Hello speed skating enthusiasts,
What. A. Fucking. Season. From start to finish, this
was one of the most exciting ones yet. Who the hell expected a world record from a filthy
Frenchman at the season opener? How about all those juniors, led by Finn Sonnekalb,
taking massive steps into the senior world rankings? Who thought we’d see the
first sub-6-minute race? And not even in Salt Lake City,
but
in
Inzell??
How about an undefeated season for Kok in the 500m—from Dutch Trials
to the World Cups to the Olympics to World Sprints? And to cap it all off, we
even got to witness an emotional farewell to a pair of absolute skating icons
at the end of World Allrounds. It was a total whirlwind and I loved every
moment of it.
But all good things come to an end—even a season as
good as this one. With the season done, it’s time to crown a new fantasy speed
skating champion. In today’s column, I’ll start by quickly recapping the last
weekend of racing before announcing our newest member of the Hall of Champions (along
with the rest of our in-the-money finishers). I’ll then give a few quick thoughts
and thank yous before signing things off. I didn’t have enough time to get to
the Emins or the Choir Awards today, so looks like I’m due for at least one more
column this year. Don’t get your hopes up if you think it’ll get posted in a
timely manner.
World Sprints
The final weekend of the year started with the World Sprint
event over the first two days, followed by World Allrounds on the Saturday and
Sunday. World Sprints really demonstrated the gaps that are starting to show
between those skaters who are good and those who are truly great. Overall, the
top skaters completely stole the show and no one else managed to put up much of
a fight.
On the women’s side, Femke Kok was untouchable. She
went four for four and won the final classification by a margin we’re much more
used to seeing at the junior level. In fact, the World Junior Women’s
classification was won by only 1.3 samalog points this year while Femke Kok won
World Sprints by an insane 2.27. Just unbelievably dominant on so many levels.
In second place was a bit of a surprise—not Jutta Leerdam, who didn't even show up for the event, but Suzanne Schulting.
She didn’t have the best start to the season and missed most of the World Cups,
but she finished strong with a 2
nd
place finish in each of the four events
at Worlds and took home the overall silver medal. She also notably ended the
season as a free agent in two pools. Tons of managers could have taken advantage
of the 120 points she earned this weekend but failed to manage their team
effectively. Rounding out the podium was the third and final Dutch skater,
Marrit Fledderus. She only hit one podium all weekend but her combined time was
enough to hold off the nearest challengers: Kaja Ziomek-Nogal, Beatrice
Lamarche, and Lee Na-Hyun.
On the men’s side, it was always going to be a battle
between Jordan Stolz and Jenning de Boo. Despite Stolz having the better World Cup
season and taking gold in both individual events at the Olympics, de Boo put on
a World Sprints masterclass and handily won the overall classification in world record fashion. He crushed
Stolz (and the rest of the field) in both 500m races and even managed to win
one of the 1000m events as well.
Stolz may have been a bit back from de Boo but still slotted into second overall relatively
easily, as the gap between him and de Boo and him and the rest of the field
was actually pretty comparable. In third place was the defending world sprint
champion, Ning Zhongyan. Ning showed once again that he is without a doubt the
best 500m skater in the world that doesn’t race the 500m (not even at the
Olympics when the events are super spread out). Joep Wennemars got 4
th
and is starting to look very comfortable in those close-but-not-close-enough finishes.
They almost look good on him. Laurent Dubreuil also had a strong weekend but
his 1000m was just a bit too weak and he ultimately finished 5
th
. Damian
Zurek, who was ranked 2
nd
in the world in both distances and had a
pair of top-4 finishes at the Olympics, notably pulled out of the event after
the first day.
World Allrounds
Allrounds is always such an exciting event to watch,
with ungifted sprinters being forced to try to shred a 500m and each tenth of a
samalog point having the potential to be so meaningful when the final scores
are tallied up. This year was particularly exciting because both the men’s and
women’s events featured a world class sprinter (Stolz and Takagi) taking an enormous
lead and then doing their best to hold on as the distances got longer.
On the women’s side, Takagi handily won the 500m but by
much less of a margin than she likely would have hoped. A couple of allround
threats stayed within about one samalog point of her, notably Antoinette Rijpme-de
Jong, Joy Beune, and most shockingly Ragne Wiklund. Ragne went into the competition
with a 39.59 PB but smoked that by skating a 38.84, really setting the ton for
the weekend. She followed this race up with a dominant 3000m, skating 3.56 on a
weekend that saw only one other woman break 4 minutes. Wiklund and Takagi finished
the first day tied to the 1000
th
in samalog points and the stage was
set for a great day two.
In the 1500m, defending champion Joy Beune gained some ground with a win
as the field clearly narrowed to five skaters competing for podium spots: Beune,
Wiklund, Takagi, Groenewoud, and Rijpma-de Jong. In the final event, that grueling
5000m, Wiklund pulled off a successful full 12.5 laps (as opposed to her typical
4600m specialty) and clinched the overall title—the first Norwegian woman to
win allrounds in 88 years. Groenewoud also finished on a high note, moving up
the rankings during the 5000m into the silver medal position. Rijpma-de Jong
struggled in the longest distance, taking her out of the competition. Takagi
had an overall great race, struggling a bit near the end but managing to stay
within about four seconds of Beune’s time and therefore beating her in the
overall classification by 0.18 samalog points. Takagi was the defending
world sprint champion, so for her to end her career with one final world
allrounds podium finish ahead of the defending champion is pretty phenomenal.
On the men’s side, Stolz opened up an insane lead in
the 500m, finishing about 2.4 seconds ahead of most relevant skaters (except
for Kongshaug who managed to keep the gap to 1.8 seconds). But Stolz then gave
a lot of time back in the 5000m, finishing with a very respectable 6.19 that
just happened to get smoked by Metodej Jilek, Vladimir Semirunniy, Stijn van de
Bunt, and especially Sander Eitrem (who shredded a 6.01.61 track record in
Heerenveen, destroying Patrick Roest’s old record of 6.04.36).
In the 1500m, Stolz went out with a vengeance and
attacked right from the start, opening in 22.75. But three full days of racing
was starting to catch up with him and he only won the event by about three quarters
of a second. Eitrem finished second in the 1500m and put himself in a great
spot heading into the 10,000m. In that final event, he redeemed himself after
his underwhelming Olympic 10,000m race and finished third, good enough to
clinch the overall title (the first Norwegian male to win since 1994).
Stolz had a gargantuan lead over the rest of the top
competitors, worth about 40 seconds in the 10,000m, but he just did not have enough
in the tank to clinch it out. He ended up losing the 10,000m by over a minute
to Metodej Jilek, who settled into second in the overall classification. Just
behind Jilek in both the 10,000m and the overall ranking was Vladimir
Semirunnij, who ultimately finished ahead of Stolz for the bronze spot by
nearly a full samalog point.
Despite his incredible talents, Stolz witnessed firsthand
just how hard it is to compete in World Sprints and World Allrounds on the same
weekend. If he was paying attention two years ago, he would have noticed that Takagi
was able to win sprints pretty easily but struggled immensely just one day into
the allround event and ended up scratching the final day of racing. I
appreciate his confidence and ambition, but if something is hard for Takagi then
it’s likely hard for any skater.
A Tribute to a Pair of Legends
This bring us to a section I wanted to get to
before we crown our latest fantasy speed skating champion. Two absolute legends
of speed skating finished their careers at World Allrounds: Miho Takagi and Martina
Sablikova. I thought I’d quickly pay them their respects before we get back to
the fantasy business.
Miho Takagi
Miho Takagi is, without a doubt, one of the all-time
greatest skaters. After making her Olympic debut in 2010 in Vancouver as a
Junior B, she never looked back. She’s both a world allround champion and a
multi-time world sprint champion. She has another five silver and bronze medals
from world sprints and allrounds as well. She’s a 10-time Olympic medalist. Her
Olympic medals span across four different events and she has at least two
medals in each of those. In fact, she’s probably the only speed skater ever to
get back-to-back Olympic medals in both the team pursuit and the 500m—two distances
that contain very little crossover, at least in the modern era of speed skating.
She’s a 16-time world championship medalist, six of
those being golds. She won a World Cup classification 13 times in her career and has 117
World Cup medals in 259 World Cup starts. Incredibly, 59 of those World Cup
medals are gold. This means that over her entire career, 23% of her World Cup
races resulted in a gold medal and nearly half resulted in a medal of any
colour. Outside of the usual senior competitions (especially from a North
American perspective), she’s a 12-time medalist at world juniors, a 5-time Asian
Winter Games medalist, and she won Japanese National Championships an insane 43
times.
She broke three Olympic records and six world records,
two of which still stand. She’s the only female skater to ever break 1.50 in
the 1500m, and she’s done it multiple times. And she did this all in what will
be looked back on as a relatively short career. Takagi is only 31 years old—a quick
look at many of the other medalist at this last Olympics would suggest that she would still be in her prime for another four years (or longer!) if she stuck around. We’ll never know exactly
what that could have looked like, but it’s a guarantee that her medal tallies
and successes would have just continued to grow and grow.
In an era of increased specialization, she was one of
the few remaining truly well-rounded skaters. And she was also about as dependable
as they come. In our league, she is still the all-time points leader in our
skater rankings and was always a safe bet for a first-round pick, even on her
down years. And to cap it all off, she had one of the best career signoffs I’ve
ever seen. When asked at the end of World Championships what she wanted to say,
she kept it very short and sweet: “Thanks so much, and Goodbye.”
Martina Sablikova
The other big retirement this past weekend was Martina
Sablikova. She’s retiring at a much older age than Takagi (38 years old) and
this one was much more expected, but it doesn’t make it any easier seeing her
move on from the sport. She exploded on to the world scene at a young age,
narrowly missing the 2006 Olympic podium as a junior with a 4
th
place finish. Since then, she’s had one of the most consistent careers ever
recorded in speed skating.
She is a five-time world allround champion and has
another three medals from the event. She is a seven-time Olympic medalist,
three of which are gold. She’s got 12 medals from the European Championships,
including her five wins. Her tally for World Single Distance Championships is
utterly insane: she is a 16-time world champion and has a total of 27 WSD
medals.
She’s medaled 112 times at the World Cups, 66 of which
are gold. And she did that all in 263 starts. (On a side note, it’s cool
to see how close those numbers were to Miho’s 117, 59, and 251.) Her gold medal
rate at World Cups is even higher than Miho’s, eclipsing 25%. We also have to keep in mind that Sablikova is from Czechia, which has a tiny speed skating program. This means she was never able to benefit from team pursuit medals in all of her medal counts, unlike many other top skaters from the Netherlands, Japan, Canada, the USA, and Russia. This just adds another level of impressiveness to her insane medal counts.
She skated nine
junior world records, including two that are still standing from 2006. She cementing
herself early in her career as one of the best long-distance skaters before she
even hit 20 years old, including a 6.50 in the 5000m, 4.00 in the 3000m, and an
insane 14.08 in the rarely skated 10,000. Over her career, she broke seven senior
world records and her eventual 13.48.33 in the 10,000m honestly might never
fall.
Martina is without a doubt one of the all-time greats.
Her consistency on the World Cup circuit, at World Champs, and at the Olympics
is almost unmatched. From her first medal at Worlds in Salt Lake City in 2007,
she managed to medal at Worlds or the Olympics every year until her last. Her
19-year streak was finally broken at the 2026 Olympics in Milan where she was
sick and hardly able to race the 5000m, nevermind the 3000m that the had to scratch.
Making it through 19 straight years without illness, injury, or even just a
down year interrupting your medal streak is one of the most impressive runs I’ve
ever seen in the world of speed skating.
A career this impressive deserved a proper signoff, and Sablikova did this in perfect fashion. At World Allrounds she was overcome with emotion on the start line of her 3000m race, thanking the crowd with a wave and fighting back tears. As the race started, you could see her smiling massively as she took in every second of the moment in a fully packed Thialf. Then, with one lap to go, she stood up, pulled down her hood, took off her glasses, and did one final lap in front of a crowd that at this point was going absolutely bananas. I could not tell you what her competitor (Kaitlyn McGregor) skated that day and I bet no one else knows either since Sablikova had completely stolen the show. She turned her 3000m into a surprise retirement lap that likely no one but maybe her coach and her girlfriend knew was coming and it made for an absolutely epic moment. If you haven't watched the whole thing, I highly recommend checking out the ISU's stream on YouTube and giving her last race a full watch, including the whole lead-up.
A New Fantasy Speed Skating Champion is
Named
Ok, that’s enough about the past. It’s finally time to
get back to the present and announce a new winner. The
2025 Men’s and
Women’s Stage 3 Choir Fantasy Speed Skating Draft Champion
is
Max
,
who managed the team
Liiv by the Kok, Die by the Kok.
He’s been a
regular in this league for a long time but, despite always fielding a very competitive
team, he’s never before managed to put together the perfect season that is
needed to win this league. That all changed this year when he tallied 2854
points and finished the season atop the league standings (despite refusing to
move on from using Kok puns in his team name).
Max’s team consisted of Femke Kok (c), Jutta Leerdam,
Brittany Bowe, Valerie Maltais, Nadezhda Morozova, Kim Min-Sun, Marcel Bosker,
Chris Huizinga, Lee Na-Hyun, and Marten Liiv, with valuable contributions from
Stijn van de Bunt who came in late in the season as a free agent. And before
any of you haters say he only won because he had Femke Kok, Max’s team would
have still finished in first place if all the Kok’s in the league are replaced
by the equivalent of the 8
th
best skater (a decent proxy for a
respectable first round pick). Whichever way you cut it, his team was just better.
The Rest of the Winners (Hint: Probs Not
You)
Since the top ten teams all win money in this league,
we’ve got a bunch more partial winners. By far the closest finisher to Max was
Christian. Despite a late push at World Allrounds, it just wasn’t quite enough
and he ultimately finished in second place. Rounding out the top three was
Dylan, a relatively absent manager who usually doesn’t even draft his own team
and somehow still keeps making money in this league. Unlike Max, Dylan’s
success pretty much entirely hinged on having Femke Kok. Had he had a generic
first rounder, he would have finished much closer to 17
th
(still
better than Stepdad and Your Biological Father!). Go figure. Joining our podium
finishers in the top ten are the following managers: Matt Z, Charlotte, Daniel,
MCV (again??), Zach, Abby, Rachel and Daria. Congrats to all the teams that
made some money!
The Organizers and Columnist in Shambles
As alluded to in the previous section, the league
organizers and columnists kinda got stomped this year. The obvious exception to
this is Christian, but he’s always rigging the draft and so I’m not sure if
that even counts. Dad fared ok, falling just nine points shy of the money right
at the end of the season (obviously because he got unlucky and NOT because he
drafted a mediocre team). Thomas, Cody, and Stepdad finished in 17
th
,
19
th
, and 20
th
—a piss poor showing for a bunch of fantasy
speed skating tryhards.
But At Least We Aren’t
THAT
Bad!
It may have been a disappointing season for Dad and
most of the league organizers and website contributors, but at least we didn’t
get beat by Dad’s Lads. As always, the Lads took down a couple of teams, bringing
those managers so much shame that it cannot possibly be described in words. Dad’s
Lads finished with 1683 points which would have ranked them 27
th
in
the league, beating out 13 pathetic and embarrassing teams. Imagine losing to a
bunch of literal free agents! Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine what it’s like
since you just fucking did! Shame!
I won’t call out every single manager who found themselves
this far down the rankings, but I will name drop a few. For starters, Connor Woods
lost to a team of free agents and he did it while using Dad’s really good draft
list. Shame! Matt Laxton has been a manager since this league first started and
yet he’s still losing to a team of free agents. Shame! And Greg Bieber, the very
same Greg Bieber who thought he was hot shit when he entered this league in
dynamite fashion a few years back and won rookie of the year with a very
impressive top five finish, has finally hit a new low by ending the season in
34
th
and getting absolutely smoked by a team of unwanted, unpicked,
unloved, worthless, insignificant, inferior, wretched, good for nothing free
agents.
But then it gets worse. Jordan Stolz is just one man,
but he managed to put up an incredible 1285 points. This beat out four teams,
each of whom had ten skaters. The following managers have really hit rock
bottom: Jenna, Robert, Taylor, and Adam. I pray you’re able to pick it up next
year. Otherwise, like, what the fuck…
Finally, The Leftovers had a dreadful end to the
season and finished with only 784 points, well behind our last place finisher
with 1209 points. Good job everyone, you all managed to beat a team of dogshit
free agents that were too bad to make the other team of free agents. I hope you’re
proud.
Some Final Housekeeping Notes Before I Sign
Off
Finally, some quick housekeeping notes before I sign
off. For those that landed in the money, you’re gonna get paid. That much I can
guarantee. Just give me a week or so until things cool off at work and I find
the time to send you all your big fat cheques. I’ll reach out for your etransfer
if I don’t have it already so you can likely be expecting a message from me in
the near future. And if your name is Christian, you’re gonna get 10 bucks less
than you deserve because Connor owes me 10 bucks and so I am passing this debt
on to you. Good luck collecting it!
Next, I just want to extend a special thank you to the
rest of the team here at FantasySpeedSkating.com. I’d love to take credit for
running the whole show, but that just wouldn’t be right. Thomas, Cody, and
Christian are always making sure that things run smooth behind the scenes and I
couldn’t be any more thankful to work with such a good group. I’ll also give a
quick shoutout to the rest of the columnist: Stepdad pulled some serious weight
in making my columns look good in comparison to his, Your Biological Father
showed once again that all he really cares about is the team names, and Mom,
well, er, I think she’s still coming back from the corner store with those cigarettes
she went out to buy a year or two ago, but I swear she’s gonna coming back. She
said she’d come back. Right guys? She’s coming back, right? Right…?
Whelp. That’s pretty much it from me. It’s been a lot
of fun sharing my thoughts throughout the season with y’all and I hope to do it
all again next year. If you wanna see who ends up being lucky enough to get an
Emin award or want to follow along with some of the other offseason plans I’ve
got for the column, then check back in a week or two. Otherwise, see you in the
fall for another exciting season of fantasy speed skating!
Cheers,
Dad