Hello speed skating enthusiast,
So much to unpack from these first two weekends of
racing, but Dad is unfortunately quite busy. So instead of something insightful,
here is a relatively lengthy list of skaters who have done better than
expected, worse than expected, and a few who seem to sit confusingly between
the two trending directions.
It’s looking like I might actually have a bit of free
time this weekend, so stay tuned for an updated Crappy Tire Power Rankings and
some Free Agent and Injury Trackers in the coming days.
Stock Rising
Damian Zurek –
You
could have given me any odds in the world that Damian Zurek would be a top 4
pick after 2 World Cups and I would have turned you down without hesitation.
And yet here we are. His opener is good enough and his lap is phenomenal, but
the real success is now in his consistency. Yeah, sure, we’re only 6 races in.
I get that it is a small sample size. But all 6 of his races have ranged from
good to incredible and this consistency was the main ingredient missing from
Zurek in the past.
Fig. 1 – This Polish sprinter is literally
younger than half the league’s managers.
Beatrice Lamarche –
World
Cup 1 may have been a dream start for the breakout Canadian, but she then
followed it up with another 20-point performance at World Cup 2. As someone who
started as a free agent in most pools, this is a very impressive achievement.
It looks like she may be dropping out from the 1500m events going forward, but
this realistically wont impact her point potential negatively in any way.
Casey Dawson
–
It feels like just last week that I was calling this guy an outside podium
threat for an individual distance at the Olympics. If it feels that way, it’s
probably because it
was
only a week ago that I said that. After a
dominant 5000m gold medal and track record performance in Calgary, this guy can
no longer be called an underdog. He’s also a very solid allrounder and should
do some damage at World Champs too.
Felix Maly –
He
may not be as good as Dawson in the 5000m, but he’s now a steady A Group guy
and will continue to trickle in points on that front. His Mass Start
performance at World Cup 1 also shows that he’s able to earn some big points on
occasion. Considering this guy is still a free agent in every pool and is
out-earning skaters like Dubreuil, Groenewoud, Daleman, Giovannini, and Swings,
it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this somewhat odd-looking German’s stock is
slowly trickling up.
Finn Sonnekalb –
He’s
big, he’s German, and his name is... not Nico Ihle? Not sure
what they’re feeding this guy over there but it’s clearly working out for him.
He’s currently ranked 2
nd
in the world in the 1500m and he’s still a
fucking junior. Reminds me a little bit of this American guy who stormed on the
scene a few years ago…
Fig. 2 - A photograph of a very young Finn
with his very large and German father.
Ying-Chu Chen
–
In a pair of weekends full of shocking results, the most shocking result of all
was possibly Chen’s silver medal in the first women’s 500m in Calgary. She had
just been promoted from B Division and doesn’t have much history in the A
Division, but she skated to an incredible PB and took down some big names in
the process. I’m personally still not jumping on this free agent pick too quickly,
but Chen has quickly gone from someone I wasn’t even considering as a pickup to
someone I’ll be keeping a close eye on.
Gabriel Odor –
He
was a late pickup in 4 pools who has the benefit of not having much competition
for country quota at events but ultimately never seemed to earn many points.
That quickly changed in Calgary with top 7 performances in both the 1500m and
the Mass Start. Maybe Odor isn’t just undeniably cute but also good at speed
skating.
Katsuhiro Kuratsubo
–
This Japanese sprinter ripped some good times at Japanese Trials in the preseason but struggled
badly at World Cup 1. At World Cup 2, he made it out of B Division and then
posted a top 6 finish in the second 500m event. This means he gets it stay in A
Division for at least WC3 and seems like he’s really finding his way at the
World Cups. The Japanese male sprinter depth has always meant that “random”
500m guys who make the World Cups can pay off handsomely over the course of the
season (just think about Daichi Yamanaka, Ryohei Haga, Yamato Matsui, Yudai Yamamoto, and Takuya
Morimimoto). It was only 4 short years ago that Morishige was a relatively unknown
quantity and then had a breakout Olympic season. Or maybe Kuratsubo will be more
like the typical Japanese sprinter: here for a season or two and then make room
for the next guy. Only time will tell.
Elizaveta Golubeva –
It
wasn’t that long ago that she medaled at Worlds in the 1500m, beating Miho
Takagi, Joy Beune, Brittany Bowe, and a whole bunch of other skaters that a lot
of you young bucks may not even be familiar with (any other Yekaterina Shikhova
fans in the crowd? Hard to forget such a temptress…). She then changed her
name. Then her country. And now she’s back! She isn’t quite what she used to
be, but it’s not like she’s old or anything. She can throw down respectable results
in the 1000m, 1500m, 3000m, and Mass Start, so by sheer volume this "Kazakh" might
actually be putting out some serious points by the Olympics.
Nadezhda Morozova
–
No skater has a worse potential-to-dependability ratio then this actual
Kazakh. When she’s on the top of her game, she’s crushing out 1500m podiums or
cranking out a top 5 finish in the 3000m while making it into A Div in
literally every distance, including the 500m (which is actually crazy
impressive… I’m not sure any other skater could do this right now—not even
Miho). And then suddenly she’ll fuck off for a bit and get back to dancing at
this weird cult she’s a part of and will slowly stop wearing clothing and get zero
fantasy speed skating points. Luckily for the managers who picked her, she’s
currently going down the first path. Things could change in a heartbeat, but
for now it’s looking very promising.
Fig. 3 – A wild Morozova in her natural habitat.
Lee Na-Hyun –
Maybe
the whole junior world record thingy in the 500m two years ago should have alerted more
of us to how fast Lee might be getting. But a somewhat lackluster final junior year
last season didn’t do her any favours and she fell to the late rounds in a couple
of pools. She’s now gone 37.34 or faster in 4 consecutive World Cup 500m races
and hit the podium in Salt Lake City. Her 1000m isn’t amazing, but it’s been
good enough to earn points at both World Cups as well. Things are definitely on
the up for this Korean sprinter.
Jutta Leerdam –
It’s
not often that you’ll see a true top pick make it onto a list of skaters
performing above expected, but Leerdam is outperforming her average draft slot
by a decent margin. She went in the 2
nd
round in almost every pool
with an average draft position of 11.2
nd
but is currently sitting 5
th
in the skater rankings if we remove Stolz. She’s the only skater to beat Kok so
far in any distance and has put up over 40 points both weekends. I don’t think
anyone thought she would suck, but after a shaky Dutch trials it seems that
Leerdam is back to her usual World Cup form.
Stock Falling
Connor Howe
– Two dead-last finishes and a pair of scratches. Now I’m hearing he won’t be
finishing the fall World Cup Circuit. Surely there is something going on behind
the scenes here and I hate to see a fellow Canadian struggle, but managers who
took him in the 4
th
or 5
th
rounds surely wish they’d
stumbled into a Timothy Loubineaud or Damian Zurek instead. Or even an Alexa
Scott—at least she’s earned a single point this season.
Marijke Groenewoud –
Last
year she was 4
th
in the 1500m, 7
th
in the long-distance
classification, and 1
st
in the Mass Start. She averaged 43 points at
the World Cups. And she finished as the top draftable skater, trailing only
Jordan Stolz on the all-skater ranking list. This year? 19
th
in the 1500m, 13
th
in the
long-distance rankings, and 4
th
in the Mass Start. She’s averaging
13 points per World Cup. And she’s in a 3-way tie for 39
th
place in
the skater rankings, making her a strong 6
th
round pick. Yikes.
Fig. 4 – A brand new documentary about how close Marijke is to the 1500m podium.
Miho Takagi
–
After being the safest first round pick of the last decade, Mommy Miho has
finally cracked. Let’s not get all dramatic and say the season is over or
anything like that—she could very well turn around and win a couple Olympic
medals and World Championships. But for her to only have averaged 20 points per
World Cup after years of dropping 40- and 50-bombs, things look noticeably
different. Add in the fact that she made two honest efforts at earning 3000m
Olympic quota and didn’t come particularly close, the total number of points
that Miho is now projecting for this season is well under what we would normally
expect.
Laurent Dubreuil
–
It really pains me to see Larry struggle in an Olympic year after being so
dominant for so long. His lowest World Cup Ranking in the 500m since the
2019-2020 season is 3
rd
and he finished in the top spot twice in
that stretch. His 1000m is notoriously inconsistent, but he’s still been ranked
in the top 5 three times in that stretch and in the top 10 an additional two
times. He’s currently barely holding on to 10
th
in the 500m and is
headed to B Division in the 1000m, so he’s off to a relatively brutal start so
far. Maybe he’s been eating too much Kraft peanut butter as he preps for the
upcoming Olympic media cycle.
Fig. 5 – Powered by really oily Canadian
nuts.
Binyu Yang –
Last
year this very talented Chinese youngster was ranked 8
th
in the
1500m, 12
th
in the long-distance classification, and 3
rd
in the Mass Start. This year she hasn’t cracked top 15 in any ranking list, has
put up fewer points than Greta Myers, and has spent most of her time dwelling
with speed skating’s bottom feeders in B Division. And, with China failing to qualify
more than a single Olympic quota in the women’s long-distances so far, it’s not
like she’ll have a bunch of races at the Olympics where she can quickly close
the points gap between her and the skaters ahead of her. Her B Div 1500m time
was a single bright spot on an otherwise very underwhelming start to the season.
Kim Min-Sun
– It’s hard to imagine KMS heading to B Group in the 500m off her own merit,
and yet we witnessed her get dusted in Salt Lake City and was quickly
relegated. She’s back in A Div now (just barely) but still failing to earn her
managers many points. She’s a far cry from being one of the most dominant
female sprints and has a lot of work to do to re-earn that sort of label.
Marcel Bosker
– He crushed Dutch Trials, but how he just looks like a total shitter. With the
other 5000m guys ripping, Bosker’s chances of earning his own Olympic spot is
looking slimmer by the day. Then again, it’s not like he made it to the 2022 Games
off his own merit, so maybe he’s holding on to hope that the TP will really
need him. Though that didn’t exactly work out for the team too well 4 years ago, so
his best chance at success this season will be to do it all on his own. I guess
I’ll just gently remind everyone that Bosker has a history of pulling out of
allround events partway through, taking off his skinsuit partway through a race
because he’s “overheating”, and just generally not being a very strong fantasy
speed skating pick.
Graeme Fish –
He’s
ranked 37
th
in the World after a pair of World Cups and nowhere near
qualifying a 5000m spot for the Olympics, so things are looking grim. With the
10,000m up next, fortunes could quickly change, but with the men’s long-distance
field being an absolute bloodbath, no points here will come easy. He’s also one
of only three skaters picked in every pool who is skating at the Fall World Cups and has yet to record a single point, so buddy has better turn things around
soon or I imagine we’ll soon see him available as a free agent.
Momoka Horikawa –
She
got sent down to B Division in the 1500m for WC2. She’s now getting sent down
to B Division for the 5000m in WC3. She got dead last (23
rd
!) in the
most recent Mass Start. Things are not looking great for this overrated and yet
still underperforming sack of Japanese meat.
No Mans Land
Is their stock rising? Falling? Sometimes it ain’t
easy to tell. The following skaters seem to be caught in the middle—a mix of
good and bad, incredible and horrendous, and no clear direction or trend for us
to pick up on.
Vladimir Semirunniy
– Not a great start to the season for this “Polish” long distance record holder,
but things are just starting to trend upwards. No 5000m Olympic quota yet but
that should change once Beau Snellink moves into the top 15 in the rankings.
The 10,000 at WC3 is a massive moment for this guy. If he manages to make it
into the 5000m and 10,000m at the Olympics and ends up going to World
Allrounds, his late season point potential could be very, very high. If he
strikes out at WC3, he won’t come close to repeating his successes last season.
Fig. 6 – Four-time "Polish" record holder
Semirunniy with a clear wardrobe malfunction.
Yevgeniy Koshkin –
He is 4 races into the season, three of which earned zero points and one was the 3
rd
fastest 500m of all time. He also broke the 100m world record in Calgary and
then proceeded to finish dead last at the end of 500m. It has become super
fucking hard to get a read on this guy. Obviously the potential is there, but
goddamn do I hate to bet on a guy who could earn you absolutely nothing on any
given weekend (but if you bench him you just KNOW he’ll win gold with a world
record time).
Davide Ghiotto
–
It ain’t usually a great sign if a first-round pick has some question marks
around their performance… but it’s also still very early in the season and
surely this Italian has his eyes on Olympic glory on home ice. If he gets things
together in February, I don’t think people will look back at the first two
World Cups and see a missed opportunity.
Patrick Roest
– With Bosker floundering in the water like a drowning squirrel, the odds that
someone like Roest could sneak a spot at World Allrounds are slowly increasing.
But we won’t get ahead of ourselves just yet… buddy still has a lot to prove.
Kaja Ziomek-Nogal
–
She fell at Polish Trials and announced how disappointed she was to miss the
World Cup team. Then she got sent anyways and started the season with a 4
th
place finish in the 500m (woohoo!). Then she finished 18
th
(uh oh). Then she
got DQ’d and sent to B Divison (yeesh). Then she ripped what would have been a
top-8 time and is heading back into A Div looking solid again (uhm ok..?). A bit of a
rollercoaster so far this season for Kaja and I’m not too sure what to make of
it. Also somehow still less of a rollercoaster than that year she randomly
announced she was pregnant around this point in the season. Round two anyone?
Peder Kongshaug
–
In a country with a long history of very successful distance skaters, he came
within about a second of the national record in the 5000m at WC1. He also
finished one hundredth of a second off the 1500m podium. He then got absolutely
trounced at WC2 in both the 1500m and the 5000m. This later part is a bit
concerning since it’s been over two years since he’s done that poorly in the
1500m—he’s the defending world champion and was ranked 2
nd
in the
World Cup classification last season. Maybe he was just sick and he’ll quickly
bounce back, but WC2 was definitely a shockingly bad weekend for Peder.
Nikola Zdrahalova
– She narrowly failed to get a 3000m Olympic spot and the upcoming 5000m will be
a challenge. On the other hand, 1000m and 1500m Olympic spots are locked in. She
hasn’t quite made it into A Div in as many distances as we maybe expected
heading into this season, but she’s also doing enough damage in the 1500m to
not be a total waste. “Neither great nor awful” is the assessment so far.
Kim Jun-Ho
– We’ve been here before. This guy is notorious for shredding the start of the
season and then essentially disappearing. Then again, no team shows up at the
Olympics more tapered than the Koreans. So maybe this time will be different
and Kim will make it through a full season? Thomas Krol has also been noticeably
absent from the podium this season, which should tell you all you need to know
if you’re a firm believe in the Kim-Krol-Kim Theory.
Alexander Farthofer
–
On the one hand, his times this season have been utterly phenomenal. On the
other hand, he’s earned almost no fantasy points. The go-to motto is usually to
“bet on talent”, but talent doesn’t always pay off. How many times were people
left with scraps after betting on Morozova? Qishi Li? Kai Verbij? Tingyu Gao?
Angel Daleman
– The competition on the Dutch women’s team is pretty fucking disgusting. Angel
could be top 5 at the Olympics in 3 distances. She could also very well not
make it on to the Olympic team at all. She could podium at World Sprints just
as easily as she could fail to qualify for the event. So much potential and yet
so much uncertainty on this one.
That’s all I’ve got for today. We’ve got a bit of a
break from racing this weekend before the World Cup Circuit resumes on December
5
th
in Heerenveen in the Netherlands. Lots of time to get your bench
in and make any necessary free agent adjustments before the deadline.
Cheers,
Dad