The US national short track team now trains at the Utah Olympic oval, and I have never bugged Apolo Ohno, or even turned my camera in his direction (well, once I briefly did, it’s in my “king of pain” video from the fall world cup qualifier).
I figure that Apolo has everyone & their brother wanting to say hello 24/7, so I leave him be; and simply watch that whole short track team train outrageously hard (really, they do very intense high volume “Korean training”! it hurts to watch their brutal dryland workouts.)
But with the world cup starting a week from today, the hockey rink has been dismantled so Dutch TV cameras have a clear field of view; & so the whole short track team was out skating the big ice!!
Apolo on the long track?!?!? Welcome to my world! and I will take pictures of that!!
He was obviously having an absolute blast too.
Here is Apolo & Kip Carpenter, chilling & chatting:
I asked Kip if he knew Apolo from his own years of short track, Kip said:
Know him? I used to drive him to high school in the morning! I trained with Apolo 96-97-98. We were just kids then. Now we are “old guys”, and it’s been several years since we really have seen each other. It was nice to catch up.
I did give Kip some good-natured crap about the “old guys” comment, but they were teenagers then, and there is a world of difference between that and your late 20’s
Here is Chad Hedrick leading a whole pack of short trackers at speed.
They looked more comfortable in the turns than the straights, but that is to be expected.
These are members of the women’s team, also having a great time. I think they had just stepped on the ice a few moments before I took this, and these very talented athletes are experiencing a giant “whoa!!”
Clear your imagination for a moment, and picture this as the last lap of a long track 1500m
of course Apolo, or any of the short track national team members, could probably skate very fast at any of the middle distances, but why would he do that? It’s a nice fantasy to think about though.
In addition to Apolo, the Dutch, Russian, Norwegian, Finnish, and other national teams were all on the ice preparing for the world cup. Here are two dutch skaters from the DSB pro team (translation for Americans, DSB=The New England Patriots), hips right on their push and making huge turn pressure.
This is Norwegian distance specialist Oystein Grodum, This is one BIG DUDE. He is at least 6’6”, people immediately notice his odd looking arm swing, as it barely moves from what you see here, just a little directly forward & back. But if you have problems with your arm swing pulling your hips out of line (I do), adopting elements of this actually works really well.
Ivan Skobrev leads a train of Russians past US national team skater Ron Macky. Members of the Dutch TVM pro team sit in the background and watch closely. (Translation for Americans, TVM=Indianapolis Colts)
I think this is TVM skater Jan Smeekens, saying, I’m going that way! And he was, quite quickly.
And this is my buddy Brian Boudreau, an American master chasing some crazy fast Norwegians; they are ripping out several 25 second laps in a row here… that is over half a mile at an average speed of 36mph! absolutely scary fast!
Brian has also recently caught the blogging bug, you can see his writing over at Flyin Brian, I sent him some images I took from today, and he has his own interesting take on this morning’s very busy session on the long track.
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