Loss To Speed Skating Program

If you have never tried it, or thought “anyone can do that”, think again and you should really think about taking it up.

My first venture on the “long blade” was when I went to Holland for a hockey holiday albeit years back, but I for one have a new respect for the ones that take up the sport.

The blade is as you can assume it much longer and if you don’t lift your skate on the cross-over in the corner, you’ll be sliding like you were on a bobsled at Whistler’s Bobsled track.

But there is no doubt you will enjoy it and aside from that, you’ll meet great individuals who are actually good at it.

Nicole Garrido, now 26 took up skating at age nine after her school friends asked her to try it and with Parents from Chile, ice skating was something new, yet different and completely unknown to her.

One such Long track speed skater is Edmonton’s Nicole Garrido who managed to win a Bronze Medal at the 2008 World Junior Championships.

She skates out of the Olympic Oval in Calgary and is Coached by Mark Wild and has several personal bests

500: 40.49, 13 March 13, 2007, Calgary
1000: 1:17.41, January 4, 2008, Calgary
1500: 1:58.45, March 19, 2009, Calgary
3000: 4:04.49, November 16, 2007, Calgary
5000: 7:04.34, March 20, 2009, Calgary

At the same time she was still held the National Women’s Junior 3000m record she won in 2007.

For the sport and especially Canada, she has decided to make it official and announce her retirement from the sport.

She represented Canada at the 2010 and 2012 World All-round Championships, plus competing at the 2012 World Single Distance Championships in the 3000m and 5000m events.

She also attended the 2007 and 2008 World Junior Championships and in 2008 in Changchun, China, she won Bronze in the 3000m event.

She also took 5th position in the 1500m race and if that’s not enough, in 2007 (Innsbruck, Austria) she finished fourth in the 3000m.

She still holds the National Women’s Junior 3000m record, which she set in 2007 with a time of 4:04.49 clocked in Calgary.

She also was the junior record holder in the 5000m from 2007 until last March, when Isabelle Weidemann broke her mark of 7:15.56.

She was a member of the National Team from 2007 to 2015, with the exception of the 2011-2012 seasons she missed following surgery for a severely herniated disc.

Since then, she has taken part in a total of 26 World Cups throughout her career, starting with the 2007-2008 season.

Her best performance was a 9th position result in the mass start event at the 2012 World Cup Final in Berlin, Germany.

In 2014, she narrowly missed qualifying for the Sochi Olympics, finishing 4th in the 3000m race and 2nd in the 5000m event at the Canadian Olympic trials.

Nicole Garrido is now looking to complete her fourth and final year of Political Science studies at the University of Calgary.

We wish her all the best and no doubt she just might take up Coaching at any level.