Christine Nesbitt takes 1,000m World Cup silver in Japan

Canadian speed skater Christine Nesbitt won the silver medal in the 1,000-metre race at the Essent ISU World Cup event in Nagano, Japan.

Nesbitt, who won two gold medals during the last ISU stop last week in Astana, Kazakhstan, finished with a time of 1:15.45. American Heather Richardson won the race after clocking 1:15.24, while Dutch skater Lotte van Beek took bronze (1:16.15).

The London, Ont., native now accumulates five medals this season and a career total of 62 podiums.

"I think it was a pretty good race. The last weeks of World Cups I feel like I've been struggling to find my skating a bit," said Nesbitt. "It wasn't a perfect race, but it was a step in the right direction. I feel like I built some confidence. There are a lot of mistakes that I made still, and they can be perfected. I'm excited about it and looking forward to working on those things."

In the men's 1,000-metre event, Winnipeg's Tyler Derraugh finished fourth with a time of 1:09.98 for a World Cup career best and missing the bronze by only 0.14 seconds.

Pekka Koskela of Finland won the gold medal in 1:09.52, Germany's Samuel Schwarz took silver after stopping the clock at 1:09.69, and Kyou-Hyuk Lee of Korea rounded the podium (1:09.85).

"It was a really exciting race today. I changed some of my focus points and technical points that I wanted to improve from the last 1,000 I did in Heerenveen," said Derraugh. "I had some success in changing those in my race and it went a lot smoother and I felt a lot stronger towards the end of the race."

Denny Morrison of Fort St. John, B.C. was sixth (1:10.19), Edmonton's Jamie Gregg took ninth place (1:10.66), and Philippe Riopel of Lachenaie, Que., was 15th overall with a time of 1:11.71.