Short track speed skater Rikki Doak learned a lesson that is pushing her to the finish line

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Rikki Doak watched the Beijing Olympics on TV last February, kicking herself the whole time.

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The short track speed skater from Fredericton should have been competing for Canada, alongside the likes of national team star Kim Boutin and fellow New Brunswick native Courtney Sarault. At least, that was the plan until the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into the works.

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Short track training, like most other facets of life in public, was shut down in the early stages of the pandemic, in hopes of mitigating the spread of the virus. Like most of Canada’s national team athletes, skaters were left to train on their own for months at a time. Some did as they were instructed, some didn’t.

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“For me, I feel it was like a lack of motivation, a lack of wanting to suffer every day,” Doak, 24, said late last month. “If we had training at home, it was easier to skip a few, like, it won’t hurt. Well, too many of those actually did end up hurting because I didn’t perform.”

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She said she finished eighth overall in the national team selection races for the 2020-21 World Cup season and lost the spot she won in the fall of 2019. Doak wound up eighth at the Olympic trials in early 2022 as well, on the outside looking in again.

“They took the top six, so I was close, but not close enough,” Doak said. “I think that actually put a lot into perspective for me. I was like I have to put in the work if I want to perform as I was. Since that moment, I trained as I should have during the pandemic year. So I think it actually kind of was like a curse, but also a blessing. It taught me that I have to push in every training and give everything.”

The lesson was painful but has been incredibly effective. Though the 2022-23 World Cup season is just two events old — it kicked off in Montreal in late October and moved to Salt Lake City last weekend — Doak already has three medals to show for her efforts. On Sunday, she skated to the first individual World Cup medal of her career, a bronze in the second of two women’s 500-metre races.

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She was in position behind race winner Xandra Velzeboer of the Netherlands and looked to score a silver, but both Doak and teammate Danae Blais were passed by Korea’s Choi Min-jeong on the final turn. Doak just barely edged Blais at the line for the last spot on the podium.

“I was aggressive until the very end and am so happy to win my first individual distance World Cup medal,” Doak said.

She had already grabbed a silver medal as part of the 3,000-metre women’s relay team and a bronze in the 2,000-metre mixed relay squad in Montreal. That growing collection of baubles puts her ahead of her own schedule for this season. She came into the first two World Cup stops thinking she would experiment with tactics, ensure she was setting up her passes well, gain experience and have fun. She wasn’t really zeroed in on the podium.

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Now, assuming she re-qualifies for the remainder of the six-event World Cup tour, there is no telling what to expect from her, beyond her full attention to training, that is.

“That’s the thing. I have to think about it. It’s not just me. I have to beat other girls who train just as hard as I do. It’s going to take a lot of work.”

She has a fine role model on the ice with her every day at the national training centre in Montreal. Boutin, who won a gold medal in the first of two 500-metre races in Salt Lake City, is the acknowledged team leader these days.

“I look up to Kim every day,” said Doak. “It’s easy to see how she takes on a certain training. She helps me. If I’m not feeling good, she has wise words to keep me going. She is a person I look up to a lot. She knows how to lead people. We all look up to her and we all want to learn from her.

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“And on the men’s team, we have Pascal (Dion) and Max (Laoun) who are great teammates and they help us train harder. It’s nice to be around all these people who have won medals, have experienced it, just to learn from them.”

Dion won Olympic gold as a member of the men’s 5,000-metre relay in Beijing, and bronze at Pyeongchang 2018, and will be in the mix for Canada in Italy in 2026. Doak is committed to being there too.

“That’s definitely the top goal,” she said. “It’s a long road.”

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