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 Florence Brunelle (CAN) competes during the 2022 ISU World Junior Short Track Speed Skating Championships in Gdansk (POL) @ISU (International Skating Union)

Florence Brunelle (CAN) is not your average teenager. Over the past couple of months the 18-year-old Short Track Speed Skater has won three World Junior Championship titles, grabbed a fourth-place finish at her first Olympic Winter Games and cemented herself among the top 10 female sprinters in the world. 

 Florence Brunelle (CAN) poses during the 2022 ISU World Junior Short Track Speed Skating Championships in Gdansk (POL) @ISU (International Skating Union)

As she contemplates the possibility of putting the perfect full stop on a remarkable debut season at this week’s World Championships in Montreal (CAN), the Canadian is aware she is making it all look so easy:

“It’s not easy,” Brunelle laughed, before kind of admitting, that it sort of is. 

“But I choose to do all the things I can with a good mindset, which is making me happy. I learned that. I saw myself at not a good place mentally and I went, ‘right whatever is happening right now I want to be happy, I want to feel good and I want to love what I am doing’. 

“I think that’s how I’m able to do it all and repeat it. Everything I am doing is making me happy. After that I want to perform, I want to win and everything, but the first thing is I know this is how I want to live my career and my life. I want to be happy.” 

As a result, Brunelle has been “skating calm” all season. In turn she has been able to embrace all the new experiences – World Cup racing with an Olympic place on the line for example – with a smile and, perhaps more importantly, with top performances. This recipe sent her to Beijing on the back of three World Cup silver medals (all in the relay) and a seventh-place finish in a World Cup 500m.

Team Canada, Team Netherlands and Team China pose during the ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating 2021 in Debrecen (HUN) @ISU (International Skating Union)

Results in China did not go how Brunelle had hoped – fourth in the 3000m relay and 19^th in the sprint was “a bit disappointing” – but she still feels she got so much out of her two weeks spent on the biggest sporting stage of all. 

Courtney Sarault, Kim Boutin, Alyson Charles and Florence Brunelle (CAN) celebrate during the 3000m Relay Semifinals of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing (CHN)  @GettyImages

“I knew that small details make a difference but I think in Beijing I really saw it and felt it. I was like, ‘OK, if I want to be a better skater, I really need to work harder on those small details, that is going to make a difference at the end’,” she said. 

“It’s your everyday routine and stuff; my mindset at every single practice, my sleep schedule – normal things I now know I need to be really good at. It’s not about working hard because everyone is working hard, everyone is trying to do the best they can, but some other things besides speed skating really.” 

Kim Boutin provides the perfect example. The four-time Olympic medallist is already “doing it all”. Buoyed by seeing such an approach in action, Brunelle was able to bounce back quickly from the blow of just missing out on an Olympic relay medal in tandem with Boutin. Indeed, within a fortnight the teenager was dominating on the ice again, claiming 500m, 1000m and Women’s relay gold at the Junior World Championships in Gdansk, Poland. 

She has since been teased on social media that she celebrated those titles in a manner made famous by Boutin herself. It’s an observation that makes Brunelle smile and only confirms something she now believes. 

“These four seasons (just ending) I saw myself as a kid but now I don’t see myself as a kid anymore,” Brunelle said. “I don’t know everything but I know what it is to be on the international circuit. So, for the next four years I am excited to see how I can be the best skater I can be.” 

And it all starts on her home ice in Montreal. In a sign of the times, and of her youth, it will be the first occasion Brunelle has skated in front of a packed crowd as a senior. Do not be surprised if she gives them plenty to cheer about.