Speed skating's BCS -- No controversies here

It was the last major speed skating event of the year in a country which made a significant amount of history during it. Where a fair-to-middling talent decided to change things around and it paid off in a significant way, and another inline skater decided to switch over to ice, like KC Boutiette, Jennifer Rodriguez and Derek Parra before him, and made approximately the same splash. A good thing, actually.

By the time you read this, the only races remaining at the U.S. national speed skating championships will be the women's 5,000 and men's 10,000 meters. Every other discipline's race was decided over the past four days, with some of the more famous names on the sidelines, like Casey Fitzrandolph, who is taking the 2002-03 season off, and Chris Witty, who was sidelined with an illness.

Instead of having the all-round and sprint championships on consecutive weekends, as was done in the past, the decision was made to combine the two into a work-week long event.

Sprint races were contested on Friday at the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns, where Becky Sundstrom, who has had a so-so career, set a personal best in capturing the first of two 500m races, while national recordholder Rodriguez was second and Amy Sannes third. Later that day J-Rod returned the favor, winning the 1000m, with Sundstrom second and Sannes third. Joe Cheek, 2002 Olympic bronze medalist on the 1000m swept both men's races, with Chris Callis and Nick Pearson exchanging second and third places on the 500m and 1,000m, respectively.

The Americans can send a team of four men and women to the World Sprint Championships, which will be held in Calgary, Canada on January 18-19. Not only that, but these races will fill open slots for the January 25-26 North American Regional Qualifier for the World All-round Championships and the remaining World Cups in Baselga di Pine', Italy; Inzell, Germany and the World Cup final in Heerenveen, Netherlands in March.

Saturday saw Shani Davis, who became the first African-American to qualify for a speed skating national Olympic team in short track, pull off a mild upset in winning the men's 1,500m. Taking a bit of the luster off that was the fact that defending Olympic champion Derek Parra did not have to skate, as did either Cheek nor Pearson. KC Boutiette did return, however, after a stint in Holland as a marathon skater, and he came in second, while Callis picked up his third podium finish in as many races. Just .03 of a second separated first from third.

It was Davis, you may remember, who was at ground zero of the controversy which engulfed the national short-track Olympic trials last year when Tom O'Hare accused Apolo Ohno and Rusty Smith, who are friends of Davis, of collusion to get Davis onto the team by fixing the final 1000m race of the trials. An arbitrator ruled that there was insufficient evidence to suggest anything of the sort, yet Davis never got to skate in Salt Lake City in February.

Cheek and Sundstrom repeated their 500m wins of 24 hours before, while Rodriguez cruised to victory in the women's metric mile. (It was somewhat surprising for Sundstrom, in that he has decided to no longer train with the national team, and it seems to have yielded dividends.)

After an off day on Sunday, the sprint races concluded with the men's and women's 1,000 meters, and the all-round portion got going with women's 3,000 and men's 5,000m action.

Cheek continued his dominance, winning out over Pearson and Callis, while Rodriguez continued to hold sway over Sundstrom and Sannes on the kilo. Cheek, Pearson, Callis and Kip Carpenter (who pre-qualified) will make up the men's team for the World Sprints, while Rodriguez, Witty, Sundstrom and Sannes comprise the women's side.

Rodriguez was pre-qualified in the 3,000m, so she did not partake in it, which was good news for Kristine Holzer, who fended off Katie Krall and Eva Rodansky, who had dabbled in a couple of World Cup races last season. The inliner in question made quite the splash on the men's 5,000m.

Chad Hedrick has racked up over 40 gold medals in inline skating world championship competition and was the 2000 champion of the Professional Inline Racing Series (PIRS). He decided to try long track, and finished a strong second to Boutiette, with Callis in third. Davis proved his 1,500m win was no fluke, as he was less than a half-second out of the running in fourth.

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The end of the year wasn't the end of the qualification processes that national speed skating federations around the world employ to determine who skates for the remainder of the season. It continued this past weekend, with diverse countries as Romania, Japan, Austria and Korea deciding their respective all-round and sprint champs.

Kyu-Hyuk Lee and Jo Seon-Yeon bested all comers to win the Korean Sprint Championships in Seoul, which doubled as its single distance championships. Jun Mun won the men's 1,500m, Lee Seung-Hwan the men's 5,000m, while Eun-Bi Bak netted a metric mile and 3,000m double win. Nam Dal-Ri won the women's 5000m.

The Romanians held their all-round championships (and European championship qualification) before Christmas in the town of Miercurea Ciuc. Marius Bacila and Daniela Oltean walked off with the men's and women's titles. At Innsbruck, the Austrians will send Emese Doerfler-Antal and Thomas Falger to Heerenveen this coming weekend by virtue of their victories in that country's all-round title tilt.

The final two stops on our championship roundup, then, are Italy and Japan, where Enrico Fabris, Matteo Anesi and Stefano Donagrandi and Nicola Mayr (the only woman to qualify) will represent the host nation of the 2006 Winter Olympics this weekend. In Sapporo, Japan, the national sprint championships concluded with the hosts of the 1998 Olympics deciding that sending Hiroyasu Shimizu, Tadashi Obara, Masaaki Kobayashi and Yusuke Imai onto Calgary isn't a bad idea, while Aki Tonoike, Sayuri Osuga, Tomomi Shimizu and the fast-rising Shihomi Shinya make a formidable women's side.

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Canada will decide its national speed skating champions next weekend and we'll have full coverage of that, as well as the 2003 European Championships where the bulk of the lineup for February's World All-round Championships in Sweden will take place.

Also on tap, the top 10 stories from the year in speed skating, which was a terrific year any way you cut it for the Americans.