A 'Spoon-ful, a drive for five, and a sad farewell

December 9, 2001. That date may wind up being remembered in a retroactive way. It was Catriona Lemay Doan's 37.22 second jaunt on the 500 meters at the World Cup tour stop at Calgary's Olympic Oval. As events played out at the venue's fourth hosting of a World Sprint Speed Skating Championship, a streak was on the line that went back to 1990. More on that later.

As expected, Monique Garbrecht-Enfeldt of Germany and Jeremy Wotherspoon of Canada had little opposition in their quest for a fifth and fourth World Title, respectively. For Garbrecht-Enfeldt, it was her fifth crown, a dozen years after her first and her fourth in five years, while Wotherspoon equaled Eric Heiden's career total on the ice where he calls home.

The only suspense, it seemed was for who would finish behind them. The sprints are a duo of 500-meter and 1,000-meter races for men and women over a two-day period. The times are then translated into samalog points; that is, every race is treated like a 500m. Every distance is treated like a 500m race. So if the distance is 1,000m, the points for that are determined by dividing the 1,000m time by two. For example, if you have a one-minute, 15 second, 1,000m race, it's 75 seconds divided by two to come up with 37.500 (always rounded out to the thousandth) points. The lower your time, the lower your samalog score. And the lower the samalog you have, the higher up in the overall classification you soar.

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Garbrecht got the proceedings off to a fast start by winning the 500m on Saturday, with Asians on her backside through positions 2, 3 and 4; Manli Wang of China, Shihomi Shinya and Sayuri Osuga, both of Japan. Lemay Doan's winning streak on the 500m at Calgary ended abruptly, finishing fifth, still unable to regain the form she had before a back injury at the beginning of the season. Jennifer Rodriguez was 9th in that race, while Canadian Olympic heroine Cindy Klassen was a very respectable tenth, a stellar showing for an all-round speed skater.

Rodriguez's teammates, however, were less fortunate. Becky Sundstrom placed 13th, while multiple World Sprints medallist Chris Witty finished a disappointing 21st. The kilometer was ahead, however, so the defending Olympic champion in that race didn't have anywhere else to go but up.

Wotherspoon continued his season-long win streak on the 500m next, with Hiroyasu Shimizu of Japan just 11/100ths behind, and two Dutch, Gerard van Velde and Erben Wennemars wanting to get in on the fun. Joe Cheek of the U.S. was fifth, the highest American finish of the day so far. Kip Carpenter made it a Yankee duet in the top ten (8th), while Nick Pearson and Chris Callis finished farther back (16th and 28th, respectively). Callis would have to improve on that, since if you fall below the top 20 overall, you lose a starting place for the following year's championship.

The 1000m would see Rodriguez trying to remain perfect in big-time competitions of a non-Olympic nature, but in the end, the German was a bit too much, as Garbrecht-Enfeldt was the only skater to go under 75 seconds, with J-Rod in second. Klassen greatly improved on her prior race and copped the bronze. Marianne Timmer of the Netherlands was 4th, and Shinya stuck around in 5th.

Witty just, and we do mean just, edged Sundstrom for 9th place (by 1/100th of a second), while Wang's 8th place suited her just fine. That's because she settled in behind Garbrecht-Enfeldt for third place in the overall samalog. Garbrecht led second-place Shinya by .67 seconds, Wang by .71, with all-rounders Rodriguez and Klassen slightly farther back (.84 and .92 of a second, respectively). Lemay Doan's hopes of a medal took a hit, as she finished 7th on the 1,000m for an overall rank of 5th, .96 back of the leader, and a quarter-second out of the podium. Witty wasn't even the second-best American on the overall ranking (13th) behind Sundstrom (11th) as the women called it a day.

Wennemars ambushed Wotherspoon on the men's 1,000m as Saturday's racing concluded, edging the favorite by 1/100th of a second for his first-ever world sprints individual race gold medal. Cheek brightened hopes for a U.S. medal by his third place finish, and van Velde, as well as Korea's Kyu-Hyuk Lee rounded out the top five. Shimizu didn't do himself any favors in trying to secure an overall silver, as his 12th place finish set him back from second to third overall. Not the case with van Velde, however, who moved up a spot on the men's samalog ranking. Wennemars and Cheek put themselves within striking distance of a medal as they parked themselves in at 4th and 5th overall.

Carpenter made it consecutive top ten finishes (8th) while Callis got it into gear here, as he tied for 9th. Pearson was 14th, so things had gotten better for the U.S. men. Callis got his overall samalog rank into the top 20 (16th) while Carpenter and Pearson nested comfortably 8th and 14th overall after day 1.

For Wotherspoon, his efforts yielded a .39 second lead on van Velde, .55 on Shimizu, .59 on Wennemars and .77 on Cheek. It may not be much of a deficit to make up in an all-round championship, but in a sprint, any double-digit advantage in tenths of a second is a big deal.

Another story unfolded as the races played out. None of the times were close, especially on the 1000, to the world records which came out of Kearns, Utah, the venue for last year's Winter Olympics. Shockingly slow when compared to them, actually. For example, Shimizu became the first man to break 9.4 seconds in an opening 100m spurt (9.39), but even paired with Wotherspoon, neither came near Shimizu's 34.32 set at the 2001 World Single Distance championships in March of that year. In the women's 500m, Garbrecht was nearly a half-second slower than Lemay Doan's 37.22 standard. Her winning time on the 1,000m was a full second and change slower than Witty's world best. Wennemars fared worse; his winning time was 1-2/5ths seconds slower than teammate van Velde's Olympic championship skate.

So Calgary had four more chances to continue a record, which had been intact since 1990, a string of fourteen consecutive major international competitions where a world record was set in an individual race of a senior nature. The Oval had become a haven for world junior records of late, but in this, the first big-ticket event it hosted in the post-Kearns era, would it be able to muster even one takeaway from the Utah venue?

The skaters, nor the 4,000+ fans in attendance would have to wait too long to find out.

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Sunday's women's 500m was a rerun of Saturday's, with Garbrecht-Enfeldt getting tested a bit by Wang, who came in second. Shinya cemented her spot for a run at the medal stand with her third place showing, while in a mild surprise, German Jenny Wolf was 4th. Osuga skated into 5th, and Lemay Doan three-hundredths behind her. Klassen just missed out on a top 10 finish (11th), while Rodriguez picked a bad time to have an off-race and could do no better than 16th, behind Sundstrom and Witty, tied for 14th.

The endgame was playing out by now. Garbrecht-Enfeldt's dominance was so much that she opened up a 1.83 second lead on Wang going into the 1000m finale. Shinya was third overall, 1.94 in arrears, with Lemay Doan fourth (2.59 back), and Klassen motoring into fifth (3.23 behind, and 1.29 out of a bronze). Rodriguez was still the top American, but plunged to 8th overall, taking any hope of an overall medal with it, with Sundstrom 12th and Witty 14th.

Sunday's men's 500m returned things to the perceived norm, with Wotherspoon, van Velde and Shimizu the proverbial win, place and show, as Cheek and Wennemars kept their medal hopes alive with 4th and 5th places. Carpenter was 10th, Callis 19th and Pearson 24th. With one race to go, then, Wotherspoon increased his lead on van Velde to 1.02 seconds and 1.45 on Shimuzu for the gold. Wennemars trailed by 2.11 and Cheek 2.3 seconds out. Overall, Carpenter and Pearson slipped to 9th and 16th with 70-odd seconds left to skate.

And no world records.

Garbrecht sealed her one for the thumb with a track record on the 1000m. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The drama began in the 11th of 14 pairs, with Klassen being the first skater to break 75 seconds and went into the overall lead with Shinya now second. The pair after next was Rodriguez and Wang, who needed to win to get a medal. Didn't happen.

J-Rod swamped her and took control of the race lead and was third in the overall samalog with Garbrecht and Shinya to close out the women's races. Shinya could do no better than 9th place on the kilometer, which meant she dropped from a silver to a bronze, and that Klassen, already deemed a prime contender for World All-round Championship gold, added a silver to her burgeoning collection of precious medal this season. Wang's unfortunate collapse (10th) dropped her from silver to out of the money, while Rodriguez rallied to place 5th.

If this was Lemay Doan's finale in Calgary at an international meet (as there has been retirement talk swirling about her this season), it was a downer, as she dropped to 7th, her worst overall Sprints finish in more than a half-dozen years. Sundstrom and Witty were 12th and 13th overall for the rest of the American team.

And not a world record in the lot. Time was running out. A string of 14 consecutive ISU events, which included World All-round, Sprint and Junior Championships, World Cups, a World Single Distances for the ages in 1998 going back to 1990 had produced at least one individual race world record. The Oval was down to its last at-bat.

The men's 1000m ended the meet. The last three pairs would decide who would wind up where in the overall top five. Cheek's turn was first, as he surged to the top of the leader board and put the pressure square on Wennemars, who was ahead of him. If he went 1:08.07 or slower, Cheek would be assured of a medal. But Wennemars spoiled American hopes of a podium finish by going 1:07.98 to stay ahead of him. Van Velde maintained his silver medal spot which left Wotherspoon to end the weekend on a high note for the home team with title No. 4. Cheek was 4th overall, losing out on a bronze by just .08 of a second. Shimizu was 5th. Carpenter was 9th on the 1000 and stabilized his 8th place overall finish. Pearson and Callis were 15th and 16th overall.

And no world records. None at all the entire weekend in individual races. That's not to say there weren't any; Wotherspoon reset his sprint samalog points record and Dutch sensation Bjorn Nijenhuis broke junior world records on the 1,000m and the junior sprint points samalog. But for the first time since 1990, there were no single-race world records set by a Witty or Lemay Doan or Shimizu-caliber skater.

This was Calgary's first major international competition of any kind, World Cup or World Championship, since the Olympics last year. It proved the bar set by Kearns, Utah's Olympic Oval was just too much to overcome. A new era in speed skating history dawned at the end of the Sprints, that nothing is forever; not even the unofficial title as the planet's fastest speed skating facility. It happened to the best ovals of the past century; Bislett Stadion in Oslo, Norway; Eisstadion Davos in Switzerland; Kompleks Medeo in the now-former Soviet Union (now Kazakhstan) and Ijsstadion Thialf in Heerenveen, Netherlands. Each was surpassed by a faster place.

As Calgary has now.

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Speed skating Canada finally got around to announce its roster for next weekend's North American Qualification for the World All-round Championships in Gothenberg, Sweden on February 8-9.

Cindy Klassen, Clara Hughes, Kristina Groves, Tara Risling and Kerry Simpson will be the women's contingent into Kearns, Utah, while Steve Elm, Dustin Molicki, Kevin Marshall, Mark Knoll, Phillippe Marois and Peter Volcic make up the men's squad who will try to secure the final spots for the biggest event of the all-round season.

We'll have complete coverage of the event next time.