Canada continued collecting Olympic gold medals with a win in the men’s long-track speed skating team pursuit.
Canadian skaters Mathieu Giroux, Lucas Makowsky, and Denny Morrison defeated the U.S. squad to keep Canada at the top of the list.
“It is a weight off the shoulders,” Morrison told AP. “It is not an individual race. It is representing Canada. It was amazing.”
The United States and Canada faced off the for the gold using different strategies to achieve the same goal: to get the entire three-man team across the finish line before their opponent’s last skater crossed the line.
In the end, the race came down not to strategy, but the injured left hip of American skater Chad Hedrick, and to the overall speed of the Canadian team.
The Canadian team planned to use an unorthodox two-lap per skater strategy to complete the eight-lap, 3200-meter race, with Morrison skating fiorst and last stint. This would cut down on time switching leaders, but would put more strain on each lead skater.
The U.S. team, Brian Hansen, Chad Hedrick, and Jonathan Kuck planned to use the normal lap-and-a-half rotation, which cost more in leader changes, but kept each skater fresher.
Hedrick’s participation had been questionable before the race. His left hip was causing him pain. He suggested that he might not be able to compete, but in the end, decided to press on, because he had already decided 2010 would be his last Olympic Games.
Canada, led by Morrison, came out faster, getting tucked into formation and locked into stride quickly, while the Americans seemed a little less organized. The Americans were .73 seconds behind after the first lap.
The U.S. tightened up and sped up, cutting the gap to .43 seconds by the halfway point, and cut the margin still further, to .29 seconds with three laps left. They slowed on the next lap, while the Canadians kept right on their pace, stretching their lead to more than half a second.
The United States team was not going quietly, however. The U.S. team turned up the wick and cut the Canadian lead in half by the start of the final lap. But Chad Hedrick was struggling, falling behind his teammates and visibly grimacing.
Still, somehow Hedrick pushed himself on, and the U.S. team increased their pace. The Canadians, with Morrison once again in the lead, kept rolling steady as a train—a bullet train, to be sure—and the home team crossed the line of the Americans by a margin of two-tenths of a second.
The Canadians won another gold, and Chad Hedrick won his fifth Olympic medal. “This is my fifth medal, all at different distances, a major accomplishment for me,” Hedrick told an AP reporter. “It’s definitely been a great ride.”
