Zen and the Art of Speedskating

My wife’s ancient iMac is an ok machine, but it’s frustrating trying to write fluidly on an unfamiliar keyboard… So I am going to be really visual for today’s post-

This first photo was taken at the Quebec ice marathon two weekends ago by Ross Hanham, and originally posted on his Masters Speedskating Newsblog.

This is 73 year old Canadian Speedskating hall of famer Pierre Gagné following 10 year old Paisley Perrie on the rolling start of the 40km, 100 lap race.

There is so much that I love about this shot, for so many, many reasons. Maybe the most important is that speedskating is a profoundly multi-generational sport, as this shows. Want a larger one for your desktop? click on the photo.

I took this next image during the last 300m of the Liam Ortega vs. Kreg Greer 5k at the America’s cup. This is Liam, hammering out his final lap. In the big version (click on the image for it), you can read his laptime on the scoreboard & in the hands of Derek Parra, holding the lapboard. I like the curves, the reflections in the ice, how Liam holds his free hand on his back, and the implied speed of the image..

Liam did not skate the times he wanted this past weekend, but he said bad weather stuck him in airports for 2 full days on the way to this competition; that’s really not good for the legs! Even so, he qualified & will be traveling to Torino for the World University games.

Liam’s pair Kreg Greer did not fare so well in the race or after, and ended up in the hospital that evening suffering from a multitude of things- (the doc said he had never seen such a high white blood cell count in a 20-year old). He is feeling better after antibiotics. Get well soon Kreg!

To the right is shown the duct-taped & battered Bont skates of Justin Stelly. He is skating some impressive 5k and 10k times. With 5 minutes notice & on a whim, he skated a 15:14 10k at the America’s cup, he also has skated 7:14 in the 5k (translation: fast). He is a long time inliner, on the ice for only about 2 months now. Wow!

I asked him about the “coonpup” on his skates-

He laughed and said that folks from Louisiana are sometimes known as “Coondogs” and that when he was 6 years old, racing at an indoor inline event, Chad Hedrick called him “The Coonpup” and the nickname has stuck with him ever since.

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