Salt Lake World Cup, Day 3
Another amazing, exhausting day of racing, I swear my adrenalin glands were fried from just watching.
I am mentally out of words, and busy, I leave for Calgary tomorrow to race in the Can-Am, and I have a STUPID amount of stuff to get done, so here are a few more images.
Because of his 5k world record, Dutch Skater Sven Kramer got to hang his name on the wall of fame, this is one happy man.
Was I overstating my thoughts in an earlier post? About how huge some of the Chinese women sprinters are? Well, I will let you decide based on this picture. US skater Elli Ochowicz is not the tallest person, but still…..
And here is a German and Chinese sprinter lining up vs each other… This is what one calls start line focus! Oddly enough, the best Chinese sprinter, Mani Wang, is not that big.
There were so many world records, but also a lot of great competition between friends. This is Eric Kraan and Arnim Ruleas, after a very intense 1000m race. Arnim led every step up until the final meters in a classic duel of fast starter vs fast finisher. Eric has battled a nasty back injury recently, and was more stoked about his own race than most of the guys who finished in the top 10.
Here is one of the finest athletes to ever strap steel to his feet, Canadian Jeremy Wootherspoon, 150 meters into his 1000m, flying like a rocket ship blasting out of earth orbit. Shani Davis is chasing, and ultimately will pass him with 100 meters to go, setting a new world record, and beating the whole field by almost a second! Salt Lake is the fastest ice in the world, but by the time Jeremy & Shani took their blazing turn on it, it looked like a hockey game had come through. I wonder how Jeremy felt after this, as this was the second time someone has chased him down & shot through his draft to a world record (Shimizu did it in the 500m in 2001).
P.S. I did the first VIDEO zen 10 interview, with longtime Milwaukee speedskating coach Bob Fenn, I will post that in a few days…
P.P.S my friend Jannicke also took some nice “behind the scenes photos” at the salt lake races.
Filed under: from the coffee shop
i wonder if any 2 national team members have ever had such a close race as arnim and eric..that was fabulous! thanks for reminding us he is fighting through a back injury, all the more admirable, they can be proud of their performances this historic skating weekend! we’ll be remembering this for many years..
like you, as i mentioned when i emailed ya, i’m speedskated ‘out’ and i haven’t even set foot on ice this weekend!
Hey! Thanks for all the insights! You just can’t get them like you provide off any other web page.
Good luck at Can Am!
JD
ahhh! the “fenn 10″ coming up. that’s cool. too bad you couldn’t grab mr. kramer and get the “sven 10″ as well for your “zen 10″ series… oh well, as us snails say, “you can’t win them all.” but, maybe you’ll get another chance, which, in that case will warrant using another one of our favorite sayings, “better late than never!”