What is Speedskating?
By: Ethan Lin
The guide for people who don’t know what speedskating is and who already know who speedskating is.
What is speedskating?
Speedskating is basically what it sounds like, you’re on skates and you are going fast with lots of speed. We skate in an Olympic rink, and on a 111m track. Most of the time, we have 4-6 people at the starting line. Sometimes when we go fast we pivot, which is when we stick our hands down on the ice, so we can have more control of our skating.
Equipment
- Boots (made of carbon fiber and designed for speedskates)
- Blades (1.1 millimeters wide and 13-19 inches long)
- Gloves (with tips)
Helmet (special ones)- Cut suit (cut proof suits)
- Skin suit (outside layer designed by coaches to represent our club)
- Shin guards (the ones soccer players use to protect themselves)
- Ankle guards (guards to protect ourselves from getting cut in the leg)
- Socks (compressed socks to make air resistant lower)
- Glasses (to protect our eyes from shards of ice, and maybe to look cool)
- Laces (long strong laces for the boots)
How the races work
If you are in small or local races, usually there will only be semifinals and finals. If you are in bigger races, there will be quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals. If you are in the Olympics, or world cup there will be preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals. In the races, if you don’t make it past the preliminaries, then you will not be able to compete for the next event. If you don’t make the quarterfinals, you won’t be able to compete for the next event. If you don’t make the semifinals, you will have to go to B, C, D, E, or F finals. The finals is the race which gives you points, and all the other ones decide who will go to the finals, and which final you will be in. The person who comes last place in the A finals, will have more points then the first place person in the B finals. Make sure you get a good place in the finals. Now we will be talking about the meaning of different things in races.
- DQ means disqualified and you will not get any points for that event.
- Penalty means you get the points for the last place or you just get last points if you are not in the finals.
- YC or yellow card means you have done 2 penalties in a race. And that means you will get no points for the event.
- RC or red card means you will not be able to race in this race.
- DNF means did not finish
- DNS means did not start
Rules
There are many rules of speedskating, but I am here to tell you some of the most important and basic rules. First Rule: Do not go inside the block. If inside the block, you will get a DQ. Second Rule: If you do a false start, which means you start before the gun sounds, then you will get a penalty. Third Rule: If you double false start then you get a DQ. Fourth Rule: If you are passing and you hit someone, then you get a DQ. If the person is in the top two positions, and they fall down when the person passes, then you will get advanced. Last Rule: If you take off any equipment on ice, or fall down, you will get a penalty. There are many other rules but these are the most important of them all.
h
How we train
I practice/train at a team called Potomac Speedskating Club. We do many things with our two coaches. One coach was a world record holder, and the other one is a national team coach for five other big countries. As you can see they probably have high expectations so we train pretty hard. The laps we do depends on what the coaches think but mostly we do around 4-27 laps per set. Each set varies from 4-40 sets. In dryland there are a couple basic things we do. Basic position: We basically do a squat with our chest touching our knees. Cushions: We basically do an up down motion with our chests down. Imitations: Basically what you see in the picture but moving side to side. And many other things, but these are the main things we do.
Olympic/World Records
- The fastest 500m skater for men is Wu Dajing (China) with a speed of 39.505 seconds.
- The fastest 1000m skater for men is Hwang Daeheon (Korea) with a speed of 1:20.875.
- The fastest 1500m skater for men is Sjinkie Knegt (Netherlands) with a speed of 2:07.943.
- The fastest 5000m country for mens relay is Hungary.
- The fastest 2000m country for mixed relay is Korea
- The fastest 500m skater for women is Kim Boutin (Canada) with a speed of 41.936 seconds.
- The fastest 1000m skater for women is Shim Suk Hee (Korea) with a speed of 1:26.661.
- The fastest 1500m skater for women is Choi Minjeong (Korea) with a speed of 2:14.354.
- The fastest 2000m country for women’s relay is the Netherlands.
One other thing to notice is that most of these World/Olympic records came from a skating rink in the US. The name is Utah Olympic Oval. It has been known to have the fastest ice on Earth.
My Experience
Personally, how I got into speedskating is a fun story. When I was little, I used to do figure skating so during the winter, my parents were going to sign me up for figure skating. But then they saw speedskating, and they told me they wanted me to try new things, so they signed me up for speedskating. Couple weeks later it was time for my camp so we drove to the ice rink. My parents told the coaches I was new and then left me. They thought it was going to be like a regular winter camp but it wasn’t! The parents needed to stay there! But they didn’t realize that till the third day, when the coaches stopped them from leaving and told them to stay. After the camp my parents asked me if I liked speedskating. I told them I liked it but the training was too hard. They told me I would get used to it and eventually I would like the sport. Those words came true!
This is a image of me a long time ago.
Related Stories
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-track_speed_skating
- https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/whats-difference-between-speed-skating-and-short-track
- https://olympics.com/en/sports/short-track-speed-skating/
- https://www.britannica.com/sports/short-track-speed-skating
Take action
