MOOSE JAW — For around 15 minutes, Moose Jaw’s Graeme Fish was in the gold medal position at the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games.
The 24-year-old took the ice in the first pairing of the 10,000 metres speed skating competition early Friday morning and put down a time of 12:58.80 to easily win his pairing with New Zealand’s Peter Michael, lapping the Kiwi in the process.
And for the first 13 laps of the second pairing, Fish was still in first.
Eventually, the Netherlands’ Patrick Roest finished 14.21 seconds ahead of Fish with a time of 12:44.59 -- and by the time the fourth group finished their skate, Fish was out of the medals.
Fish put together a consistent race from his fourth lap on, hovering between 30.7 and 30.9 second laps from lap four through lap 19, but never breaking the 30-second mark in one of his 25 trips around the 400 metre Ice Ribbon track.
When all was said and done, Fish would record a sixth-place finish in his first appearance at the Olympic Games.
The former Kinsmen Moose Jaw Speed Skating Club competitor was nine seconds off his season-best time set in his lone World Cup race and 22 seconds back of his world record time set two years ago.
The race was essentially a coronation for Sweden’s Nils van der Poel, as he capped off an incredibly impressive last year of competition by easily breaking his own world record in a time of 12:30.74 to claim gold.
Roest would end up winning silver and Italy’s Davide Ghiotto took advantage of skating with van der Poel to put down a time of 12:45.98 and win bronze.
Fish’s Team Canda mentor Ted-Jan Bloeman -- the defending Olympic champion -- struggled to a 13:01.39 and finished in eighth place.
Fish might still have another skate at these Olympics, as he’s slated to skate in next week’s mass start event as an alternate.
