LAKE PLACID, NEW YORK – Team Canada captured a pair of medals in the women’s 3000m speed skating at the Lake Placid 2023 FISU World University Games, with Calgary’s Laura Hall skating to gold and setting a track record with Laval University’s Rose-Anne Grenier finishing third in the distance.

For Hall, a Calgary Dinos student-athlete, she entered the Lake Placid 2023 World University Games as the 33rd-ranked skater in the world for the distance and posted a 15th-place finish in the FISU Games’ opening race, the 1000m, before smashing the Lake Placid track record in the 30000m.

The 19-year-old from Salmon Arm, B.C. began her season by setting a personal best in the 3000m, skating to a 4:08.15 at the indoor Olympic Oval in Calgary, commonly known to be one of the world’s fastest ice sheets, before peaking at the right time on Monday outdoors to en route to the gold medal in a time of 4:25.70

Skating in the final pair alongside Czechia’s Veronika Antosova, Hall beat out South Korea’s Jiwoo Park for the top spot on the podium.

Meanwhile, it was Grenier from the penultimate skating pair that took the bronze medal as she skated the distance in a time of 4:29.10, with the Laval University student-athlete winning her school’s second speed skating medal after David La Rue captured 1000m bronze on Sunday.

Laurie Cayer of Laval rounded out the top-10 finishes for Canada as she skated a time of 4:41.01 to land in eighth place.

The two medals mark Canada’s third and fourth at the FISU Games, as they join fellow speed skater La Rue in reaching the podium on the oval, while uOttawa’s Shilo Rousseau grabbed the gold medal in the women’s 12.5km biathlon.

It’s a true Canadian skating party in Lake Placid, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop.

MORE TO COME.