Hello speed skating enthusiasts,
Since I’m low on time, I’ll save us both the trouble
of writing (or reading) a preamble. We finished up the last column with the
500m events, leaving the 1500m and mass start events as the only remaining
fantasy points earning events that still need to be covered.
Men’s 1500m
After winning the 500m and 1000m races, and having won
this event at a number of World Championships since the last Olympics, and
being the top ranked 1500m skater in the World, Jordan Stolz was the obvious favourite
for this event. But, this is the fucking Olympics, which meant we were blessed
with a nasty upset and one of the most impressive races I’ve ever seen.
Prior to the Olympics, I had publicly stated on the pod
that I thought Kjeld Nuis would win this event. This was admittedly to keep
things interesting, since having everyone agree that Stolz was the favourite doesn’t
make for great entertainment. But, to Kjeld’s credit, I also honestly believed he had an
outside chance at winning the whole damn thing. He is undoubtedly the most clutch
men’s 1500m skater of the last decade or so. He won gold at both of the
previous Olympics and was clearly hoping for a three-peat, though at 36 years
of age this was going to be a challenge.
In this event, he had a great race and finished within
0.07 of Jordan Stolz. He was over a second ahead of Stolz going into the final lap
but ended up barely losing to him due in part to a 2.3 second drop for his final split. On a normal day this likely would have meant he would still have earned a silver medal, but
this was no ordinary day. Nuis had to settle for bronze, and Stolz for silver, because
Ning Zhongyan popped off with one of the nicest races I have ever seen.
Ning was flying right out of the gates. His opener was
22.99, over a third of a second faster than Stolz’s. He was one of only three
skaters to skate under 25 in the first lap and was the only skater with a
sub-26 second lap. To put that into perspective, a lot of skaters in the 1500m
hit a 26 in their
first
lap. Ning’s 25.9 in the
second
lap put
those all to shame and had him well out in front after 1100m. He managed to
hold on a bit stronger than Nuis did and finished with a final time of 1.41.98,
smoking the Olympic record of 1.43.21 and beating the rest of the podium by
over three quarters of a second.
It’s always hard to compare different races on
different tracks at different competitions and in different moments of time.
But, despite these difficulties, it’s races like this that make you wonder what
the time could have been if they had been racing in Salt Lake City on some
world record quality ice. The race was so smooth—utterly dominant from the
beginning. It reminded me of other races that really stand out as being on
another level, such as Sverre Lunde Pederson’s 5000m dominance in Inzell at the
2019 Worlds or Stolz’s 500m blowout in Heerenveen at the 2023 Worlds. Like
these other performances, I can’t help but wonder if this was one of the best
(and possibly the very best) 1500m races I’ve ever seen and, if this was at altitude,
Ning could have been the first man to break 1.40. Unfortunately, we’ll never
know.
One overall takeway from the men’s 1500m was that the ice
conditions clearly suited the guys approaching this event from the sprintier
side. The top 3 all obviously came with incredible speed, but in the top 7 we
also saw Wennemars, Di Stefano, and Kongshaug. It was a bit further down that we saw
the stronger 5000m skaters, such as Eitrem (9
th
), Semirunniy (10
th
),
and Jilek (16
th
).
Women’s 1500m
Similar to Stolz on the men’s side, Miho
Takagi was the clear favourite for the gold medal in the women’s 1500m. She’s been
a dominant force in the distance for years, has multiple Olympic medals in it,
and finished the season as the top ranked 1500m skater. The only other skater that
could easily have been argued to be the favourite was Joy Beune, but she missed
a top three finish at Dutch trials and so didn’t compete in this distance at the Olympics. In
her absence, Takagi was the going to get the gold…until she didn’t. In fact,
she didn’t even finish on the podium—a result that probably had 1,000,000 to 1
betting odds. Her final result of 6
th
place was her worst Olympic
1500m finish since 2010 in Vancouver when she was a Junior B1.
With Miho out of the picture, this left the top spot
wide open for whoever had the race of their life. This ended up being
Antoinette Rijpma-de Jong, who had medaled at a few Olympics in a row but had
never been able to earn that incredibly evasive gold. It was a tight field with
nine girls skating a 1.54, but Antoinette’s was fastest at 1.54.09. Right
behind her was Ragne Wiklund at 1.54.15, good enough for silver. Wiklund unsurprisingly
lost about four tenths of a second to Antoinette in the opener, but then (much
more surprisingly) she beat Antoinette in the first and second lap. With 400m
to go they were only 0.01 apart and it was actually Antoinette who had the stronger
finish of the two of them. It wasn’t a big difference, but it was enough to win
her the gold medal.
Rounding out the podium in the bronze medal position was
one of the biggest surprises of the entire Olympics: Valerie Maltais. She had
never previously landed on a 1500m podium. In fact she spent half the season
in B Division, only had one result in the top 15, and was ranked 17
th
in the world. For many people watching, she probably wasn’t even considered an
outside podium threat in a field with not only Takagi, Wiklund, and Rijpma-de
Jong but also Morozova, Bowe, Groenewoud, Kok, and Han, never mind legitimate
dark horses like Blondin, McGregor, or Lollobrigida.
Coming off two Olympic medals in two distances she was an obvious contender in, it seemed that Maltais was going into this
race with a different mindset and skated it about as fearlessly as possible. By
that I mean she just fucking went for it and clearly didn’t carry any anxiety-
or expectation-based baggage. She skated it beautifully and was justly rewarded. For those watching, her reaction said it all. The most unexpected
successes can be the sweetest, and seeing Maltais and Wiklund celebrate their
podium performances together as the last skater crossed the line was really
heartwarming. Long story short, Maltais had put herself in a competitive position
and took maximum advantage of Beune’s absence and an underwhelming race from Takagi.
Men’s Mass Start
Of all the races at the Olympics, this one was without
a doubt my least favourite. Which is unfortunate because the men’s mass start
has such a good track record of exciting races. But a few unfortunate factors
collided and the result was a very underwhelming final event on the men’s side.
To summarize, Jorrit Bergsma went for an early
breakaway (he broke on lap three) and held on for the gold medal. Viktor Hald Thorup,
who is the nobody who DNF’d the 10,000m a few days before and is more famous
for being sponsored by the European Sperm Bank than he is for being good at
skating, had the smarts in this race to break with Bergsma and managed to hold
on for a silver medal.
The rest of the pack was left to fight for the bronze
medal which did come down to a pretty nice sprint finish. Andrea Giovannini
managed to beat out the rest of the pack (including a true sprinter in Jordan
Stolz) and finished in third. Stolz, Chung, Swings, and Gelinas-Beaulieu left this
event empty handed. How’d we get here?
A few things happened. First,
no one fucking
reacted to Bergsma’s break
(except for Thorup, obviously). He didn’t even sprint by at
a fast pace on the outside or anything sneaky. He literally just pulled ahead
of the pack by skating a 28.2 (which they can all hit with ease on the shorter
track that includes the warmup lane) and the pack just… let him go?
Second, the pack was an unfortunate assortment of
countries. Teamwork has become a huge part of mass start racing and having two
skaters from your country in the final is a big difference maker. The reason
for this is because you can take turns making breakaways or, if another country
breaks, one of your skaters can essentially sacrifice themselves by leading
laps to close the gap on the break so that the second skater has a chance at a win
in a sprint finish. To be clear, that last part is the important part. We see this all the time with the Dutch where Groenewoud
and whoever she is partnered with work off each other by constantly attacking separately but never screwing each other over,
or on the men’s side where Bergsma is often paired with a sprinter so they can
have a threat regardless of which way the race goes.
In this race, so many of the top countries were left
with only one skater. Stolz was the only American, Chung the only Korean, Tony
the only Canadian, Giovannini the only Italian. Even the weaker countries mostly
only had one skater: Odor for Austia, Jilek for Czechia, and Wu for China. In
fact, only four countries had two skaters: the Netherlands, Japan, France and
Belgium.
The Dutch had Stijn van de Bunt and Jorrit Bergsma. The
Japanese had Shomu Sasaki and Motonaga Arito. The two Belgians were Bart Swings
(a legend) and Indra Medard (a coward). The two Frenchmen were Timothy
Loubineaud (a distance stud) and Mathieu Belloir (a semi-respectable mass start
sprinter).
So, why does this list suck? Well, we can start off by
just immediately discounting the Japanese skaters since they are generally a
bit weaker. The Dutch also don’t matter for this argument since Bergsma was in
the break and therefore his teammate (Stijn) wasn’t going to sacrifice himself to
close to gap. Medard has basically never led a lap in his life and so we couldn’t
possibly expect him to start doing that in this race. And finally, the French
were in an odd position where their stronger skater (Loubineaud) may have
actually been in a better position to close the gap, but then Belloir isn’t necessarily
good enough in a final sprint to justify Loubineaud’s sacrifice. But if you
reverse their roles, then you could still just argue the same thing.
What we needed in this race was a sacrificial lamb
from Korea who would do anything to give Chung a shot in the final sprint. Or
someone from Canada to grind a couple laps out so Tony could be in a good spot.
Or for literally any American or Italian to be there to do the same. Or for the
second Belgian skater to not be Indra Medard. It was a perfect storm of good countries
mostly lacking a teammate and the countries that had two just being the wrong
people or countries.
I’ll mention one third and final point. Stijn van de Bunt
put on a masterclass on being a good teammate and honestly deserves a lot of
credit for making sure the pack stayed as passive as possible. He kept going to
the front and leading the pack but then purposefully dumping speed so that
Bergsma could keep his gap on the pack. The pack is generally happy to have
literally anyone lead so they kept letting him go to the front and would then
figure out too slowly that he was sabotaging them. Of course, he was also
sabotaging his own race, but this is the sacrifice that good teammates make in
the mass start and this is one reason why the Dutch keep fucking winning. (On a side note, the Dutch Federation surely noticed Stijn's efforts and I imagine he'll be rewarded in the future with more MS positions at World Cups. And what goes around comes around, so I am also quite certain that Stijn will eventually win his own MS gold medal, which seems to happen to most Dutch MS skaters who are willing to put in an honest shift as the good teammate.)
Overall, the pack was just way too passive. They let
Bergsma break away with ease, then they all refused to put any of their own energy
into closing the gap, and then they got bullied by a little Dutch boy who was
skating in his second ever senior international mass start event. The result was
an early break that lead to a pair of uncontested medals being awarded to
Bergsma and Thorup.
Now I do want to be clear about one thing: I'm not trying to take anything away from Bergsma or Thorup’s medals. These were well earned,
were a result of their performance on the ice, and no one can take that from
them. I obviously just wish the pack had at least
tried
to fight them
for the gold. I’m not mad at all at Bergsma and Thorup for playing their cards right. I’m just really disappointed with how things played out for the spectators and fans.
Women’s Mass Start
Unlike the men’s mass start, the women’s mass start
final was a real nice race. It may have had a relatively predictable podium,
but at least we got to witness a final lap sprint that involved 11 of the 16
girls that made it to the gold medal race. It also happened right after the men’s
race and so maybe it also felt like a way better spectator product relative to the
shitshow we had just witnessed.
Going into this race, the top three girls in the World
rankings were Mia Manganello, Marijke Groenewoud, and Ivanie Blondin (in that order). These
three kept it consistent by all landing on the Olympic podium but they did at least switch up the order. Groenewoud got the gold with a very dominant last lap
while Blondin managed to pass Manganello coming out of the final corner to take
the silver medal. This left Manganello with the bronze, a result I’m sure she’s
still thrilled about since it was her first (and surely last) individual Olympic
medal (I always forget she has a sneaky bronze from the 2018 TP). Groenewoud’s
gold was also her first individual Olympic medal while Blondin repeated her silver
medal performance from 2022 where she lost to another Dutchwoman, Irene
Schouten.
Though the top ranked women finished on top, they didn’t
get there uncontested. Francesca Lollobrigida and Valerie Maltais were both
coming off incredible Olympic performances in the 3000m, 5000m, and 1500m where
they collectively earned four medals. They were also considered medal
favourites for this event but fell just short, finishing 4
th
and 5
th
respectively. Maltais’s result was particularly impressive since she fell in
the third lap of the race and had to sprint to catch back up, wasting valuable
energy. Though she wasn’t able to pull an Irene Schouten (who fell in the 2024 World Championship mass start but fought her way back to win gold), getting
back into the final sprint and finishing top 5 is still super impressive.
Alright, now I’m actually done for a bit I think. Two
columns in a night is hopefully enough to satisfy even the eagerest of Dad’s Column
consumers. I guess I’ll issue one last apology for how late these Olympic
recaps have been, I’ve just had a hard time getting my double-shifts covered at the communism factory.
Also, on a somewhat sad note, there is only one day left in
the international skating season. World Sprints has just ended and World
Allrounds is headed into the second and final day. Looking at the league
standings, shit is coming down to the wire. I see a two way tie for 10
th
(the last money spot). I also see about 6 managers in the money right now with
weak allrounds teams while a handful of managers with a lot more firepower in
their roster for tomorrow nip at their heels. We're guaranteed to see some late season shuffling in the league standings. Should be a great last day of racing!
Cheers,
Dad