SPEEDSKATING: Anatomy Of An All-around Championship.

When you schedule a country’s sprint speedskating championships on the same weekend as the Canadian sprints in Calgary, you run the risk of playing second fiddle in columns like this. Such was the case Saturday afternoon at the Olympic Oval as an emphatic message was sent to the reigning queen of her discipline - don’t count on a home-ice crowning at the World Sprint Championships just yet.

Catriona Lemay Doan, who turned 30 on December 23, reached back into the past and rediscovered her explosiveness on the 500 meters. In the process, she broke two world records; her three-year-plus world record with a scintillating 37.4 second time on the opening day of Canada’s sprint championship event. The old mark of 37.55 was set at the Canadian Single Distance Championships on December 29, 1997 in Calgary.

Lemay Doan added a national record of 1 minute 14.99 seconds on the 1000 meters, the third-fastest time ever by a woman on the kilometer and roared to overall victory on the women’s side. She set another world record in samalog points (more on the samalog scoring system later) and almost broke the 150.000 barrier in doing so. She totaled 150.085 points over four races, lowering the 151.605 world best set by Monique Garbrecht of Germany at the 1999 world sprints, also at Calgary.

It was far from a good weekend for Susan Auch, Lemay Doan’s arch-rival. She fell in Sunday’s 500m for the first time in almost six years when she hit a rut in the ice and crashed as she headed into the final turn of the race. She withdrew from the remaining 1000m and now must wait to see if she will receive a bye to compete at Inzell, Germany, site of the 2001 World Sprint Championships on January 20-21.

If the request is rejected, then Lemay Doan will likely be joined by the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place finishers overall, Canadian allround champion Cindy Klassen, Krissy Myers and Shannon Rempel, respectively. If Auch’s appeal is successful, then figure Rempel to be the alternate instead.

On the men’s side, 2-time defending world sprint champion Jeremy Wotherspoon and Mike Ireland, silver medalist from last year’s races in Seoul, Korea, only skated the first day’s races as they were pre-qualified for this year’s tilt. They are also nursing injuries; Wotherspoon has a sore left hip; Ireland a strained groin. The eventual men’s winner was Patrick Bouchard, followed by Kevin Crockett (better known to speedskating fans as Kevin Overland, who changed his last name to honor his grandfather) and Olivier LaRocque.

Not to be outdone, on January 2-4, Canada’s best allrounders competed for the right to go to Milwaukee for this coming weekend for the North American qualification for the world allround championships in Budapest, Hungary next month.

On the women’s side, it was a blowout deluxe, as Klassen outclassed the rest of the women’s field to win the Canadian national championship. She built up enough of a time gap over eventual runner-up Cindy Overland that even a 5th place finish by Klassen on the 5000 meters (Overland won the bronze medal) only slightly impacted on her margin of victory. Joining the two Cindys will be Kristina Groves, Clara Hughes, Tara Risling and Nicole Slot. The men’s competition was much more of a barnburner . . . details later on.

The best men’s allround skater in the world the past couple of years will have to wait 12 more months to contend for his first European championship.

On Sunday, the national governing body of Dutch speedskating announced that defending allround world champion Gianni Romme would not compete next weekend in Baselga diPine’, Italy at the continental championships due an acute case of the flu. He will be replaced by first reserve Jelmer Beulenkamp. This will probably not jeopardize Romme’s chances to defend his allround world title next month in Budapest.


Unlike last weekend’s U.S. allrounds, where the championship was rendered practically meaningless by rules which allowed for the top 4 men and women overall to skip the final distance, since they pre-qualified for the continental qualification at Milwaukee, the US Sprints was a much more meaningful affair. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, the expected winners won.

Casey Fitzrandolph and Chris Witty captured the men’s and women’s national sprint championships in relatively easy fashion with each winning three of the four races. It was their fourth championship; for Witty, four in a row, and for Fitzrandolph, his first national title since 1997. Joining Witty at Inzell will be Amy Sannes and Becky Sundstrom.

Jennifer Rodriguez, the runner-up to Witty this weekend, and who hung a rare 1000m US Sprints loss upon her on Saturday, elected not to participate due to her world allround championship commitments. Fitzrandolph’s teammates will be Joe Cheek and Nick Pearson, two allrounders by trade, but who qualified for the world sprints nonetheless.

There is a noticeable element of risk on the women’s sprint side. Each country in an International Skating Union world speedskating championship (allround or sprint), is entitled to at least one skater who meets certain time requirements on a particular distance. If all your country’s skaters finish in the top 20, you get an extra starting spot for the following year’s championships, up to a maximum of 4 skaters for each gender. Conversely, if any of your skaters finish out of the top 20, then starting spots are taken away for the following year’s championship.

Sundstrom’s sub-par performance at last year's World Sprints in Seoul, Korea (in which out of 4 races she finished 25th, 17th, 25th and 24th which equaled 23rd place overall) wound up reducing the American women’s team from 4 participants to 3 for Inzell. And yet, because of the lack of depth on the country’s sprint speedskating roster, Sundstrom will skate at the World Sprints once more as her closest challenger at the US Sprints was more than 10 samalog points behind. Let’s hope that she will have a better meet this time.

Since this is the week before the rest of the world championships allround picture comes into complete focus (with European and North American representatives to be decided this weekend), allow me to let you in on just how a championship of this type works.

In order to understand the sport of speedskating, a fan who is on the fence of whether or not they like it needs a walkthrough of its most important championship competition. So now would be as good a time as any to do just that.

The World Allround Championships will be, for the first time since 1996, contested outdoors, in Budapest on February 10-11. Forty-eight skaters compete; 24 men, 24 women from every corner of the world. Each will race 3 events in this order – for men, the 500, 5000 and 1500m; for women, the 500, 3000 and 1500. The top 6 in each gender on the , (men’s 5000 and women’s 3000), as well as the next best 6 in the overall classification after the third race, move on to skate a fourth and final distance; for men, the 10,000 and for women, the 5000 meters.

So you can be like German Anni Friesinger, who fell after her 500m pairing, theoretically ending her chance to skate the final distance last year in Milwaukee, yet still skate at the end. She qualified for the 5000 by being in the top 6 on her 3000m. Friesinger finished 12th out of 12 overall, but she still made it through based on new International Skating Union rules, which reward those who excel on the second distance.

The scoring system used to determine the eventual world champion is called a samalog, in which each race is treated like a 500 meter. The faster one skates, the lower the number of samalog points are given. For example, in a 5000m race, a skater’s time is divided by 10. For a 1500m, divided by 3. On a 3000m, divided by 6 and so on. The lowest number of samalog points at the end of the competition determines the world champion. How low you go in the samalog determines how high you place in the final classification - and the victory podium.

A good example of how this is conducted can be gleaned from the recently concluded Canadian allround championships. Calgary was the host of the January 2-4 competition in which 60 men and 45 women strove for the opportunity to advance to Milwaukee for the North America/Oceania continental qualifier for Budapest next weekend. There was only one change in the format of races, with the shortest distance first, in ascending order to the longest.

Negotiating your way through an allround speedskating championship is tricky and minefield-laden. You can fly around the track in a one and a quarter lap race, but will you have the stamina for three and a half-laps? For seven and a half laps? For twelve and a half? If you do, the chances of graduating to the final distance increase.

For the purposes of this, let’s concentrate on the winner of the men's 500m race, and the eventual men's overall winner.

Kevin Marshall opened the proceedings with a win on the 500 by 76/100ths of a second over 5th place finisher Dustin Molicki. Going into the metric mile Molicki needed to overcome a 2.28 second gap (76/100ths-second multiplied by 3). Not only did Molicki win the 1500m, he cut into Marshall’s lead by 3/4ths of a second. The 5000 and 10000 were on tap - and the longer the distance, Molicki gets better as well.

Molicki was in 3rd overall behind Steve Elm, who had a great 1500, and Marshall, who now had a 5.1 second advantage on Molicki as the 5000m beckoned.

The 5000 meters went off on 1/3. Molicki also wins this race, and closes the gap on Elm and Marshall; by 1.2 seconds on Elm, and erases nearly five seconds off Marshall’s 5.1 second lead. Now all three of them are less than three-hundredths of a second apart from one another as the 10,000 went off.

Marshall, the leader, went in the 6th of 7 pairs. He clocked 14:11.59, which left the door wide open for Elm and Molicki, whose prior personal bests were less than 14 minutes. They would skate last. Elm led for the first 11 laps of the 25-lap marathon, nursing a 2.37 second lead halfway through the race. But Molicki rallied in the final half of the race, shaving tenths of a second off Elm’s lead with each lap before he sealed the deal in the final five laps, gaining almost 9/10ths of a second while doing so and winning the race, and leapfrogging Elm and Marshall to the championship, the first of his career.

Molicki’s margin of victory over Elm in the samalog ranking was the equivalent of 9/100ths of a second.

Joining those three in Milwaukee this weekend will be Arne Dankers, Jamie Ivey and Philippe Marois. Six women and seven men from North America qualify for Budapest. In the European Championships, thirteen women and twelve men qualify, thanks to Europe’s superior showing as a continent in last year’s world championships.

It should be a great weekend for the sport, and we’ll have a full recap of it here next week.