Éric Bédard put Sainte-Thècle, Que., on the world speed skating map.
As one of Canada’s most accomplished short track speed skaters, Bédard competed in three Olympic Games and won medals in all of three.
In Nagano in 1998 he helped Canada win gold with the 5,000-metre relay team and was the bronze medalist in the 1,000 m individual event. At Salt Lake City in 2002 he was a repeat winner in the 5,000 m relay, and in 2006 in Turin he claimed silver in the 500 m.
Bédard also won eight world championship medals and finished second overall in the world standings in 2000.
Prince George has its own world champion, 27-year-old long track speed skater Carolina Hiller, who successfully defended her team sprint world title last spring in Calgary. Hiller paid her dues as a club skater with the Prince George Blizzard Speed Skating Club which gave her foundation of skills she hopes will pay off next year at the 2026 Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Bédard says it's vital for their development to show kids what’s possible if they stick with their sport and want to succeed badly enough to put in the time it takes to be a full-time athlete and Hiller, now in her second year with the senior team, is that beacon for Prince George kids to emulate
“It’s just amazing for a club like this to have a world champion,” said Bédard, 48, in in Prince George for the Canadian Junior Open short track meet, Jan. 11-12.
“I’m from a really small village as well, like 3,000 people, and it’s exactly the same. We didn’t realize at 20 or 25 years old when you win a medal and you’re on the podium, but when you come back to the club you inspire the kids and now this is our job – to inspire more kids.”
Bédard is head coach of Les Élans de Trois-Rivières club in Quebec and he brought several skaters with him to the two-day Prince George competition.
“I was not supposed to coach the club but the coach left and said , ‘Hey, do you want to do it?’ I was part-time and now it’s a lot of hours, but it’s really good,” he said. “The athletes of course they trust me and I can inspire them and teach them to skate well and skate low and it’s really good as a coach to see the progression. So even though it’s not national team, it’s club, when you see athletes grow like that, it’s inspiring.”
Bédard turned to coaching when he retired as an athlete in 2006 and headed the German team that competed in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and switched to the Italian team that won four medals (three gold, one silver) at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
He was the high performance director with Olympic Oval program in Calgary in 2015 when Prince George hosted the Canada Winter Games and that was his first visit to PG to watch his athletes in action that year at Kin 1.
One of the highlights of Bédard’s coaching life was seeing the turnaround in the attitude of one of his skaters struggling with bad grades at school and how skating and the discipline required in training changed his life for the better.
“This person for sure would have never finished his high school and he’s really smiling and happy now,” said Bédard. “You have the good stories of a skater who grows up and wins a lot of medals but you also have those really important stories of a skater who will never be a good athlete but you keep him in sport and he finishes high school because he was attached to speed skating.”
Bédard coached the German team at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and was head coach of the Italian team that won it first short track medals at the Sochi Olympics in 2014.
He has a company, Nagano Skates, based in Quebec City, that supplies speed skating equipment and team apparel all over the world. His skin suits are worn by skaters from 125 clubs in Canada.
Quebec has 52 clubs and close to 7,000 of Canada’s 12,000 speed skaters (short track and long track) are from there. By comparison, BC’s 23 speed skating clubs have about 1,400 skaters.
There were no Canadian records set at Kin 1. Bédard said the ice isn’t as fast as Calgary’s but the quality was certainly up to national standards.
“It’s normal ice, it’s not fast but it’s grippy, the edge stays there and that means the ice is clean, so that’s a really good thing, the guys here did a really good job,” he said.” Nobody complained about the ice and that’s good.”
Bédard said the top 40 male and top 40 female skaters aged 16-18 stayed in Montreal and did not attend the Prince George meet. Even so, the calibre of racing and the speed of the skaters ripping around the track at Kin 1 for those two days of competition was phenomenal.
The faster skaters stayed close to Sherbrooke, Que., which is hosting the Canada Cup No. 1 event this weekend (Jan. 24-26), a qualifier for the Canada Cup Junior Final in March in Calgary. The top three males and female skaters in the aggregate from the Prince George races qualified for Canada Cup No. 1. Canada’s top senior skaters are also at the Sherbrooke meet, which is the qualifier for the World Cup 5 and 6 and world.
The Prince George Blizzard has 84 skaters, most of them in the younger age groups, and part of the reason the club wanted to stage the Canadian Junior Open was to expose those kids to high-level racing.
“It’s one thing to see it on TV or on the web but it’s something else to see it live,” said Bédard. “To represent Canada at the international level you need to know how to race. It’s what we try to develop in Quebec but also this weekend (in Prince George).
“In hockey we say you have to develop your hockey IQ and it’s the same in short track. If you have the racing IQ pretty high you have a chance. We have a lot of good athletes in Canada and when they pass through to the top and they are top-five in Canada they are there because they know how to race and how to compete.”
Bédard was on the Canadian relay team that several times set the world record in the 5,000m and he said that was only possible because they trained together all the time at the short track training centre in Montreal.
“We did it because we were good, but also because the spirit was there,” he said.
