Hello speed skating enthusiasts,
Here’s Part 2 of the degenerate rambling that I
started yesterday. After starting off with some of the lighter stuff in the
previous column, today’s rambling delves a bit more into the world of bulletins
and rules. And it might be a bit less satirical too, since some of this stuff
actually kinda pisses me off. Hope you enjoy!
Is Your Country Allowed National Records?
–
Back
in November when I was helping out with some announcing at World Cup 2 in
Calgary, one of my colleagues got a slap on the wrist for announcing that
Ying-Chu Chen got a Chinese Taipei national record in the 500m. Allegedly, the
ISU doesn’t recognize Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) as an independent country, so
China’s national records are technically also the Chinese Taipei national
records.
Should Chinese Taipei have national records? Or is the
ISU happy to let China, essentially the largest member country of the ISU
(sorry India, but you’re pretty fucking irrelevant in the world of skating),
refuse to recognize Taiwan? What will happen when a contested region such as
Palestine inevitably has a speed skater on the World Cup circuit (I mean Greece
has a skater now, so at this point anything is possible). Will they also not be
allowed national records? Does Israel not have any national records since a
significant number of countries don’t recognize them as a country? And why did
the ISU give enough fucks about any of this to warn me like four times not to
announce Chinese Taipei records? Maybe they should spend more time hammering
out some fair and logical Olympic qualification rules rather than trying to
police “national” records around the world.
Just Don’t Be Fourth –
I
actually think it’s a little insane that only three 10,000m specialists were able to earn Olympic quotas based on time, while the other nine athletes
competing at the Olympics in the 10,000m will get into the event mostly off
their 5000m success (75% of their points will come from the 5000m). The ISU
restricting an Olympic event that is twice as long as the next longest
distance to literally the size of the podium feels like madness. The same can be said for the women’s 5000m, but the men’s 10,000m definitely
feels worse.
Obviously we are currently in a moment where a lot of
the top long distance guys are great at both distances (Jilek, Loubineaud,
Eitrem, Ghiotto, Dawson, etc) so maybe it sounds like I’m complaining just for
the sake of complaining. But there is no guarantee that the top skaters in the
long distance classification will always be good at both distances and this sure as hell
wasn’t always the case in the past. How many 10,000m races has Bart Swings
skated at World Champs based on his 5000m successes? How many times did Sverre
Lunde Pedersen qualify a 10,000m spot at Worlds only to have it get filled by
Ole Bjornsmoen Naess because Sverre wasn’t a 10,000m guy? How many 10,000m
specialist, possibly a Loubineaud before he broke out last season or someone in
the same vein as a Graeme Fish, have been screwed over by silly rules like
these?
When the ISU and IOC Rules Clash –
Should
a skater without citizenship for a country, who is therefore not allowed to
skate for that country at the Olympics, still be allowed to earn quota for that
country at the Olympics? The specific example that brings this issue up is
Sofia Thorup earning a pile of Olympic quotas for Denmark since the ISU lets
her skate for Denmark at World Cups despite not being a citizen, but the IOC
won’t let her race the Olympics because she isn’t a citizen. Natascha Lindenskov,
who is a Grade A Shitter, almost got a couple of Olympic spots in Thorup’s
absence since she’s literally the only other relevant Danish skater.
Thankfully, Lindenskov is bad enough that she still
won’t be going to the Games, but we were damn close to having this joker boot someone much
more respectable from the Olympics. Does this system make sense? Or should the
ISU and IOC maybe try aligning their rules a bit better so that weird
discrepancies like this don’t exist? (If you’re wondering where Dad sits on
this – he thinks it doesn’t make any sense).
Flexible Bulletins –
National
Skating Federations like Speed Skating Canada write bulletins during the summer
to outline the rules for the season. These bulletins explain who gets to go to
World Cups, how skaters can qualify for the national team, and all sorts of
other rules. The whole reason for this is to create a set of agreed-upon rules
that all athletes compete under for the season. Federations really aren’t
supposed to change the rules mid season, because the fear is that the rules are
then being redesigned with certain skaters in mind. Yet this is exactly what
SSC does.
For example, the Canadian Olympic Skate Off was originally
supposed to also be a trials event for World Championships. But mid season, the
rules mysteriously changed to some strange qualification process where an
athlete’s best 500m and 1000m (for sprinters) or best 1500m and 3k/5k (for
allrounders) are combined. Note that I didn’t specific a competition, because
that’s not part of the rules. You can shred a 500m at one event and then go
shred a 1000m at another and take those two. No longer are we selecting athletes
who can put together at least two good races in a weekend. No longer are we
requiring athletes to beat their opponents head-to-head at an event where
conditions are equal for everyone. Instead, we’re giving an advantage to skaters who happen to have race
one weekend on faster ice.
These new rules aren’t great, but they might be passable
if they were set from the very beginning. The fact that these new rules came
into play AFTER athletes had already skated times that could qualify them a
spot at Worlds is pretty fucked up. I know SSC doesn’t really care about Worlds
(except for when they get called out publicly by Larry for not supporting
Canadian athletes that go, which is at least a little bit funny), but
ultimately the competition is a World Championship event and shouldn’t be treated
as the low-stakes joke that SSC seems to think it is.
Why Know the Rules When You Wrote Them? –
There
was an interesting and disheartening bit of drama at the Canadian Olympic Skate
Off which was a bit of an own-goal for SSC. Simon, the guy who wrote the
fucking bulletin (aka the High Performance Director, NOT me), told a
couple of national team coaches ahead of the men’s 1500m that the winner of the
men’s mass start would be a priority position for Olympic team selection. As
expected, this led to utter madness as suddenly people’s Olympic dreams were
dangled right back in front of them. Turns out buddy had “misspoke” which is
often code for “being an idiot”.
Olympic trials is an incredibly emotional weekend.
Peoples’ dreams are made at Olympic trials, but they can also be shattered.
Some skaters leave Olympic trials on a loss and end up never strapping the
skates on again. As the High Performance Director, you have to be rock solid
with the rules at an event like this. Mistakes like that are inexcusable,
especially when you’re the fucking person that wrote the rules. You cannot play
with athlete’s emotions like that.
Should SSC Take World Cup Quota More
Seriously? –
I think one underrated storyline at World
Cup 5 was Canada’s refusal to send anything remotely resembling a full team. We
left many spots unfilled, sending only our Olympic team despite having many
more World Cup quotas than Olympic quotas. I care about this for two reasons.
First, it’s a fucking World Cup. Just send a damn
team, compete on the world stage, and give your skaters race experience. I’m
not sure why a federation wouldn’t want to do any of that.
Second, the World Cups actually mean something. “But
Dad, only the fall World Cups counted as Olympic qualifiers!” Argh, I can
already hear the idiots saying this. Yes, you dunces, of course World Cup 5 doesn’t
count for Olympic quotas, but it DOES count for World Cup quotas for next
season and by golly things ain’t looking great.
The rules for qualifying World Cup quotas are mostly
based on how many skaters you have in the top 40 in an event during the
previous season. To max out with five quotas in a distance, you need to finish
the season with five skaters in the top 40 in the world rankings. This makes
getting a fifth quota challenging, since getting five skaters in the top 40
with only four quotas means your skaters need to earn significant points each
time they race and then not race the full circuit to make room for a fifth skater.
This also means that maximum quotas should be protected as they are not easy to
keep.
It wasn’t long ago that Canada had pretty much maxed
out their World Cup quotas and were able to send essentially a full roster. We’ve
dialed back a bit, mostly due to capping our World Cup teams at 16 skaters (or
whatever limit is chose for a given year). This means we leave quotas unfilled
and then lose them for the following season. This year we dropped down to only
3/5 spots in a couple of distances, particularly on the men's side.
Now that we know the rules, why do we care so much
about Canada’s small roster at World Cup 5? Well, one example would be the fifth
spot we aren’t going to get next year in the men’s 500m. Yankun Zhao finished the
season ranked 41st, only 2 points behind 40th. And he did this only racing two
500m World Cup races all season. Sending him to WC5 would have essentially
guaranteed a 5th quota for next season. Instead, we let Yankun fall to 41
st
and therefor below the threshold to earn a World Cup quota for the 2026-2027
season.
Yankun might be an easy example when looking at points
because he came so damn close to 40
th
, but the challenge there is
that he didn’t finish top 5 at winter trials and so justifying sending him
could be difficult. This isn’t always the case though. Let’s look at another
example: Alexa Scott.
Alexa finished the season ranked 44th in the 1500m and
is Canada’s 5th highest ranked skater. Alexa missed 40th by 8 points, which is
a very small gap to make up at a weaker World Cup (like the one this past
weekend). By not sending Alexa, Canada essentially just forfeited that fifth
spot for next season instead of fighting for it. And Valerie Maltais didn’t
even race the 1500m this past weekend, so it’s not like SSC could have argued
that our quotas were already full for WC5. It’s not like we were guaranteed a fifth quota next
season if we had sent Alexa, but we would have had a damn good chance at earning it. And that’s
not to mention the other reasons one might send a skater to a World Cup: for
experience, for development, and to send our best skaters to race internationally
wearing the maple leaf with pride.
I think it’s time that SSC starts taking our World Cup
quotas a bit more seriously. This is something that has been bugging me for a
while as I’ve watched our quotas slowly slip away year after year. I’ve regretted
not writing about this in the column before and so I thought today was as good
a time as any to bring it up. If no one at SSC is taking a strategic look at
our quotas, how many we need to qualify World Championship and Olympic spots, and
how hard they can be to earn back once we lose them, then I would say this is a
pretty big blind spot for our federation.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back soon with Part 3
since I am now realizing my rant just isn’t over yet.
Cheers,
Dad