Graeme Fish and Ben Coakwell will be representing Canada at the Beijing Olympics from Feb. 4 to 20. 

Fish was one of 16 skaters named by Speed Skating Canada to compete at the Olympics Fish will be competing in the 10,000-metre race. 

The speed skaters were selected based on their rankings from four ISU World Cup events this fall.  

During the 2019-2020 season, Fish broke the world record to win gold in the 10,000-metre event in the World Single Distance Championship in Salt Lake City with a time of 12:33.86. A banner now hangs at the Kinsmen Sportsplex honouring that achievement. At that same championship, Fish would win bronze in the 5,000-metre event. 

Fish would go on to win three more bronze medals and two silver medals that season and was named Canada’s Long Track Male Athlete of the Year. 

Fish took off the first two months of the season in 2021 due to the pandemic but returned in October to win silver in both the 5,000m and 10,000m at the Canada Long Track Championship. 

Named to the World Cup team for 2021-2022, Fish was going to compete in two events. He finished fourth in the 10,000m in Stavanger, Norway. However, a positive COVID-19 test in Norway forced him to miss the last two pre-Olympic events. 

Coakwell to Compete in Four-Man Bobsled 

Coakwell will be attending his third Olympic games, this time as the brakeman for Justin Kripps’ four-man bobsled team. 

Coakwell finished 24th in the 2014 Sochi Olympics alongside Kripps and 12th in the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018 with Nick Poloniato’s team. 

This World Cup season, Coakwell has a silver and two bronze medals as well as a fifth-place finish. 

Coakwell and Team Kripps third overall in the 2020 World Cup standing in both the two-man and four-man events.