BEIJING They never saw him coming.
Not the ridiculously packed field for the Olympic 1,500-metre short-track speedskating final — 10 contestants in the field, so many that the race had to be started with a double-bank of skaters, six in the front, four in the back. Steven Dubois was in the back.
And not, to be perfectly frank, even his Canadian teammates on a much-ballyhooed short-track platoon, where the 24-year-old from Terrebonne, Que., an Olympic rookie, casts the shortest shadow, eclipsed by a whole clutch of medal-gaudy compatriots. Certainly the least likely to threaten for a podium when the evening began on Wednesday.
Yet it was Dubois who snatched glory from what had been unfolding as a most miserable night for Canada at the Capital Indoor Stadium.
From the rear of the pack to a photo finish at the finish line and silver, in what isn’t even Dubois’ strongest distance — he’s a 500-meter specialist, an alternate on the squad four years ago for Pyeongchang, left at home.
“I’ve been training for the 500 the whole year. The 1,500 is not my distance, for sure.”
But damn if the 15th-ranked Dubois didn’t deliver to Canada its second silver of the 2022 Winter Games, eighth medal overall, in a thriller of a race, straining to stretch a toe over the line a nanosecond ahead of Semen Elistratov from the Russian Olympic Committee, and a heartbeat behind South Korea’s Daeheon Hwang.
As screeches erupted from the Canadian women’s relay team that had stayed to watch, even Dubois looked stunned at what he’d just achieved.
“Definitely disbelief.”
Let’s rewind the tape. In the quarterfinal heat, Dubois barely squeezed in as third and final qualifier.
“The first race, I knew I wanted to be in front. I wanted to test my legs, how much I can pull, how fast I can go. So I went to the front. On my way out to the front, I got pushed a bit so I got relegated to last position. It’s a good thing that I’ve been practicing being patient, making smart choices, smart passes, for the last three years. So I was able to come back through and made my way to third position.”
In the ensuring semifinal, Dubois had to sweat out a video review.
It appeared he’d lost a skate edge and had fallen out of the pack but was given an advancement to the final upon further scrutiny.
“In the semi, I knew I had my legs. I knew I could beat out of the race if I wanted to.”
Meaning the underpinnings would hold up, if he went full-throttle.
“My strategy was to go to the front and then I slowed down a bit so I didn’t have to pull the whole race. Then one of the skaters did an outside pass, hit me on my shoulder, made me lose all my speed.”
He was one of four skaters who advanced after the head referee handed out penalties in two of the three semifinal races. Charles Hamelin, the dean of short-track speedskating in Canada — in the world, really — was among those punctuated.
“It was one of those things where I was in position to qualify for the B final,” Dubois continued, in his rat-a-tat play-by-play for reporters in the mixed zone afterwards. “I couldn’t do anything about it. In my mind I knew it was an advancement but the announcer and the referee waited a long time. So I was beginning to panic a bit, I’ll be honest.”
World record holder Sjinkie Knegt of the Netherlands it was, by the way, who’d made contact with Dubois, sending him careening into the wall, and penalized-booted for it. Because Dubois was in a spot where he would have advanced to the final at the point of that incident, he was granted a sniff at medals showtime.
But still, even given how chaotic short-track can be — that’s the magnetism of it — Dubois didn’t loom as podium potential. That muscle had belonged to Hamelin, gold at the distance in 2014, and Pascal Dion, ranked No. 1 in the event after reaching the podium three times in four World Cup events this season but lost his footing and was knocked out of his semifinal.
The final began cautiously, everyone read of the jam rendered by 10 participants.
“When there’s 10 people in a race, you can’t really be in the back,” Dubois explained. “Because there’s no way you’re going to come back. You saw it in this race. The top three races that were there in the last five to six laps, we all finished 1-2-3.”
Because Dubois had a plan, see. He picked his spot, made a significant move with nine of the 13 1/2 laps remaining, then jumped up to a second in the next lap.
“It was going so fast because nobody wants to be in the back. So everyone moved fast to the front. I was starting on the backline and I got kind of squeezed. The Italian guy went to the front. I have set off the pace, super-fast.
“Then, I didn’t really want to use my legs to get to the front. But I knew that one of the Koreans would make a move. Then I saw the Korean guy preparing something, I could see it in his strides of him… he’s accelerating…
Breathless now in the retelling.
“He did an inside pass… then outside. I kind of had doubts, halfway. It was a long way to the front. I was, like, whatever, I’ll just follow and use my legs, get up to the front, then I’m in the best position I can be.”
Wondering, where would they try to pass him. “I was expecting so much, outside, inside. But only one person tried to pass me, tried to take my spot, and I blocked him, and made myself a spot.”
The bell lap was frenzied but Dubois held off Elistratov, just.
“I knew if I was smart in the way I race, then use my legs and don’t make bad choices, I could be there. And that’s what I did. One big pass and that’s all it took for me to win a medal.”
Sure. That’s all.
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