MONTREAL — A Canadian short-track speedskating squad loaded down with medals from the 2010 Winter Olympics begins a new season this week, but one of the team’s biggest rivals will be missing.
Double gold medallist Lee Jung-Su and his South Korean teammates will skip World Cup meets this week in Montreal and next week in Quebec City while they sort out a controversy over race-fixing and favouritism back home.
“It’s disappointing for the event,” Canadian coach Yves Hamelin said Wednesday.
“They are our main rivals and we love fighting against them.
“We know it will be a bit easier for our top athletes to reach finals, but there will still be some good racing.”
The South Korean Olympic Committee suspended some athletes and a coach and moved their team trials from April to September after finding that some athletes had been held out of races and some results had been fabricated.
The Koreans are just finishing up a lengthy new team qualification system this week and won’t be ready to compete until the third and fourth World Cup meets in December in China.
But Hamelin said there will be plenty of competition from China, Japan the United States and some of the emerging European teams to test Canada, one of the top powers in the sport.
Between them, long- and short-track speedskaters were Canada’s top performers at the Vancouver Games, with short-track taking two gold, two silver and a bronze, including golds by the coach’s son Charles Hamelin in the 500-metre race and the men’s relay.
“It’s going to be a bit different without the Koreans,” said Charles Hamelin.
“But it will give a chance to younger skaters who are new to the World Cup to step on the podium.
“We’ll see the Koreans in China in a few weeks and I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
Hamelin said he and his girlfriend, women’s 500-metre silver medallist Marianne St-Gelais, took a refreshing break after the Games last February, but were back on the ice at the team’s Montreal training base in early May to begin the process of building towards the next Olympics in 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
He said he will take a different approach for this four-year cycle — placing less importance on winning races so he can work on tactics and situational racing.
The aim is to be a mentally stronger skater for the next Games.
“My goal is to try new strategies to make myself more dangerous for 2014,” he said.
“Now it’s not to win medals, but to work on things that are difficult mentally — to put myself in situations where I’m not always in control, so that even if I’m last, I won’t panic and do stupid things.”
The men’s team is largely unchanged from last year and is still led by brothers Charles and Francois Hamelin, Olivier Jean and Francois-Louis Tremblay.
Five are gone from the women’s team, including Kalyna Roberge, who opted to take at least one year off, and veteran Tanya Vicente, who has retired and will work as a television analyst at the competition.
The coaching staff hopes to work as many new skaters as possible into the World Cup events this week to give them international experience.
One who is ready to go is Michael Gilday, the Yellowknife skater who just missed making the Olympic squad.
“It was a disappointment to be just off the team but now we’re starting again, so it’s time to work on the little things I’m missing and build for four years from now,” the 23-year-old said.
“It’s a lot of the technical aspects for me.
“This year especially we’re taking time to iron out all the technical deficiencies so later on we can just worry about getting into shape.”
Mostly, the new season marks a return to normalcy after a hectic 2009-2010 season spend building toward an Olympics on home ice.
“Last year was a really long season for us, almost 12 full months of training,” added Gilday.
“It was important to take some time to be sure we were mentally recovered and not burned out.”
Jessica Hewitt has moved from Calgary to Montreal, where most of the team trains at the Maurice Richard Arena where the World Cup will be held.
“It’s a big change living in a new city and training in a new environment with a new coach,” she said. ”I’m still adjusting to everything, but it’s been fun so far.”