SPEEDSKATING: Dynasties, By Any Other Name Or Country...

Deaths of famous people may come in threes, but at Inzell, Germany this weekend at the 2001 World Sprint Speedskating Championships, good things came in the same amount to the hosts, and to our neighbors to the north.

On the same oval where she won her first world sprint women’s championship 10 years ago, in front of nearly 3,500 partisan fans, Germany’s Monique Garbrecht-Enfeldt captured her fourth. She had to rally on the second day to do it, holding back strong challenges from Japan’s Eriko Sanmiya, who finished second overall and with it, picked up just her country’s second world sprint championship medal ever and Catriona Lemay Doan of Canada, the eventual bronze medalist.

The world sprints are a four-event competition with two 500 and two 1000 meter races contested. Refer to the samalog system of point calculation from last week’s column, and again, how low you go in the samslog determines how high you place in the ranking.

It was Garbrecht’s fourth career world sprints title and third in a row, becoming the first female skater and only the third person ever to three-peat in the 31-year history of the Sprints. She ascended to second place on the all-time Sprints wins list with just Karin Kania Enke of the former East Germany’s six titles in the 80's above her. To put her weekend in perspective, only Belarus’ Igor Zhelezovsky and a skater of note named Eric Heiden won three sprint crowns in a row on the men's side.

On the men’s side, the three-peat came instead from a nation at the expense of one of their own. Mike Ireland, near the top of the world cup points standings on the 500 and 1000 meters, captured his first career world sprints title for the maple leaf, spoiling defending champion and teammate Jeremy Wotherspoon’s bid for three straight crowns. All the more remarkable was the fact Ireland did not win one of the four races skated, but went top 5 in three of the four and was 7th in the other.

The last time a world sprint champion won without winning a race was in 1990 at Tromsø, Norway when Korea’s Ki-Tae Bae won the first of his country’s only two sprint titles. Hiroyasu Shimizu of Japan won the overall silver and Wotherspoon captured the bronze. Ireland is only the third Canadian male to win a world sprints title, with Gaetan Boucher the other one in 1984.

For the Americans, things turned sour in a hurry. Its two ace sprinters, Chris Witty and Casey Fitzrandolph had poor first day races which doomed the former out of any hope for an overall medal and the latter out of the overall top 10. Witty finished a disappointing 7th and Fitzrandolph 13th. Her only top 3 finish was on Sunday’s 1000, and really dug herself a hole with 11th and 6th places on the Saturday 500 and 1000m.

Fitzrandolph simply had a bad weekend, in which he cracked the top 10 only once and placed 11th, 14th and 13th in his other three races. He was barely the highest ranked American male skater as allrounder Joe Cheek came in 14th overall just 18/100ths of a second in back of him.

Other American finishes were Amy Sannes (a most respectable 10th, her highest World Sprints rank in her career) and Becky Sundstrom did in fact come through with a 14th place finish on the women’s side. Nick Pearson, as he did last year, just eked into the top 20 by the skin of this teeth (20th). Due to this, the Americans will be able to send a maximum of 4 skaters from each gender into the 2002 World Sprints in Hamar, Norway.

Small consolation, however, on a weekend which had brought hope for continued positive momentum from Team USA.

This is how the competition shook out...

Day One:

The women’s 500 Saturday was first on the docket, won by Lemay Doan in convincing fashion; she had secured the second-fastest 1000m time in history and smashed Garbrecht-Enfeldt’s world samalog sprint points record at the Canadian sprints 2 weeks prior in Calgary. Sanmiya and Garbrecht-Enfeldt rounded out the top 3, but Lemay Doan had a good-sized lead going into the 1000. Same scenario as in Calgary for the 1999 World Sprints. Sure enough, as in those races, an Achilles heel emerged later that day.

Lemay Doan faltered badly on the 1000m, winding up 9th, which Garbrecht-Enfeldt won and Sanmiya picked up her second consecutive silver and the overall lead. Canada’s ‘Cat’ dropped from 1st to 3rd with two races remaining. The result was costly, as Lemay Doan was 45/100ths of a second out of the lead, with Garbrecht-Enfeldt just .08 back. Russian Svetlana Zhurova, nicknamed The Russian Rocket who is a perennial contender on the 500, but whose 1000 was always suspect, surprised the crowd and was fourth overall with a splendid kilometer effort and was 9/10ths of a second in arrears to Sanmiya.

Shimizu got the men’s proceedings off to a rousing start, finishing 19/100ths of a second faster than Ireland on the 500, while Wotherspoon was ambushed by Shimizu’s countryman, Manabu Horii, who has not had a banner season on the world cup circuit coming in 3rd with Wotherspoon one spot back. However, like Lemay Doan, Shimizu suffered a meltdown on the 1000, finishing 15th. Of the top 3, only ‘Spoon finished in the top 5 on Saturday’s kilometer, won by Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands, with Adne Sondral of Norway and Sergei Klevchenja of Russia rounding out the top 3. Still, the damage was done. Shimizu’s lead had evaporated and Ireland settled into first place after the first day’s races with a .29 advantage over Shimizu, and .6 over Wotherspoon. But Horii wound up 3rd overall, and 1998 World Sprint champion Jan Bos climbed into the title picture in 4th.

Sunday would turn out to be, in the words of WWF TV announcer Jim Ross as a good ol’-fashioned slobberknocker.

Day Two:

There was snow falling, so the times would be a bit slower than yesterday’s. Lemay Doan tried to rally on her second 500 in as many days and remained undefeated this season on the distance, but her margin of victory over Garbrecht-Enfeldt and Sanmiya was simply not enough to make a difference. Lemay Doan gained just 8/100ths of a second (her deficit was down to .37), and Garbrecht’s silver medal (and subsequent .22 lead over Sanmiya) returned her to the catbird’s seat going into the 1000, and a home crowd throbbing with anticipation of a native girl winning. Zhurova still hung tough in 4th; the question with her would be this; could she unveil another good 1000 to stay there?

Shimizu rebounded nicely from his abysmal kilometer and went 2 for 2 on the 500, gaining a much needed .34 on Ireland. Wotherspoon won the silver and Ireland the bronze. So with Horii 6th and Bos 8th on that 500, the stage was set for a two-man race for the title between the Ireland and Shimizu.

Shimizu regained the lead, but by just .10 over Ireland, which happened to be the same gap Ireland was behind Wotherspoon at the prior year’s world sprints in Seoul, Korea, going into the final distance. Another battle loomed between Horii and Wotherspoon, just .6 apart, 3rd and 4th overall, respectively.

The women’s 1000 saw Sanmiya having to skate next to last against Holland’s Andrea Nuyt. Sanmiya finishes in 1:19.17. So Garbrecht-Enfeldt, who would skate against Lemay Doan on the final pairing, would need to finish in 1:18.94 or better to win the title. Lemay Doan would have to do better than that just to pass Sanmiya. With the crowd roaring for Garbrecht, she opens .66 faster than Sanmiya on the first 200, 1.44 seconds faster at 600 meters, and finishes in 1:18.23, more than enough to seal the deal. Lemay Doan can only muster 8th, and it’s over. Ten years after winning her first world sprint crown, she became a walking, living dynasty at the ripe old age of 32. Old for a speedskater. Young enough to seal her legacy as one of the greats in the sport’s century-plus history. Zhurova skated a valiant 1000, but Aki Tonoike of Japan edged her out for 4th. Zhurova settled for 5th.

The men’s 1000 would close it out. Horii would try to keep his bronze medal-pending standing against Bos, Wotherspoon would face Saturday’s 1000m winner Wennemars, while Shimizu and Ireland would vie for the title of world’s best men's sprinter in the last pair of the meet. Bos routs Horii by nearly 1.2 seconds in their pair and is assured of no worse than 4th. Wotherspoon loses to Wennemars, but only by .02. Now the ‘Spoon is assured of at least a bronze medal, and Ireland-Shimizu will determine what color their medals would be. Shimizu could still lose to Ireland, but he could not lose by more than .09.

The race begins; .01 separate them at the 200m mark with two laps left. Shimizu gains .15 on Ireland on the next lap, so Ireland must make up a .25 deficit on the final lap to win the title. Which he does. The times: Ireland 1:12.16; Shimizu 1:12.56. Neither time will win the race (the top 3 were Sondral, Bos and Wennemars), but where it counted, Ireland beat Shimizu for the world title by 15/100ths of a second. Roughly the length of two skate blades.

And that is how speedskating has so much over figure skating, with its practically pre-determined outcomes (see the 1998 Nagano Olympics ice dancing competition for proof), its cold-war judging and its kiss and cry corral. There was only one ice-based amateur sport to watch this weekend. Speedskating is a sport of tenths and hundredths of a second. Which is why it lends itself so well to highest drama.

Next week the world cup resumes with an outdoor sprint in Helsinki, Finland, the last world cup before the 2001 World Allround Championships. The short track world cup season begins to close its doors its windup in Trnava, Slovakia in the next to last meet for them. We'll have coverage of both, and a world allround preview next week.