Belgium at the 2026 Winter Olympics: Short track skating
Belgium may not be a traditional winter sports nation, but it left the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing with two medals. It is looking to do even better at the 2026 Games in Milan-Cortina, with several disciplines offering realistic medal prospects. Today, Belga English looks at short track speed skating.
Belgium will head to the Winter Games in Milan-Cortina with six short track speed skaters, its strongest delegation to date. The country will be represented in every individual distance (500m, 1,000m and 1,500m) as well as the mixed 2,000m relay and the men’s 5,000m relay.
Just like at the previous Winter Olympics, siblings Hanne and Stijn Desmet are spearheading the selection. Despite early-season struggles, Hanne Desmet delivered podium performances in Gdansk and Dordrecht. “I'm not worried now. Things are going so much better and I think I can pull through. I'm really looking forward to it," she told Sporza last month.
“The level in an Olympic year is incredibly high, but Hanne is exactly where she needs to be,” national coach Joey Mantia added. “At the [Olympic] Games, we’ll see the Hanne we know.”
Men's relay surprise
Perhaps Team Belgium’s standout achievement is its qualification for the men’s relay, for the first time in 24 years. The team finished seventh overall in the World Cup rankings and clinched one of the few Olympic tickets. Qualification has been a decade in the making: the team narrowly missed out on a ticket for the 2018 edition in Pyeongchang and the 2022 edition in Beijing.
"The level in an Olympic year is incredibly high, but Hanne is exactly where she needs to be"
Stijn Desmet is the engine of the relay team, anchoring finals with trademark finishing speed despite ongoing hip issues. “Stijn is one of the driving forces of the team,” said Corné Lepoeter, president of the Royal Belgian Speed Skating Federation. “He also brings the other guys up to a higher level.”
Stijn will also compete individually at the Milan-Cortina Games. The 1,500m is expected to be his main focus, after he won silver at the World Championships in Beijing in March. Hanne’s strongest event, meanwhile, is the 1,000m. She won World Championship gold in Beijing and claimed Olympic bronze over the same distance in 2022.
For both Desmets, managing nagging injuries remains key, especially for Stijn, who hopes to stabilise his hip for the Olympic campaign.
Ambitious underdog
Belgium’s short-track successes are not self-evident, compared to traditional short-track nations like Canada, the Netherlands, China and Japan, which have the facilities to play top-level sport in their own countries. The Desmet siblings had to move to Canada to compete, as Belgium does not have the facilities that would allow them to train at the highest level.
But Team Belgium is ambitious. At the 2022 Winter Games, it returned with two medals thanks to the skating federation: Bart Swings won gold on the mass start in speed skating and Hanne Desmet on the 1,000m short track.
"And now we want to do better than in Beijing," Lepoeter says. "That's the goal, that’s what we’re aiming for.”
#FlandersNewsService | Hanne and Stijn Desmet © BELGA PHOTO JILL DELSAUX
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