Canada's Laurent Dubreuil captures gold in 500m at speed skating worlds
Canada takes silver in both women's and men's team pursuit
Canadian Laurent Dubreuil struck gold in the men's 500-metre race at the ISU speed skating world championship on Friday in Heerenveen, Netherlands.
The 28-year-old from Lévis, Que., is the first Canadian to take that sprint title since Jeremy Wotherspoon in 2008.
Dubreuil won by a slim margin, beating out Russia's Pavel Kulizhnikov by 0.14 seconds with a time of 34.398 seconds.
The Netherlands' Dai Dai N'tab and Kai Verbij finished in third and fourth place, falling 0.23 and 0.28 seconds back of first place, with times of 34.678 and 34.698.
WATCH | Canada's Laurent Dubreuil, 500 metre world champion:
Women's team pursuit silver
Canada came away with silver in the women's team pursuit event.
The women's team of Isabelle Weidemann, Ivanie Blondin and Valerie Maltais, seemed visibly upset by the result after falling 0.17 seconds short of the Netherlands' gold medal-winning time.
A gold medal finish for Canada would have made it their first world championship title since 2011.
WATCH | Canadian women capture world championship silver medal in team pursuit:
Canada seemed destined to win it, being first from the second lap, all the way through until the very last lap, where it slipped away from them, allowing the Netherlands to win by such a slim margin.
Russia finished in third with a time of two minutes 59.358 seconds, followed by Norway in fourth with a time of 2:59.631.
Canadian men take silver
On the men's side, Canada also found its way onto the podium in the team pursuit event, taking silver.
WATCH | Canadian men add team pursuit silver medal at world championships:
Calgary's Ted-Jan Bloemen, Toronto's Jordan Belchos and Connor Howe of Canmore, Alta., fell 0.28 seconds shy of the gold medal-winning time of 3:41.429 that the Netherlands team posted.
Never out of reach of winning the race, the Canadian team was second coming out of the first lap, then fell to third from that point until they got through lap four.
The Canadians skaters managed to find their way into first place until lap six where they surrendered the lead to the Netherlands and were never able to recover.
With files from The Canadian Press
