Donnelly competes at the ISU World Allround Championships

It may not have been the result he was looking for, as Oshawa’s Ben Donnelly finished 17th in the International Skating Union’s World Allround Championships on March 5 in Norway, but he still managed to pull some positives out of the weekend event.

“It wasn’t the result I was looking for,” states Donnelly in a news release. “I had an unlucky first backstretch running up on the Italian skater and I lost some speed.

“But overall, this weekend, I’m really happy with the result, especially with my 13th place in the 5000m, which was my best executed 5000m race ever.

“It was a great learning experience and doing all these races in a small amount of time will help me going into the Olympic year. It was a good experience and good training at the same time.”

Donnelly took the 17th spot in the 1500m with a time of 1:48.52, which had him slide from 16th to 17th position in the overall ranking.

Sven Kramer from the Netherlands won the title for the ninth time in the past eleven editions. His teammates Patrick Roest and Jan Blokhuijsen took the second and third spots respectively for an exclusively Dutch podium.