Five local speedskaters blazed to 18 new personal best times in Edmonton over the weekend.

The meet attracted more than 150 young skaters from all over western Canada. Organizers had hoped they would have the wider Olympic-sized ice ready for the short-track speedskating competition but had to use a significantly narrower rink that posed a considerable challenge to skaters, like those from the Yukon, who train and compete on a bigger surface.

Brothers Caius and Lucas Taggart-Cox of Marsh Lake competed in the younger L2T division.

Caius posted personal best times in all three distances – 200, 400 and 1,500 metres – raced by the L2T skaters and his results included winning the 400-m B final.

Caius generally prefers the longer distances but this weekend he did very well in the 200-m sprint, getting through to the A final and finishing fourth overall.

His younger brother Lucas tends to like the shorter sprints but had his best races in the 400-m distance, posting a personal best in placing third in the 400-m A final.

Michael Ritchie of Haines Junction, Micah Taggart-Cox of Marsh Lake and Tristan Muir of Whitehorse represented the Yukon in the large and highly competitive T2T division.

Ritchie set up his highly successful weekend from the beginning, achieving a personal best in the 200-m pursuit sprint.

This despite slamming into the mats on the final corner, successfully fighting to stay on his feet, and getting across the finish line in under 23 seconds.

In the 200-m B final that followed Michael went out and took nearly another second off his time over the distance. Muir also collected a personal best in the 200-m.

All three of the Yukon T2T skaters achieved personal bests in the 3,000-m endurance race with Micah being the fastest Yukoner while placing fourth in his division.

Micah admits to the oddity of actually loving this often unpopular long distance race where points are awarded according to your position at different points in the race.

Muir, a relative newcomer to the distance, discovered that he shares Micah’s affection for it, claiming that it is both fun and easier than shorter distances.

For the T2T skaters the second day of competition was dominated by a series of 400-m races.

Many of the skaters were competing for spots on their provincial teams’ rosters and this fierce competition, coupled with the narrow rink, led to nearly every race involving false starts, falls, disqualifications and occasionally spectacular crashes involving multiple skaters.

In Muir’s 400-m heat he was being easily out-stripped by the other skaters but moved up into third when a faster skater fell on the second lap.

The two leaders were easily skating away with the race when they collided and crashed in a tangle that Muir just managed to avoid.

It looked as if he would skate to victory but the race was whistled down when one of the downed skaters appeared to be hurt (it did not end up being serious though he did not return to competition immediately).

The race was then re-started with three of the four original competitors. Muir finished the race in third and last place, but the referees disqualified both the competitors whose collision had caused the race to be stopped leaving him in second.

But, because it was that kind of a day, the referees’ decision was appealed on the grounds that the re-started race was separate from the original and the original disqualification should not apply.

So Muir had to race again, against a single competitor and advanced into the A semifinal demonstrating that in this sport anything can happen and just staying on your feet can take you a lot further than you think.

As Muir said: “It was crazy, just crazy. They were all faster than me but they were crashing and burning all over the place.”

He ended up in eighth place out of the 16 in his division.

In their somewhat less crazy 400-m races, Micah managed to post a personal best in his semifinal (ending up sixth overall out of 16 in his division) while Ritchie took nearly two seconds off his previous best time in his heat, then another third of a second off that in his semifinal race and chopped another second off of that in the final 400-m for second place out of 16 in his division.

The T2T skaters finished the weekend racing the 1,500-m distance.

Micah was seeded into the bottom of a group that were all somewhat older, all somewhat faster and all much more experienced. It was a very tight and exciting race from start to finish with the group of six skaters staying in a tight pack and trading positions continuously.

Micah skated a strategic and confident race, posting a personal best and placing fourth out of six and 10th overall in the distance.

Finally, Ritchie completed his weekend with his seventh personal best time in the 1,500-m and having the satisfaction of beating out a Calgary skater by a whopping 16/100ths of a second for third place in his race.

– Report courtesy of the Whitehorse Rapids Speed Skating Club