Hello managers!
Dad here, back after another great weekend of World
Cup racing and a couple of posts from other members of the Council of Dads. I’d
like to quickly thank Stepdad and Biological Father for some great writing this
week, even if the content was full of shotty analysis and sloppy work. Like
really? Stepdad thinks he knows how to do statistics? Maybe instead of telling me
how good my Spearmint Score is, or how disappointed I am in my two young but
charming boys, Dylan and Jake, you could actually say something meaningful for
once. I honestly liked you better when you spent too much time in the drunk
tank to write columns for this blog.
Lucky for all of our loyal readers, I have some real
analysis coming right up. Instead of some dry recap of the past weekend, a
bunch of statistics that none of us fully understand (including the author), or
a filler article about something as meaningless as team names, I’ve brought in
a real expert to help guide us through the season so far. World renowned speed
skating expert Dr. Spence Kreamer stopped by the studio earlier this afternoon for
a one-on-one with Dad about all things skating. As always, Dr. Kreamer provided
wisdom and insight that us columnists here at fantasyspeedskating.com could
only dream of giving. So, enough from me—I’ll stop wasting your time and we’ll
get right into it.
----------------
Dr. Spence Kreamer is the Honourable Chief
Research Chair for Research on Dutch Sports. He is a professor at the
University of Utrecht where he teaches speed skating history, contemporary
speed skating, and Dutch Olympic history. His worldwide worst-seller “Fantasy
Speed Skating for Dummies” was published in 2022 and is available at a select
few used bookstores. For many years, Dr. Spence Kreamer was one of speed
skating’s most iconic figures. Then some young Norwegian stud thrusts his adolescent
cock through Dr. Kreamer’s final remaining world record and now Kreamer has
been relegated to the realm of the forgotten. Unfortunately, Dr. Kreamer is still
the world leading authority on fantasy speed skating and is thus a common contributor
to Dad’s Column.
Dad – Dr. Kreamer, so good to see you
again and thanks for coming by the studio today.
Kreamer – Nowhere else I’d rather be, Dad.
I’m honestly a bit offended you didn’t invite me back sooner.
D – Apologies, but things have been busy
around here, as you can probably tell from how nice our new studio is.
K – I was going to ask about that—how can
your crummy little website afford all of this?
D – Oh man, we told all the idiots who
play in our league to toss in a few extra bucks and most of them actually did.
Now we’ve got this beautiful studio, a three-year subscription to Netflix, and the
fridge is stocked full of Lucky Extra. We even had enough to buy a new Xbox
too. Maybe you’ve got time for a few games?
K – Hmm, tempting, but I actually came to
talk about fantasy speed skating. My blood flows south just thinking about it.
[starts shuddering softly]
D – Well then let’s feed your addiction
and get right into it. I’ll start with a question about Stolz since most of the
preseason hype had to do with him. We’re halfway through the World Cup circuit
and all five teams with Stolz are in the bottom half of the league. In fact,
the two absolute worst teams right now both have Stolz. What the hell is
happening here? Wasn’t he supposed to be able to make any team good?
K – Great question. It does seem crazy to
think that a skater of that ability would be able to pull some pretty bad teams
out of the depths of the league. Leerdam and Goetz are doing this, so why can’t
Stolz? My thinking is that he just hasn’t raced enough to make that big of an
impact. His first weekend was fantastic but then he’s been relatively absent
since then. With his return to A Group in all three distances at World Cup 4, I
think fortunes will turn quickly for the five teams you have had to deal with his
early season shenanigans.
D – Do you think this could be deeper,
that maybe there’s also a management issue here?
K – Absolutely. It can be hard to put
someone as good as Stolz on the bench, so we saw a few managers try to skate
him while he was absent. This took active roster spots away from other skaters
and set these teams back even further. Funny enough, two managers had the
audacity to bench him once he returned to the circuit, missing out on the 35
points he posted this weekend. Not surprised it happened though. What’s that
thing you always say? The managers in this league have maybe one collective brain cell? Something like that?
D – Uh, well, I thought I said that to you
in confidence, Spence. I didn’t realize you would out me so quickly. For the
record, I love the managers who play in our league. Let’s move along though, I
have lots of topics I want to cover. The Kim-Krol-Kim Theory is followed religiously
by a couple of our fans. You have any thoughts on how it’s playing out so far?
K – This “theory” is standing on stabler
ground than the theory of evolution. KMS and Kim Jun-Ho have four podium
finishes between them and another three top 5s. Krol is diddling around I the middle
of A Group with a peak finish of 9
th
. Do we expect him to eventually
move toward the top? Absolutely. Do we expect the Kims to eventually run out of
steam? Definitely. Do we expect these two things to happen simultaneously? Without
a doubt.
D – I’ll be keeping track of this
throughout the season, but you’ve always been right on this before. Changing
gears a bit, one of the announcers on the live stream has been getting a lot of
attention lately for doing a really poor job. He’s literally saying skaters are
bad and have no chance at winning and aren’t even trying to win. He also seems
to have little understanding of the fact that different ovals are different
speeds, even varying day to day or year to year. What do you make of all this?
K – I think he’s totally fine. You North Americans
are so soft sometimes.
D – I mean he’s being a total dick. And I
get that some people like an announcer who is honest, but the delivery could be
a lot better.
K – “Honest” – Is that what you call your own
column when you constantly call out skaters and managers for performing poorly?
D – Well, yeah, I do. But this column is
supposed to be raw. It’s for the people that actually go out of their way to
read about fantasy speed skating in their free time. I think those dedicated
fans deserve the whole truth.
K – Pretty big talk for a guy who just
wrote a whole column on the many inaccuracies he’s written over the past month.
D – Point taken. Moving on… how about that
Yamada family? Rio, Kazuya and Masaya have put up a pretty incredible 148 points
in 3 weekends of racing. Did you see that coming?
K – I mean if we want to talk about impressive
families, you gotta mention the Kim family. They’ve essentially taken over the
Korean national team and have been posting record points for a few seasons now.
D – Uh, I’m actually not sure if they’re
related? I assumed they weren’t since about 22% of Koreans have Kim as a surname.
K – Oh, no, you’re definitely mistaken, I had
the pleasure of meeting their mother just this past weekend.
D – Oof, poor woman.
K – Quite the contrary, she’s incredibly rich.
Tae-Yun and Min-Seok’s Olympic medals brought the family great fortunes.
D – Actually I was thinking more about her
va—
K – Vast number of children to care for
her in her old age?
D – Yenno what, probably best to leave
that one there. A couple of actual national teams are off to hot starts, which
has surprised you the most so far?
K – I think the best answer has to be
Italy. The double podium in the men’s 10k, the double podium in the men’s mass
start, They’re currently ranked second in the men’s team pursuit. And it’s not
even just the men’s team that is showing up – Lollobrigida is back in A Group
in 3 distances at World Cup 4, Laura Lorenzato qualified Italy a second spot in
the 5000m at Worlds, and Serena Pergher made it into an A Group 500m at the rip
[lip quivers] age of 19.
D - Couldn’t agree more, though I feel it
would be a disservice to not shout out China for their incredible start to the
season too. Medals from Han, Li, Gao, and Ning. Great performances from Tian
and Wenjing. And similar to the Italians in the women’s 5000m, I think the
Chinese are likely to have qualified two spots for Worlds in the men’s 10,000m.
That feels unprecedented.
K – Totally, I didn’t even consider the
10k quota spots at Worlds. Quite the achievement for a quickly improving team.
D – Just thinking now, I’m gonna say
Switzerland deserves a bit of a shoutout too. Wenger has two medals, two of
their women are in the world top 10 for the mass start even after both getting DQ’d
at cup 3, and McGregor has quietly established herself in the A Group 1500m as
the 6
th
highest ranked European. Not too shabby at all!
K – Considering how bad all those skaters
are, I guess that is quite the list of achievements. Can we go back to talking
about the skaters that people actually care about though?
D – Fair. Last season the men’s 1000m was
a super exciting event with 13 skaters winning the 18 available medals on the
World Cup circuit. Only 3 skaters had repeat podium performances, and the
results were so spread out that Larry finished 2
nd
in the
classification with a pair of silver medals. Will we see more of the same this
season?
K – Kjeld has shown he’s still a force in the
event and Stolz has been missing from the podium not because he sucks but
because he’s been absent from A Group. That’ll change starting next week and I
do think that’s going to put a damper on some of the underdogs’ hopes of
cracking the men’s 1000m podium. With Shinhama back in form and Ning skating consistently
well, I don’t think we’ll see a repeat of last year’s madness.
D - I gotta disagree with you Spence, we’ve
already had 7 medalists for 9 medals. There are another 12 medals up for grabs—I’d
be surprised if another 6 skaters didn’t show up between now and February.
Especially if some new Dutch skaters enter the fray in January. Maybe Krol,
Verbij, or Otterspeer.
K – I’ll admit that I did not see the Kazuya,
Masaya, or Lorentzen medals coming these past few weeks. But I still don’t think
this will continue.
D – We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
On the other side of the spectrum, we’ve seen relatively low turnover at the
top of the men’s 500m compared to past years. Three skaters have won over two
thirds of the available medals and Morishige just won his 4
th
500m
in a row, a super impressive feat.
K – The competitiveness of the 500m does
feel lessened, though there’s still a core group of 7 or so skaters who I feel could
win it on any given day. And I couldn’t agree more that Morishige is doing
something special. He’s the first male skater to win 4 straight in the 500m
since Pavel Kulizhnikov did it back in 2018-2019. Kulizhnikov managed to win 8
in a row, stretching from World Cup 3 in December to World Cup Final in March
with his world record 33.616 being the final race of that stretch.
D – Does Morishige have a chance at duplicating
this incredible run?
K – Let’s be honest, it’s not super likely
to happen. I fully expect Gao, Shinhama, or possibly even Murakami or Larry to
dethrone him eventually. Though, if he does pull off two more wins to make it 6
in a row, the 7
th
race will be in Salt Lake City so the potential for
a world record is actually there. Obviously any skater with world record
ambitions will be gunning to win that same weekend, such as Shinhama or Dubreuil.
So, I wouldn’t bet on it, but there is potential for Morishige to out-do Pavel’s
incredible 2018/19 season.
D – Crazy stuff, you’ve got me reminiscing
about the glorious Pavel years. Maybe he’ll make one last comeback. Speaking of
comebacks, thoughts on the Lollobrigida comeback?
K – Couldn’t be happier to see her return.
God, she still looks incredible too, total milf.
D – If the rumours are true, you had a
kick at the ol’ Italian can back in your day, eh?
K – Oh yeah, those were the days. I think
I musta been maybe 21 years old, she was a real beauty, would give Mr. Sniffles
a tickle….
D – Jesus, I’m just going to cut you off
right there. I’ll unfortunately never be able to unhear that. Also, you said you
were 21? Isn’t she 5 years younger than you….?
K – That’s correct. I’m Dutch, though, and
I also skated the 1500m, so what did you expect?
D – Hmm, right, not sure how I feel about
that. I’ll maybe get through these last few questions and then we can finish
up. What’s one theme you see continuing this season from last season?
K – Plenty of options to choose from, but
I gotta say it’s Greg drafting medal performances into existence. Last year was
incredible, he drafted Stolz, KMS, Goetz, Eitrem, Snellink, and Grevelt, all of
whom went on to medal, most of them for their first time! This continues this
season with Masaya Yamada and his famed double-gold weekend, and then with Marcel
Bosker, who didn’t even technically qualify for the team but won gold in the
mass start this past Friday. Mediocre Jackson is back in elite Olympic form and
Bon’s girl—er, sorry, I meant to say Val Maltais is easily having her best
season on record. It’s crazy what this manager can pull off.
D - I don’t disagree at all, it’s totally
uncanny. A bit haunting too. Guys like you and I put so many hours into
studying our craft and then BAM he just blindly stumbles into a bunch of skaters
having career years.
K – It’s not sustainable in the long run
though, drafting with those ambitions. His results will come crashing back to
earth. Actually, looks like they’re already heading that way.
Stepdad – That’s one thing we can all agree
on, that we pray on Greg’s downfall in this league.
D – Woah, Stepdad, didn’t see you there!
You just scared me a bit.
S – I’ve been here the whole time,
slugging back all these Lucky Extras in the nice calm, darkness of the closet.
Whoever stocked that fridge is a saint. Sorry if you wanted one though, I just crushed
the last one.
D – Wha— How…. I just picked up a two-four
this morning…
S – Well now it’s more like a zero-zero.
Sorry boss, gotta scurry home and keep working on these stats I don’t understand.
[slams door]
K – That was…. weird.
D – Sorry about that, I had no idea he was
there. Look, we’re almost out of time so I’ll let you go after one last question.
Biggest surprise on the circuit so far?
K – Hmm, maybe Maltais, maybe Han. Both
were trending in the right direction, but I think we can all agree that this
season so far has been above and beyond what any of us expected.
D – Couldn’t agree more, I had those two
in mind as well. I also just want to mention Morishige too. Obviously, he was already
known to be elite. But his results have been better than I expected.
K – Well, speak for yourself. You and your
boner for Shinhama will just have to be surprised on your own. Biological
Father and I both saw the Morishige uprising coming. Try opening your eyes for
once.
D – I will, Spence. Thanks for the wise
advice, and thanks again for joining me today for this interview. Yenno, I quickly
run out of things to write on my own, so I really appreciate the opportunity to
bounce some ideas off you. Safe travels home, and maybe I’ll see you in the new
year for another conversation?
K – You bet, Dad. We’ll be in touch.
[end of interview]
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That’s all for today, folks. Hope you enjoyed this exclusive
interview with the world-renowned Dr. Spence Kreamer. Racing resumes this coming
weekend with World Cup 4. Start times should be similar to this past weekend,
though a full schedule and entry list will be posted by the ISU in the next few
days.
Hope you all enjoy the last World Cup of the fall before
skaters head back to their respective countries for winter trials. Then the
exciting part of the season begins!
Until then, have a good one.
Dad