Valerie Maltais eyes Pan Am Games as opportunity to be dual-sport athlete

By Chris Lomon

Canada is on track to add to its impressive roster of high-profile, dual sport female athletes - think Clara Hughes, Cindy Klassen and Hayley Wickenheiser - as Valerie Maltais, who brought home silver from Sochi in short track speed skating, will take part in this weekend’s selection competition for the roller speed skating event at the Pan American Games in July.

The athlete from Saguenay, QC, already has an enviable trophy case, one that showcases a 2014 Olympic silver medal (3,000-metre relay) and a half-dozen World Championship medals. Yet, for the 24-year-old Maltais, the thought of conquering another sport is indeed an enticing notion.

Should she become an inline success story, she’d join some elite company in Canadian sport.

Hughes won Olympic medals in cycling and speed skating. Klassen, a six-time Olympic long-track speed-skating medalist, took part in inline skating events at the end of her junior career, participating in the 1999 Pan American Games. Wickenheiser, a four-time gold medalist in women’s hockey at the Winter Olympics, was a member of the Canadia women’s softball team at the 2000 Sydney Summer Games.

”I’m a very competitive person, you could say,” said Maltais with a wry grin. "I've been doing inline skating for a while and I always wanted to try the competitive side of it. When I'm doing the long distance inline events, I see it as something that will really help my training on the ice.”

Competitive is a word Maltais used often on Thursday at a press conference in Toronto that announced the city will host an ISU World Cup short-track event in November.

Maltais, who completed her diploma in dietetics at the College Maisonneuve in Montreal, is as driven as she’s ever been, especially on the heels of what she deemed a disappointing season in short track.

”I finished fourth at the Canadian championships (in January) and I didn’t like that,” she admitted. “It was an intense schedule with school, so it didn’t work out as I hoped on the ice. But now I’m ready to focus on short track again.”

Maltais is equally excited about the opportunity to make inroads in another sport.

“I’ve always challenged myself to do well no matter what it is I’m doing,” she said. “I’ve always been like that.”

There is, however, one arena in which Maltais won’t endeavour to add to her medal count.

“I did figure skating when I was very young to get me used to skating,” she recalled. “But, I didn’t care for it that much. I was more interested in trying to race my coach.”

These days, she’ll settle for the chance at becoming Canada’s next big-name two-sport athlete.