Fully Focused: Charles Hamelin

Sean Gordon - Globe and Mail - Jul. 17, 2009
The off-season, such as it was, lasted three rainy weeks in April. Being a world champion and medal favourite at the upcoming Winter Olympics has its price.

So spare a thought for short-track speed-skater Charles Hamelin, who will more likely than not be doing laps in a frigid arena with his national team cohorts while the more enlightened are on a patio or at the lake.

“In other summers, we'd go up to Lac St-Jean for the weekend. … Now, it's going to be more intense. We have to focus on what we have to do, nothing else,” Hamelin said in a recent interview.

But the twice-a-day, six-days-a-week sessions aren't all bad news for Hamelin, whose girlfriend – junior world champion short-tracker Marianne St-Gelais – is also gunning for a spot in the 2010 Vancouver Games.
Although St-Gelais, who hails from St-Félicien, in the Lac St-Jean region of northeastern Quebec, was somewhat wistful in remembering summers past.

“The worst is when summer starts to really get nice, the end of May, June, that's when it gets really hard,” she said.
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