ANDREW BATES
CUP Western Bureau Chief

An excitable Marianne St-Gelais leaned forward in her chair to tell a press conference about her birthday: “I woke up… I was nervous, but happy.”

Freshly out of her teens, the newly-minted silver medalist St-Gelais said that she had a good feeling starting at training the day before her women’s short-track (500m) speed skating competition.

“I just had a good feeling,” she said. “Just relaxed and watched TV, saw Maelle (Ricker) on the podium, looked around the condo and outside at the city.”

When St-Gelais made it to the ice, that feeling continued. “I took it one race at a time,” she said. “Each round felt like a final; I was happy to be there.”

St-Gelais was nervous about the quarter-final because one of her opponents, Lee Eun-Byul, had been a fellow finalist at the last World Cup event of 2009, but succeeding there gave her confidence about the semi-final.

“I said, ‘Marianne, just calm down, relax, take it easy, have fun. You are at the Olympics. It’s a hard one, but you do what you like, so have fun.’”

According to the effusive St-Gelais, she had focused so hard that she didn’t even realize how she had placed. “I finished second, and then I realized that I went to the finals,” she told the assembled press. “That’s probably why I reacted so hard.”

Once there, it was focus again that kept her in third.

“I was just thinking about following Meng Wang and focusing on her,” she said. Her focus excluded even the athletes behind her. “I thought that was my teammate behind me, so I just thought ‘do what you have to do, go all the way,’ ” she said. “We were so fast and it’s so hard to make a pass at this speed.”

As it turns out, St-Gelais was not being followed by teammate Jessica Gregg, but Italian Arianna Fontana. Her strategy paid off, however, as she finished a tenth of a second head of Fontana at 43.707 seconds to the Italian’s 43.804.

Both were tenths of a second behind gold medallist Meng Wang, who clocked in at 43.048. According to St-Gelais, Wang and the Chinese team are now a formidable presence in short-track. “She’s a really good skater, she’s the fastest skater in the world,” she said. “She’s (got) really fair play, and she’s just good.”

St-Gelais also extended accolades to the rest of Wang’s teammates. “In general, the Chinese team is really really strong, and we’ll see them again in the future,” she said. “I think we’re stuck with this team.”

After having earned her medal, she appeared nothing less than thrilled.

“I’m really really proud of my performance,” she said. “It’s more than a dream.” St-Gelais and her boyfriend, Charles Hamelin, were short on time to focus on her medal or her birthday, however.

St-Gelais is in the ladies’ 3000m relay on February 24th, while Hamelin still has the 5000m relay as well as the 500m and 1000m solo events to contend with. St-Gelais smiled when asked if she already celebrated her birthday or would celebrate later that evening. “Maybe after the last game,” she said. “On the 26th.”

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photo: Gerald Deo