World record, World championship gold: Graeme Fish looks back on incredible season

As Moose Jaw’s Graeme Fish made his way home from the International Skating Union World Cup #6 in the Netherlands at the beginning of March, he had to have carried with him an immense sense of accomplishment.

He’d just capped a stunning break-out season on the ISU speedskating circuit with a second-place finish in the 5,000 metres in Heerenveen, giving him a total of 306 points on the season and third-place overall in the World Cup standings.

But no sooner was the 22-year-old back on Canadian soil when bad news hit: a passenger on his plane, only three rows behind, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus that caused COVID-19.

The disease hadn’t taken a serious foothold in Canada at that point — Alberta had just reported its first presumptive case — but Fish wasn’t taking any chances, immediately going into a 14-day quarantine.

“My roommates and stuff, they were there, so it wasn’t bad,” Fish said from his Moose Jaw home last week. “Maybe I was asymptomatic and had it and didn’t even know it, so it was definitely something that had to be done.”

Fortunately, no symptoms presented themselves and once the 14 days were up, it was back to training and looking back on a season that not even Fish himself would have expected in his wildest dreams.

The third-place finish in the World Cup distance standings would be enough to indicate a stunningly impressive season for a rookie on the full-time circuit.

But then there was the day of days on Friday, February 14.

Fish, skating in the 10,000 metres at the Single Distance World Championships in Salt Lake City, was coming off a surprise bronze-medal personal-best performance in the 5,000 metres a day earlier, giving him his first world championship medal.

The thing is, the 5,000 wasn’t his specialty, and winning that ducat was a sign that things were going exceptionally well.

“My 5K in Calgary [the weekend prior], that was my first time ever medaling in the 5K, and then the next weekend when I had a 6:06 and won bronze, I thought I had a chance at a medal [in the 10k],” Fish said. “So going into it I was confident that I was going to have a good weekend, but as it turned out…”

‘Good’ was quite possibly the most understated description possible for what would happen that afternoon.

Fish would skate the 10,000 metres in a time of 12:33.868, knocking nearly two and a half seconds off the world record mark on his way to winning gold. And right behind him was teammate and former world record holder Ted-Jan Bloeman, finishing in 12:45.010 to land silver.

It was a fitting finish given how much Fish, Bloeman and fellow World Cup teammate Jordan Belchos had worked together throughout the campaign.

“I think at the start of the season, that I’d be a world record holder by the end of it, I don’t know if I’d have believed it. Maybe if I was in my late-20s,” Fish said. “I was skating with Ted, who’s the world record holder, he was showing me how to do things, and Jordan as well. But I didn’t think it would happen this quickly, it’s kind of surprising, for sure.

“We all support each other, which is why I think all three of us did really well this season. We all try to do what we can to help each other and with a good team, anything can happen. It showed this year.”

The race itself is a long one, covering 25 laps of the 400-metre oval. It was at lap 15, with 10 to go, that Fish officially took the lead for the first time. And at that same time, dipped below world record pace.

“They started showing the time on the screen and my coach was telling me ‘oh, you’re a second off the world record’ and every time I went past they were yelling ‘world record, world record’ so I knew I was on pace,” Fish said. “And I knew where Ted’s pace was when he did it. So I knew it was close, and then all of a sudden I was under it.

“So I just focussed on my technique and maintaining my execution and I ended up getting it.”

And just like that, Graeme Fish, the former Kinsmen Moose Jaw Speedskating Club competitor few outside of the Friendly City had heard about before that weekend, was all of a sudden a Canadian Olympic medal hopeful.

The Beijing Games are still two years away, of course, and lots can happen between now and then. But as of a right now, Fish is one to watch.

“I haven’t really been thinking too much about that, the Olympics are still a ways away, but I know they’re going to be looking at me because I set the world record and all that,” Fish said. “But I’m just going to keep working as hard as I can because anyone in Canada or the rest of the world could come up and set a new record. And I still have to make the Olympic team and qualify for that. That’s a ways away, but I’ll keep working on it and focussing on improving as much as I can.”

For now, though, it’s a matter of dealing with today. In a normal season and normal times, Fish would be gearing up to return to Calgary at the end of the month and start preparing for the 2020-21 campaign.

But that will likely be on hold for the foreseeable future due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve just been kind of relaxing right now, we start up again on April 27,” Fish said. “The thing about skating is it’s nice to train with people, but you still have dryland you can do. We all have the same goals and are doing the same thing, but we’re in contact with our coaches and following the plan. It’s tough, but there’s nothing you can do to change it.”

The main long track training schedule kicks in at the end of June, and even that late of a date is still up in the air.

“So it could be an extended stay here, since we won’t be training as a group,” Fish said. “You just have to think positive about what you can do in the moment. Training is fun for me whether with or without someone. I’m not expecting anything soon, who knows if we’ll be training together in the next two months? So we’ll just wait and see and hopefully we’ll be able to get together soon.