to Calgary next year to train, so it just gives us a lot of hope for the future of speed skating in Canada.”

WATCH CBC SPORTS | Canada successfully defends Olympic gold medal in the women’s team pursuit

There was another watch party held simultaneously at Garneau high school in honour of their alum Blondin, who has the chance to join or possibly even surpass Weidemann’s total of four Olympic medals before the end of Milano Cortina 2026.

“It’s incredible,” Blondin reflected in an interview with CBC Ottawa’s Omar Dabaghi-Pacheco, on assignment at the Games in Milano. “The whole crowd was with us. We had so many Canadian fans all the way around us.

“I actually look at the (video) screen during the race. I can kind of peek and I like to know what’s going on, and as soon as we got into the green and got ahead, the whole crowd started going and I was like, ‘Alright, we got this.’”

WATCH CBC SPORTS | “I’m PUMPED!” – Canada’s Blondin, Maltais, Weidemann reflect on their 2nd speed skating gold

Blondin, who is 35 like Maltais, said the group’s collective experience, plus skating together in the team pursuit for nearly a decade, was a huge asset.

“With the confidence we have going into these races, there is a sense of calm almost,” highlighted the winner of 94 career World Cup and 18 World Championships medals. “We were calm, collected and we knew what we had to get done, and we did it.”

Isabelle Weidemann leads Valérie Maltais and Ivanie Blondin to 2026 Olympic team pursuit gold. Photo: Leah Hennel / COC

Concordes head coach Mike Rivet watched the race with the group at Garneau, then headed to Brewer Park to get the ice in shape for perhaps the last skate of the season on the outdoor natural ice oval.

“I feel pumped,” Akanko signalled. “It’ll be a very celebratory practice with all of us out there just riding the high of watching this.”

World’s hardest-throwing female curler fires key bullet in big Canada win

Rachel Homan and her Ottawa Curling Club rink have won three matches in a row at Milano Cortina 2026. Photo: Candice Ward / COC

The Rachel Homan Ottawa Curling Club rink pulled out a mammoth 8-6 win over Sweden today to greatly improved their playoff prospects in the women’s curling tournament.

Locked in a relative stalemate with the lone unbeaten team in the event, Homan converted an exceptional triple takeout with her first skip stone of the seventh end while down 5-4.

WATCH CBC SPORTS | Rachel Homan pulls off triple takeout in 8th end against Sweden on day 11 of Milano Cortina 2026

The eye-popping shot prompted CBC commentator and former Homan teammate Joanne Courtney to remind viewers that Homan is the hardest-throwing female curler on the planet. The shot allowed Canada to earn a key deuce in the tight match.

“It was a huge moment for us to lie two and flip that,” Homan reflected via the COC. “I wasn’t quite sold” that the triple takeout was possible, she noted. “It looked tough to me, but the girls had belief, we swept it awesome, had a great line call, it was a big team shot and a big change in the game.”

A miss by Swedish skip Anna Hasselborg in the ninth end granted Canada a tie going into the final end with last-rock advantage, and Homan made a no-doubt final hit to score two and a crucial victory for Team Canada, which has inched its backs away from the wall after starting 1-3.

Homan, alongside Emma Miskew of Ottawa, Tracy Fleury and Sarah Wilkes, now have a 4-3 record, with a match against fellow 4-3 side South Korea on tap to close out the round robin. Canada will play 2-5 Italy before then, while the Koreans face the Swedes, who have already booked their place in the semi-finals at 6-1. Canada and South Korea are currently tied for the fourth and final playoff spot.

Team Canada’s Jay Dearborn (right) and Mike Evelyn O’Higgins blast off in the two-man bobsleigh event in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Feb. 17. Photo: Candice Ward / COC

In bobsleigh, Jay Dearborn again struggled with the challenging top portion of the Cortina track as he and fellow Ottawa bobsledder Mike Evelyn O’Higgins failed to crack the top-20 required to race in the fourth run of the two-man competition.

They finished 1.09 seconds back of the cut-off with a combined time of 2:49.78 for the three runs to place 23rd. Dearborn and O’Higgins recorded the fourth-quickest start time of 4.84 in heat 3, behind the German teams who swept the podium. They had the sixth-fastest push starts combined for the first three heats out of the 26 entered.

In biathlon, Ottawa’s Zach Connelly and the Canadian men placed 17th in the 4×7.5 km relay. The 24-year-old first-time Olympian was perfect in the prone shooting position but struggled in the standing portion, requiring a penalty lap and loading three extra bullets to hit the targets. He still lifted Canada one place from 18th on his anchor leg in the 20-team event.

Ottawa Olympians in action on Feb. 18:

Day 12 Preview: ‘We’ve always stuck together,’ Emma Miskew on lifelong teammate Rachel Homan

As Emma Miskew and Rachel Homan ready for their next big challenge of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics – a crucial test Wednesday against the host Italians – the Ottawa Curling Club pair can draw on all kinds of experiences, including a time when winning didn’t come quite so easily for the all-time leaders in Grand Slam titles.

Emma Miskew readies to sweep at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics. Photo: Candice Ward / COC

In their relentlessly mental sport, vibes are perpetually on thin ice. When nothing is right, when shots are missed, it becomes too easy to deduce that something is fundamentally wrong and needs to be changed.

Maybe that would have been the easy answer after Team Homan’s swift departure from Miskew and Homan’s last shared Olympic outing at PyeongChang in 2018 – a rare blemish on a near spotless record for the teammates since their earliest days in curling.

In South Korea, they dropped their first three games and ended the round robin with a losing record, ultimately failing to qualify for the semifinals. The result kicked off Canada’s now 12-year Olympic medal drought in women’s curling.

But it wasn’t cause for panic.

“I think that a lot of people decide, after going through some hard years, to go a different direction or make a team change, but we’ve always stuck together and worked hard together,” Miskew noted in a pre-Games interview with the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Keiran Gorsky. “Her talent and her drive and everything has also motivated me to do the same on my end through all these years. So we motivate each other. We help each other.”

Homan and Miskew first met at a Little Rocks program at the Rideau Curling Club and later teamed up to win four consecutive Ontario Bantam titles from 2003 to 2006, followed by a 2007 Canada Winter Games gold medal.

The 2010 world junior silver medallists have gone on to capture five Scotties Tournament of Hearts Canadian women’s titles.

Rachel Homan (left) and Emma Miskew celebrated the second world titles of their careers at the 2025 championships in Sydney, N.S. Photo: Curling Canada / Facebook

The past two seasons have been especially remarkable for Team Homan. They became the first team to go through the full Scotties tournament undefeated in 2024 and then repeated that perfect record in 2025 and went on to earn their second consecutive world title, concluding a dominant run of 142 match wins and just 15 losses over those two seasons.

Despite a hiccup at the 2018 Olympics, and the occasional reminder that it’s been awhile since the traditionally strongest women’s curling nation in the world has hit the podium, Miskew suggested that Canada’s medal drought isn’t racking her mind.

With myriad overarching narratives, real and imagined, the only real constant is the one who’s been by the Brookfield High School and Carleton University grad’s side for the last 25 years.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better person to go through this journey with than Rachel,” Miskew underlined.

You can read Gorsky’s full feature on Miskew here on OttawaSportsPages.ca.

Also in action on Wednesday will be Gatineau cross-country skier Antoine Cyr, who will race first and tag off to Xavier McKeever in the men’s team sprint free event, while University of Ottawa Gee-Gees product Shilo Rousseau will race the second leg for Canada in the women’s 4×6 km relay biathlon event.

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