On Tuesday, Canada took home gold in the women’s team pursuit event, making it back-to-back Olympic wins for the trio consisting of Ivanie Blondin, Valerie Maltais and Isabelle Weidemann. However, Blondin’s successes are not confined to the world of speed skating. She is also an accomplished bike racer.
Gold again! 🥇
Team Canada’s women’s long track pursuit holds onto their title 👑 pic.twitter.com/pL2Zzrt2xG
— Team Canada (@TeamCanada) February 17, 2026
It was in 2024 when Blondin started to take cycling seriously, more than just a means of building fitness for the winter. She signed a contract and was training for bike races. While riding for GS ETFs Racing that season, she managed a third place at the Gastown Grand Prix in Vancouver. In summer 2025, with Automatic, she had top-10 finishes at both Gastown and the Athens Orthopedic Clinic Twilight Criterium in Georgia, one of the biggest crit races in North America. She’s clearly got this whole going in circles quickly thing down pat.
Milano Cortina 2026 marks Blondin’s fourth Olympic Games. At Beijing in 2022, Blondin and her teammates secured a gold medal for Canada. She also took a silver in the mass start that year.
Blondin got into cycling through skating. Many athletes train on the bike throughout the summer months, with as much as 75 per cent of their workouts being cycling, according to Blondin. The two disciplines have long been linked, with Winnipeg’s Clara Hughes taking medals on both bikes and blades, while LottoNL–Jumbo (now Visma-Lease a Bike) was connected under the Jumbo sponsorship with a skating team.
From the start, Blondin was destined to race. She was taught how to skate at two years old by her dad, who built the neighbourhood rink every year. After that, she went into figure skating, but her coach suggested she try speed skating instead. There was no looking back; she was hooked on the speed that is shared on the ice and on the road.