Canadian speed skater Valérie Maltais earned a bronze medal in the women’s 1,500-metre event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina.
CBC Sports, a Canadian news outlet, reports that this marks Maltais’s third medal at these Games, following a gold in the team pursuit and a bronze in the 3,000 metres earlier in the competition.
Maltais, from La Baie, Quebec, completed the 1,500-metre race in 1 minute 54.40 seconds, positioning her ahead of American skater Brittany Bowe, who finished fourth and will retire after this Olympics. This was Maltais’s best finish in the 1,500 metres at the Winter Games, improving significantly from her previous appearances, including a 12th-place result at Sochi 2014.
Antoinette Rijpma-de Jong of the Netherlands claimed gold with a time of 1:54.09, while Norway’s Ragne Wiklund took silver in 1:54.15, marking her second silver and third overall medal at these Games. The Netherlands continue to dominate the women’s 1,500 metres, having won the event at five consecutive Winter Olympics starting in Vancouver 2010.
Japanese skater Miho Takagi, who holds the world record for this distance, finished sixth in 1:54.865. Meanwhile, Canadian Ivanie Blondin placed eighth among 29 competitors, completing the race in 1:54.93. Other Canadian athletes in the event included Béatrice Lamarche of Quebec City, who finished 17th with a time of 1:57.65. Lamarche is an Olympic rookie who recently achieved a fifth-place finish in the 1,000 metres, Canada’s best result in that event since 2010.
