Quick Facts
Cancer
Biography
Valérie Maltais (born July 4, 1990) is a Canadian short track speed skater and speed skater. She has won six world championship medals including finishing second overall in 2012.
Career
Early career
She began skating at the age of 6 and in 2009 was the Canadian Champion in the 1500m. In that same year she received a bronze medal in relay at the World Short Track Championships. She was set to compete for Canada at the 2010 Winter Olympics in the Ladies' 3000m relay. Maltais did not compete in the relay however but did compete in the 1,500 m where she finished fourteenth.
Post-Olympics Maltais found success at the 2012 World Championships. There she won a bronze medal in a photo finish in the 1,000 m. With her success she qualified for the 3,000 m superfinal where she lapped her entire opposition and won the gold medal. Due to her results she also won the silver medal in the overall standings at the competition. In the finals of the relay however, teammate Marie-Ève Drolet fell and put the Canadians in fourth place and Maltais just missed winning a fourth medal at the event.
2014 Sochi Olympics
Going into the 2014 Winter Olympics Maltais was no longer a rookie Olympic competitor, though she still found herself as the youngest member of the women's short track team at those games. At the previous games she had not been invited to skate on the relay team and says that she was paralyzed with nerves, whereas going into these games she now found strength in her favour 1,000 and 1,500 m metre events where she liked leading from the front. Maltais talked about her strategy saying that "Last year, I spent more time at the front and I think that it's a strategy that works well for me. I have to learn to change my laps and to better control my speed, but I think that this could be a good strategy." This strategy helped her at the national trials and Maltais competed in all three individual events as well as the relay in Sochi.
2018 Winter Olympics
In August 2017, Maltais was named to Canada's 2018 Winter Olympics team.