World Championships, Day 2
The Dutch ooom-pah Band Kleintje Pils showed up at the rink today. They first appeared at a speedskating race in 1994, and have shown up ever since. They are quite famous, the queen of the Netherlands has honored these guys as “musical ambassadors”.
They play the kind of music that makes you smile, sway back and forth, and want to spill beer on your best friend. I have heard them do an awesome version of Queen’s “We Are The Champions”.
So as I said earlier, the racing for the two 500m events was incredibly intense.
Here are some images.
Chris Needham was one of the first racers to start. Yesterday he was relaxed, but today he told me that the nerves & pressure before his first race was so intense, he felt like his head was going to explode. He ended up skating a 35.5 and a 35.4.
The outrageous power of Dimitri Lobkov. First skating around that block, and then in the turn a moment later. In the lead after the first race, He fell to fourth place after the second. This is the 4th year this has happened to him.
I asked Kip Carpenter if he was happy with his races, he replied “dude, you should always be happy with a 34!!” I like that perspective & re-enforces to me how much this sport is you vs yourself. (of course, for me, the time I should “always be happy with” is much slower).
And Kip’s second race was a personal best! Breaking a mark that he skated at the Olympics in 2002.
The more I skate the more I believe that bringing that knee forward is crucial to creating pressure, in the corners and the straights (It’s much easier said than done). Check out the obvious compression Kip is getting here.
So what do you do if you have time to kill, and have to skate the best race of your life in a few hours? Just hang out with friends in the stands, as Tucker Fredericks is doing here between races with a Japanese skater.
And history did await him. This has been a breakout year for Tucker, who has won several world cup events, and he was one of the favorites coming into this race. His pair for the final race was Korean Kang–Seok Lee, was the bronze medalist in Torino for the 500m.
They raced neck and neck the whole way, and when the dust/ice chips cleared, Kang had skated a brilliant new 500m world record of 34.25 !!!!!, and Tucker was 3rd overall, in the best finish of his career at a major championship.
Here is what Tucker had to say after his race (quotes courtesy of Irene Postma).
“I saw this black and blue skinsuit fly by me in the last turn. It broke my concentration, but not for very long. I could kind of hear him coming, but I didn’t know he would be past me that fast. He’s a great skater. I am happy with my race. Two 9.5 openers was really good.”“The strength of Kang-Seok Lee, is that he does something that I wish I could do: He keeps his knees in front of his skates, and still sits back. He is strong and his corners are good. This will stand for a while, there are no races on a fast track next year, I think.”
“I did the best with the situation I found myself in this year. I lost the rest of my team, apart from Chris Needham. They can’t blame US speedsk… well, actually they can. But now the organization is clear, it feels like a family.”
-Tucker Fredericks
And Kang-Seok got to add his name to the wall of Honor at the rink.
Like the men’s 500, The women’s 3k was loaded with talent. The German women have been dominant for years, but recently the Canadian & Dutch have become very successful as well.
Add into this mix the unconventional Czechoslovakian Martina Sablikova who won the European championships in stunning comeback fashion a month ago, and it was going to be interesting.
Several commenters mentioned Sablikova her unique technique. It certainly is odd, but I think I have a pretty clear idea of what she is doing.
What most people see is that she takes as many possible extra crossover steps exiting the turn. I was shooting from about 30 meters down the 100m finishing straight, and here is what she looks like.
You can see that after she exits the turn, and has squared her shoulders, she take 2 more crossover steps before going to the straightaway stroke.
First of all, I don’t think she is doing something all that unusual in the turn exist, Chad Hedrick skates the same exit, curving inward at the end of the final crossover (a banana turn?)
But Sablikova is very light & thin, with extremely long legs. So it seems like she is able to really extend that turn farther than a heavier skater.
I heard she does a lot of summer inline training, focusing on this. Looking at her technique, I see a lot of inline habits (and maybe inline fitness too).
But there is something else she does, that is worth noting, very clearly an inline habit.
First of all, here is one of the powerful Canadian women, check out where she plants her left foot.
If you draw a line from her center of gravity (from her chin down to the ice), the left foot is outside. This is VERY GOOD, as the weight of the skater helps creates push. This is how 99% of us should aspire to skate, and something I work hard on all the time.
Here is Sablikova, starting her race, exiting the first turn, look where that left foot is. (also compare it to the German next to her)
Like many inliners do on wheels, she is reaching with that foot to PULL against the ice, before her foot gets to the point where she can use gravity to PUSH. I think this is a true inline habit. Derek Parra used to do it too. A true double push does not work on the ice, its, impossible, but this is close.
She reaches really far, but still is using the inside edge (slight ankle bend).
This technique does not work at all at sprint velocities. Indeed, Sablikova has an awful sprint. But for lightweight distance specialists, I can see this being useful.
Oh, and did she win? Yes…
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Filed under: RACE DAY
It’s amazing when sports fans make predictions of something like that, when they are not the folks who have to skate 12.5 freakishly fast laps faster than any human ever has before. Then they have the nerve to act all disappointed when it does not happen exactly the way they want.
here he is, a quarter of a century ago, as a scary fast biathlete. (for a crazy story about that time in is life, 
