Ted-Jan Bloemen the second Canadian athlete to win the 10,000 m race
The long track speed skater won gold in the 10,000m on Thursday night, adding it to the silver he captured in the 5000m four nights earlier. Ted-Jan Bloemen becomes the only second Canadian athlete to win the gruelling 10,000 m race. With this gold, Canada has taken its medal tally to 12 with four medals in each category - gold, silver and bronze - to take fifth spot. Canada's only other Olympic medal in the 10,000m came at Lake Placid in 1932 when Frank Stack won a bronze, more than eight decades ago At that time the races were contested pack-style, much like today's short track speed skating. Bloemen completed the 27 laps of the Gangneung Oval in 12:39.77, knocking 2.21 seconds off the Olympic record that had been set in the prior pair by defending Olympic champion Jorrit Bergsma of the Netherlands. Bloemen had been very consistent with his lap times throughout the race, but managed to drop a couple below the 30-second mark in the last 2000m. Bloemen broke the world record in the 10,000m in November 2015 before winning silver in the distance at the 2016 World Single Distances Championships. He won silver in the only 10,000m World Cup race held this past fall in Stavanger, Norway, finishing second to Dutch star Sven Kramer. PyeongChang 2018 was actually the first Games for which Canada qualified in the men's 10,000m sincec Turin 2006. Meanwhile, India's second entry Jagdish Singh will compete tomorrow in Cross Country skiing. Only other Indian athlete here, Shiv Keshavan, finished 34th in men's Luge.
