Speed Skating and Short Track Speed Skating

[mtlchick]

Missed the events (again) but I heard that Girard was leading in the final laps and he fell.  He was probably that spent from the 500m, but I'm surprised they still thought to have him out for that especially in the position to skate the final laps. 

 

But I agree that Boutin is in prime position for flag bearer. 

[galaxygirl76]

Today is an historic day for Dutch short track. Suzanne Schulting won the first ever gold medal in that event! We hadn't won a non long track speed skating gold since Vancouver where we won our first 'snow' gold medal. 

[Ohwell]

2 hours ago, galaxygirl76 said:

Today is an historic day for Dutch short track. Suzanne Schulting won the first ever gold medal in that event! We hadn't won a non long track speed skating gold since Vancouver where we won our first 'snow' gold medal. 

Just saw it for the first time on replay.  I love upsets!

[galaxygirl76]

I think Suzanne is still crying haha. She was so happy and she had such a fantastic day today from her first race to the final all her races were great. In her post race interview she basically just repeated that she had no idea what happened, how it happened, and could not believe it. I'm so happy for her and the sport in general because they really needed it after Knegt, who was the one we were hoping would win gold, was DQ'd on three events after winning silver on his first event. Four medals including a gold is just a great result considering that we won our first medal ever in short track four years ago in Sochi.

Edited February 22, 2018 by galaxygirl76

[blackwing]

4 hours ago, mtlchick said:

Missed the events (again) but I heard that Girard was leading in the final laps and he fell.  He was probably that spent from the 500m, but I'm surprised they still thought to have him out for that especially in the position to skate the final laps. 

 

But I agree that Boutin is in prime position for flag bearer. 

Girard didn't fall.  Canada was leading with about 8 laps to go... in the final laps, Hungary just poured it on.  Girard did lose his glasses in the last lap and it may have thrown him off a little because he got passed by China.   I didn't think he looked spent from the 500, and moreover, each of the other's big gun skated the 500 finals as well (gold medal winner Wu Dajing for China and Hungary's Shaolin Sandor Liu in the B final).

The Korean skater Kwok fell about a third to a half of the way through and Korea was out of it from that point on.

Happy that Charles Hamelin gets a last medal. I'm disappointed for him, I was hoping for more, but he has had a great career.   I thought his brother Francois had made the team and would skate the relay?  He didn't get used, he seemed to have gotten replaced by Pascal Dion.

Happy for Kim Boutin too in the 1000 but I wish St Gelais had made it to the finals.   The 1000 final was great, the two Korean favorites, Choi Min-jeong and Shim Sukhee, took each other out.  Choi was in the back as usual and was making her usual last-to-first pass and it looked like she just fell as she was trying to overtake Shim.  Perhaps Shim got an arm out and hit her?  I was surprised there was no penalty although it wouldn't have mattered in a final.

I think either Girard or Boutin would be a great choice for closing flagbearer.  They are the future of Canadian short track.

[blackwing]

12 minutes ago, galaxygirl76 said:

I'm so happy for her and the sport in general because they really needed it after Knegt, who was the one we were hoping would win gold, was DQ'd on three events after winning silver on his first event. Four medals including a gold is just a great result considering that we won our first medal ever in short track four years ago in Sochi.

Re Knegt, on the official website (www.olympic.org) his initial photo was hilarious.   He was wearing a white undershirt-looking top, wild chest hair pouring out the top, and it looked like a mugshot.  He looked like the huge mute bad guy from "Superman II".  Then I think the whole Dutch team got their pictures retaken because the current picture is much improved.  

I was surprised to hear that he was so critical of the judges after the DQ in the 1000 quarter that advanced eventual silver medalist John Henry Krueger.  He said something like "I was minding my business and this guy [Krueger] bumped me and I got [bleeped]."   Usually most short trackers just consider it part of the sport, I rarely have heard anyone complain about referee calls.

[galaxygirl76]

2 minutes ago, blackwing said:

  The 1000 final was great, the two Korean favorites, Choi Min-jeong and Shim Sukhee, took each other out.  Choi was in the back as usual and was making her usual last-to-first pass and it looked like she just fell as she was trying to overtake Shim.  Perhaps Shim got an arm out and hit her?  I was surprised there was no penalty although it wouldn't have mattered in a final.

 

I watched the replay of the Dutch live stream(cuz I was still asleep thanks to the hockey final yesterday/today) and after the race they were speculating that Fontana would get DQ'd over that but instead it was Shim who got the blame.

[mtlchick]

1 hour ago, blackwing said:

Happy that Charles Hamelin gets a last medal. I'm disappointed for him, I was hoping for more, but he has had a great career.

Thanks for clearing things up about the race.  And I'm also bummed for Hamelin, but he was SO happy for Girard for his gold that after he hugged him, he lost his balance getting down and fell out instead!  I do hope he ends up coaching for the team. 

[kili]

Quote

I think either Girard or Boutin would be a great choice for closing flagbearer.  They are the future of Canadian short track.

Don't they usually try to mix it up between the federations? Skating is all under one federation and skaters carried the flag in the opening ceremony.

[galaxygirl76]

Kjeld Nuis' gold medal on the 1000m makes it the first time since Gaetan Boucher in 1984 that the same skater won the 1000m and the 1500m. 

[voiceover]

Goodbye Shani Davis.  You did a lot that was good for your sport, and I'm glad the crowd let you know it.

[Souris]

Well, mass start was ... interesting. I kind of loved the Estonian skater who was all, "Screw y'all and your ordered pack. I'm going for it!" (Even if it didn't really work out for her since she finished fourth.)

Edited February 25, 2018 by Souris

[Jeddah]

8 minutes ago, Souris said:

Well, mass start was ... interesting. I kind of loved the Estonian skater who was all, "Screw y'all and your ordered pack. I'm going for it!" (Even if it didn't really work out for her since she finished fourth.)

I was hoping she’d win! I appreciated her independence! It seemed like everyone wasn’t quite sure how to strategize.

[mtlchick]

17 minutes ago, Souris said:

Well, mass start was ... interesting. I kind of loved the Estonian skater who was all, "Screw y'all and your ordered pack. I'm going for it!" (Even if it didn't really work out for her since she finished fourth.)

It seemed like a longer track event but with skates and sprint rounds which didn't make much sense or that appealing to me. 

[galaxygirl76]

Before the Olympics started I asked my mom, who still lives in the Netherlands, how this whole mass start works and bless her she tried but I still don't quite get it. What's the point of sprint rounds in the medal race if the only thing that really mattered is the order you cross the finish line at the end.

[Fukui San]

30 minutes ago, galaxygirl76 said:

Before the Olympics started I asked my mom, who still lives in the Netherlands, how this whole mass start works and bless her she tried but I still don't quite get it. What's the point of sprint rounds in the medal race if the only thing that really mattered is the order you cross the finish line at the end.

It's pretty much Quidditch scoring! 

Instead of 60-40-20, 15-10-5 in the last sprint would suffice.  Someone who wins the the first three sprints but doesn't place in the last sprint would tie someone who only wins the last sprint. Does it need to be more imbalanced than that?

[mtlchick]

4 minutes ago, Fukui San said:

It's pretty much Quidditch scoring! 

Instead of 60-40-20, 15-10-5 in the last sprint would suffice.  Someone who wins the the first three sprints but doesn't place in the last sprint would tie someone who only wins the last sprint. Does it need to be more imbalanced than that?

I honestly thought they were joking about that break down.  It's sort of like the back loading of jumps in figure skating; you're getting extra marks for saving your energy in the first half. 

[walnutqueen]

No matter how they tried to spin, score or explain it, Mass Start was an inexplicable fucking mess to this viewer.  :-(

[blackwing]

7 minutes ago, walnutqueen said:

No matter how they tried to spin, score or explain it, Mass Start was an inexplicable fucking mess to this viewer.  :-(

I still don't understand it.  Even after reading the rules several times.

[galaxygirl76]

Maybe it needs to be more like the points race on the cycling track(now part of the Omnium). I think that's what it wants to be but if I remember correctly in the points race you 'only' get double points at the finish line opposed to enough to win the whole thing. There may also be more sprints because the race is longer.

[Fukui San]

The sprint laps make a certain amount of sense for the prelims, when you want 8 people to advance and it gives enough differentiation to have a top 8. If you had it just be the top 8 finishers at the very end, the first 6 laps would be relatively slow jockeying for position before a final sprint at the end. The sprint laps give incentives for skaters to skate fast in the middle.

If I had to design Mass Start (I've designed board games, so rulemaking is fun for me), I'd have the same number of sprint laps, but assign points for your position from first to last. Basically, you score one point for every skater you're faster than at each checkpoint. If you're the first skater at the first checkpoint in a field of 12, you get 11 points. If you're 2nd to last, you receive one point. The last lap can have double points.  That gives skaters incentive to race at every point in the race no matter where they are in the field. Now it doesn't matter if you're 4th or 10th. You get nothing in either case.

[galaxygirl76]

I didn't actually see the event because I slept through the preliminary round and on way/at work during the finals, but it read as the rider who won a sprint in the preliminary automatically qualified for the final. If I got that right then in that case the sprints make sense because there is an incentive to work for it.

[Quickbeam]

The Cones of Dunshire made more sense to me than that mass start thing. 

[Fukui San]

55 minutes ago, galaxygirl76 said:

I didn't actually see the event because I slept through the preliminary round and on way/at work during the finals, but it read as the rider who won a sprint in the preliminary automatically qualified for the final. If I got that right then in that case the sprints make sense because there is an incentive to work for it.

The top 8 pointsgetters advanced to the finals. For the first three sprints, it's 5 points for 1st, 3 for 2nd, and 1 for 3rd. For the last sprint, it's 60 for 1st, 40 for 2nd, and 20 for 3rd. Generally, if you had 3 or more points you advanced.

[sab85]

Thanks for the explanation on the sprint laps everyone! It makes sense for the qualifying rounds to get differentiation between skaters but is basically pointless in the medal skate.

It was hilarious to see everyone trying not to lead the the pack in the early laps. At one point Sven Kramer went over to the far wall to try and get out of the lead...and the whole pack followed right along behind.

[NUguy514]

That mass start thing...

[Mittengirl]

There were times during the races when it looked like a giant, multi-colored centipede was on the ice.  That was the best part, to me.  I kind of wanted the guy in the lead to slam on the brakes and see what would happen.  At least it would have made it more interesting.

[emma675]

I'm so happy to see I wasn't the only person totally confused by the mass start thing. When the announcer called out the first sprint lap I completely expected to see a mad scramble to be first and was so lost when more than half the field didn't even speed up. I'm still lost.

[greyhorse]

21 hours ago, galaxygirl76 said:

Before the Olympics started I asked my mom, who still lives in the Netherlands, how this whole mass start works and bless her she tried but I still don't quite get it. What's the point of sprint rounds in the medal race if the only thing that really mattered is the order you cross the finish line at the end.

Yeah, what is the point of the sprints in the final race?  Even the announcers said that medals are determined by order of finish, and while you get points for winning the sprints, it wouldn't help you in terms of winning a medal.  So why would any of the racers expend extra energy to win the sprint?  Just in case they don't podium, they can take pride in finishing 4th instead of 9th because of the points bonuses?  Who really cares at that point.

Mass start sort of reminds me of that odd Summer olympics bike race in the velodrome, where the racers basically are pedaling so slowly essentially just to keep from falling over for several laps and then the only lap that matters is the last one or two where they go all out sprint.  This race was so very unexciting for me, which is disappointing because I was expecting so much more.  Maybe if there was something where the last one or two racers after "x" amount of laps got dropped.  So if you're in the bottom 2 after lap 2, you're gone.  The next 2 after lap 4, gone.  That would encourage everybody to go all out from the beginning.

[Garden Wafers]

I thought the mass start was supposed to reference the Tour de France; they kept throwing out the term peloton, which is something I only associate with road races. From my faulty understanding, points winner in the Tour de France are awarded different colored jerseys; here, they get bupkis. 

[Dots And Stripes]

44 minutes ago, Garden Wafers said:

I thought the mass start was supposed to reference the Tour de France; they kept throwing out the term peloton, which is something I only associate with road races. From my faulty understanding, points winner in the Tour de France are awarded different colored jerseys; here, they get bupkis. 

I think it helps their world ranking in the event. The NBC commentators were guessing that one of the skaters who was going after sprint points in the final knew she wasn't going to win so she was trying to help her placement in her event, and thus help her ranking.

[galaxygirl76]

The ISU is trying to make speed skating more 'fun and accessible' for the non-big countries(if it wasn't for Norway and the Netherlands they probably would have booted the 10k by now) and instead we got this mess that no one understands.

[proserpina65]

16 hours ago, galaxygirl76 said:

The ISU is trying to make speed skating more 'fun and accessible' for the non-big countries(if it wasn't for Norway and the Netherlands they probably would have booted the 10k by now) and instead we got this mess that no one understands.

I love the 10,000 meters!

[mtlchick]

Nooooo!!!! This makes me so sad. 

 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/hamelin-and-st-gelais-canada-s-short-track-super-couple-announce-split-1.3834739

[galaxygirl76]

That is sad. I wonder how they went from retiring and starting a family to splitting up in a few weeks.

[legaleagle53]

43 minutes ago, galaxygirl76 said:

That is sad. I wonder how they went from retiring and starting a family to splitting up in a few weeks.

It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened.  Once couples are free from the daily distractions of their careers and left to actually focus on themselves and each other, little things that had been ignored until they got to be BIGGER things that couldn't be ignored any longer tend to dominate.  It happens to retired couples all the time.  But at least this is an amicable split -- not all of them are.

[selkie]

1 hour ago, galaxygirl76 said:

That is sad. I wonder how they went from retiring and starting a family to splitting up in a few weeks.

What happens in the Athlete's Village doesn't always stay in the Village?