Hello managers,
It’s been one Hell of a year and the final weekend of
racing didn’t disappoint one bit. I don’t know about y’all, but I think that
World Sprints and Allrounds is consistently one of the best spectator
competitions on the circuit. The excitement and drama of watching skaters
battle it out over a series of races is hard to beat. I find this particularly
true on the Allrounds side where huge leads in the 500m evaporate over the
course of a grueling 5000m or 10,000m slog. For those of us that have been
around for a few years, we always remember Melissas Wijfje’s incredible blowup
in the final lap of the 5000m at the 2020 World Allround Championships,
dropping from a 34 to a 37 second lap and costing her the bronze medal in the
overall Allround Women's classification.
Now, Melissa Wijfje may not have been gracious enough
to grace us with her presence (and ideally another spectacular blowup) this
past weekend, but that didn’t mean the weekend was boring. From start to finish
we were blessed with some wild results. Stolz made history with a world record Allrounds
score while Roest settled for his second consecutive silver medal. Joy,
competing at Allrounds for the first time, handily won the competition with a couple
of track records while Antoinette finished 3
rd
for the fifth time in
her seven Allround competitions (her other two results? Both 4
th
. Talk
about consistency).
Takagi showed the world she could still compete with
the best 500m women while Ning’s historic World Sprint Championship win made
the Council of Dads look like fools as we all predicted he wouldn’t even bother
to attend the event. Lorentzen ended his career on a high note, Pedersen ended
his career on a high note, and Ripsrud just ended her career. Voste crushed Kjeld
in back-to-back 1000m races, Hallgeir grew lungs, and Ghiotto skated the best
10,000m race of the season. No matter which part you watched, you likely
witness greatness.
Not every part of the weekend was sunshine and rainbows
though. Shinhama suffered a spinal cord compression fracture after a nasty fall
in Inzell a few days out from the start of racing. I don’t even know what that
really means, but it sounds pretty bad. Zurek also missed racing after a big
fall the day before World Sprints started. Wennemars fell on day one of Sprints,
Wiklund dealt with a tough OTT that cost her valuable points, and Grevelt not
only got OTT’d be also DQ’d, costing her all her classification points (and
costing Dad some serious cash!). Goetz forgot how to skate a good 500m while
KMS saw a 3 second swing between her two 1000m races. Blondin lost out on a
spot in the 5000m thanks to a fellow Canadian’s 3000m for the second
time in her career. Aydova got beat in the 500m by a bunch of genuine allrounders
and the Netherlands realized that their men’s allrounds team is historically
terrible (I’m actually not sure if the second best Dutch skater has ever been
as low as Huizinga’s 15
th
, but it wouldn’t shock me if that was a
new Dutch record).
So what came out of this? Well, aside from a very
satisfied Dad, we also got to tally up the last few fantasy points of the season
and crown a new league champion.
Crowning a Champion
With all of the racing now behind us, it is now time
to crown our
Men’s and Women’s Stage 3 Choir
Fantasy Speed Skating Draft Winner
. This year’s champion is
Pederfiles
Won: the Bittner story of how Thomas Herzog Stolz his child bride
. The team
started super high on the
Power Rankings
, had us doubting them after a
slow Fall World Cups, but then took the league by storm through the Winter
World Cups and both World Championship events.
This team is managed by Jake and Dylan and consists of
Jordan Stolz (C), Tatsuya Shinhama, Vanessa Herzog, Zhongyan Ning, Joy Beune,
Peder Kongshaug, Hallgeir Engebraten, Marten Liiv, Jae-Won Chung, and Gabriel
Odor, along with some brief and limited support from Isabel Grevelt and Joep Wennemars at
World Sprints. Since Jake made the Mass Start Final at World Championships and
also competed at World Allrounds, he’ll be getting kicked out of the league for
next season since we do have rules against skaters both earning fantasy points
and playing in our league. This was his last season with us and I couldn’t be
happier that he ended it on the highest possible note. Congrats to Jake and
Dylan for getting lucky and drafting Jordan Stolz. Wait, no, what I meant to write was: Congrats to Jake and Dylan for having the best team
this season!
A quick lesson for other managers: this team wasn’t
even in the money after the Fall World Cups but then went on to hit a final
score of 3206 points, a massive league record (the previous record holder
hadn’t even hit 3000 points). Also, Jake’s been playing in this league for
years and, until this season, he’d never finished in the top half of the league
standings. For those of you sitting below 20
th
this year, you never
know when the stars will align for your team and give you a massive come-from-behind league win. If you feel like you got your ass kicked, well, you really
did. But that doesn’t mean you can’t pull it together next year and win like these guys
managed to this season.
Here is a list of the top ten management teams this
season (each of whom won some money):
1. Jake and Dylan (evident correlation between being
greasy and winning)
2. Molly, Claire, and Victoria (best team without
Stolz, which says a lot)
3. Max (first podium for this veteran manager and
fantasy expert)
4. Matt Z (incredible rookie season!)
5. Simon (smartest guy on the list)
6. Paul (won the regular season but couldn’t hold on
through Champs)
7. Cody (2018 and 2023 champion—also tied his
worst
ever finish)
8. Ryan (2022 champion)
9. Kiersten and Hayleigh (hold the league’s best
average finish for a women-led team)
10. Yankun (honestly, he just got lucky)
To see a full list of all 40 teams, their rank, and
their points, please go to the Team Stats tab at the top of the website.
Now, before I let you all go, I’d like to thank the
rest of the guys who help run this league: Cody, Thomas, and Christian. Draft
night, the website, the blog, keeping track of points—there’s a lot of
behind-the-scenes work that takes a fuckton of time and it’s thanks to these
guys that we’re able to enjoy fantasy speed skating.
Like last season, I’d like to give a special shout out
to Thomas for really anchoring us despite living all the way over in France. He’s
our lead on data management and it’s because of him that our results get
updated swiftly and, more importantly, get updated accurately. He’s constantly
updating all your rosters when you make silly decisions, fixing the occasional
bug on our spreadsheets, and was even nice enough to let most of us beat him
this season. Without Thomas our website and fantasy league would be in shambles
so I’d like to offer him a huge thank you on behalf of the league.
Finally, I’d like to also thank all of you that
donated an extra few bucks at the start of the season to help us cover our
website costs. Our goal is to keep this league as accessible but also as
professional as possible and your kind donations go a long way to help keep
this league alive.
Now that the skating is all wrapped up, there usually
isn’t another Dad’s Column until next fall. This won’t quite be the case this
time around. Every year, I hand out a bunch of
Choir and Emin Award
for
the best and worst managers of the season. I’ll be dropping one more post later
this week where I’ll hand out all of these awards so be sure to check back and
see if you make the cut.
I’m also considering posting throughout the offseason
on a couple of league-related topics that fascinate me. To be honest, this will
probably come down to time and motivation, neither of which I’ll necessarily
have much of. So, there may or may not be content posted here over the next 6
months (albeit
significantly
less than what I’m currently posting if I
do end up posting anything). Either way, make sure to at least tune in again next year
to follow along for another season of fantasy speed skating shenanigans!
Draft Night for next
season will likely take place around the first week of November (possibly as
early as the last week of October). We will be reaching out to all the managers
who played this season to see if they want to join us for another exciting season
so you can expect to hear from us next September or October. If you are not
already a part of the league and would like to join, make sure to reach out to
Cody, Christian, Thomas, or Simon before the next season begins. Spots are
limited and priority is given to current managers so don’t wait until the last
minute if you want to join! Also, if you know of someone who wants to join,
please let us know and we can add them to our list.
That’s all I’ve got for tonight. Be sure to check back
later this week for the final column of the season.
Cheers,
Dad