One bump ends Canadian short-track legend Charles Hamelin’s last shot at an individual medal. There’s still the relay

BEIJING Don’t cry for Charles Hamelin.

No, really. Don’t.

The five-time Olympian, five-time medallist, is spinning his Winter Games swan song here. Which makes every moment poignant, invested with memory album images.

That tune hit a sour note, however, on Wednesday evening in what was the 37-year-old’s final individual short-track speedskating event: the men’s 1,500 metres.

Got a penalty heave-ho from his semifinal on a chaotic evening at Capital Indoor Stadium.

Definitely not how he’d envisioned the epilogue, or epitaph, race. And yet even then — after a FaceTime chat from trackside with his fiancé and two-year-old daughter back in Sainte-Julie, Que. — the venerable Hamelin, pith of Canada’s heavily decorated short-track ensemble, was putting team ahead of self, intending to boost the morale of compatriots when he returned to the athletes village.

“I’m going back to the room, make sure that nobody is crying for me. I want to go there and make sure that we are ready to fight.”

He’d won his first heat and looked chuffed to soldier further on, even though there was no great expectation that he’d hit the podium at this distance, despite the fact Hamelin actually won this title at the world championships a year ago — albeit with several of the top 1,500 specialists in pandemic absence.

In the semi, though, Hamelin came to grief.

“I was preparing to be out there in the front instead of in the pack. I knew my strategy was to hold them back. When I tried to pass the guy inside, he held me pretty tight on the rope of the track. I tried to sneak in, but he pushed me back behind. I hit the Italian guy on the outside.”

That was the infraction.

“I knew my chance to be penalized there. I was hoping for the best, but unfortunately …”

That brief conversation with his loved ones helped remove the sting that Hamelin didn’t quite wish to acknowledge existed.

“You have this moment to remind me why I’m here. They were behind me. I’m skating for them.”

Hamelin owns 1,500 gold from Sochi in 2014. Heck, there’s scarcely a race he hasn’t owned at some point in his illustrious career: 60 World Cup titles, 37 world championship medals.

Not that he was yet in the mood to take a nostalgic look backwards.

“I will think of that after these Olympics. I will think of everything I’ve done. Here in Beijing, I don’t want to think about those things because it’s not done yet, not over.”

Not over by a 3,000-metre long-shot, which Hamelin will be contesting with his freres on Sunday. One last shot to break a three-way tie for a Winter Games and become Canada’s most decorated male Olympian.

But only after he’d stepped back onto the ice, his mixed-zone duties done, to “scream my loudest: for teammate Steven Dubois, who’d forged a spot in the final and would cop silver.

Said Dubois of his mentor: “I have a hard time believing there will ever be another skater like Charles Hamelin on the national team, at least among the guys. I don’t want to compare myself to Charles because he’s a legend.”

There were tears on the track, though, for Kim Boutin, Canada’s premier female short-tracker, who crashed out in her 1,000-metre heat. She was well in the lead, appearing destined to handily advance, when disaster struck with nobody anywhere near her.

“It was a crack in the ice,’’ Boutin, 27, explained later. “I’m really sad about it. I feel like I could really be strong at that distance. I felt strong. I’m really disappointed. I’ve never fallen like that.

“Heartbreaking.”

Of course, Boutin can take some comfort from 500-metre bronze 48 hours earlier, her fourth Olympic medal. And she’s part of the women’s relay team that advanced commandingly, with two superb closing laps from Courtney Sarault.

“Those last two laps, the girls saw the look in my eyes. I wasn’t letting anybody go by.”

The relay final is Sunday.

Sarault and Alyson Charles also advanced in the 1,000 metres.

And Hamelin predicted hot stuff from the men’s relay squad also.

“We’re on fire. The boys are ready for big things here in the relay.”

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno