The Maple Leaf can therefore count on experienced training for the 2023-2024 season, while all its members took part in circuit events last year, collecting a total of 30 medals, including eight gold and 14 money, across the six stages.

In the 500-meter run and mass start, Laurent Dubreuil and Ivanie Blondin were even crowned World Cup champions, while the women’s pursuit team, in which Valérie Maltais ran alongside Blondin and Isabelle Weidemann, also took first place overall.

All of these wonderful people will take the lead in the first four stages of the fall and set the table for the two international meetings scheduled on Canadian soil this winter. Either February 2-4 at the Intact Assurance Ice Center in Quebec and February 15-18 at the Olympic Oval in Calgary.

Until then, the 18 skaters on the Canadian team will visit Obihiro in Japan (November 10-12), Beijing in China (November 17-19), Stavanger in Norway (December 1-3) and Tomaszów Mazowiecki in Poland (December 8th to 10th).

After winning three of the four distances in her program at the Canadian Long Course Championships in early October, Valérie Maltais still has big ambitions for this season.

“I still take it seriously. I want to perform well and still have high goals, but at the same time I have to accept that I won’t immediately be at the level of form I had last year. That’s fine, but as a top athlete you always want to do your best,” she told her colleague Johanne Saint-Pierre a few weeks ago.

Remember that Valérie Maltais, who has now moved to Quebec, left the Beijing 2022 Olympics with a gold medal.