Lyons Competing at Canadian Junior Championships
P.E.I. speed skater William Lyons is competing at the Canadian Junior Short Track Championships in Sherbrooke, QC this weekend.
Lyons is the first Island male to qualify for the Championships since Scott Beamish earned a berth and captured tenth place in 2011. Jenna Larter (2019) and Carly Connell (2014) have competed for the Island in the female field in recent years. Lyons qualified for this year’s event based on his results at the Short Track Canada Cup 1 held in Calgary earlier this season.
The championships feature the country’s top 32 junior-aged skaters per gender and will crown a national junior champion in each distance, as well as an overall champion. The results are also used to select Canada’s team for the 2022 World Junior Championships, taking place in Poland in March.
Lyons, from Rock Barra, will be on familiar ice in Sherbrooke, where he trained during the 2019-20 season, before returning to P.E.I. where he has trained with Speed Skate PEI’s high performance group over the past two seasons. At the Canada Cup event in Calgary, Lyons became the second-fastest Island male of all time in the 500-metre distance after clocking a time of 43.043 seconds. The Island skater is also coming off an overall win at the recent Atlantic Cup Speed Skating Championships in Charlottetown. Lyons is the lone Atlantic Canadian skater competing in Sherbrooke and enters the weekend seeded 20th.
Racing gets underway in Sherbrooke on Friday with the 1,500-metre event, followed by the 500-metre on Saturday and 1000-metre racing on Sunday.
For live streaming and more information about the event, visit https://www.speedskating.ca/events/2021-canadian-junior-short-track-championships.
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Photo caption: Kings County speed skater William Lyons will represent P.E.I. at the Canadian Junior Short Track Championships in Sherbrooke, QC this weekend. Photo courtesy of Darrell Theriault.
For more Information contact:
Speed Skate PEI