The road to 2002

I promise, this is not a carbon copy of last week's article, but if certain skaters and countries don't stop winning like they're doing.

The second chapter of the World Cup speedskating season unfolded in the picturesque city, which hosted the Winter Olympics a quarter-century ago.

There people saw the return of the Norwegian who thwarted Dutch hopes of a 1500 meter Olympic championship four years ago in Nagano.

There was even evidence presented of a changing of the guard in American middle-distance men's skating, and a woman who may be to Salt Lake City what Eric Heiden was to Lake Placid -- as in near-total domination of her races --continued her win streak. And, for the second weekend in a row, one nation ruled on the second longest men's distance.

The Road to Kearns traveled through Innsbruck, Austria, host of the 1976 Winter Olympics as the second leg of the Essent ISU World Cup speedskating tour played out at the Olympia Eisstadion this weekend, November 17-18. Saturday's races were the men's 1,500 and women's 3,000; Sunday's were the women's 1,500 and men's 5,000.

Adne Sondral of Norway, defending Olympic and World Single Distance 1,500m champion, made his return from minor knee surgery a successful one, picking up right where he left off last March by winning the metric mile over two surprise finishers, neither of whom made any kind of mark last week.

Sondral's track record of 1:50.94 was better than Dustin Molicki of Canada (silver, 1:51.36) and bronze medallist Martin Hersman of the Netherlands (1:51.46).

Derek Parra of the United States improved on his 1,500 from last week in Berlin and just missed the podium by placing fourth (1:52.24), ahead of Dutchman Erben Wennemars (1:52.35).

Other Americans were Tim Hoffman (fourth from last out of 20 skaters) and KC Boutiette (second from last).

It would appear from these results that Parra has now firmly supplanted Boutiette as the country's best hope for middle-distance success not only during this season, but at Kearns in mid-February.

Jakko Jan Leeuwangh of the Netherlands, who was seventh on Saturday, leads the 1,500-meter standings with 140 points. Petter Andersen of Norway is in second place with 136 points, and Erben Wennemars of the Netherlands is third with 120, Hersman's bronze moved him into fourth with 115 points. Sondral's win puts him in fifth place with three more races remaining before the Olympics, and four total in the season.

Then it was Anni Friesinger's turn on the 3,000. The defending World Allround and World Single Distance 1,500m champion cruised to her second consecutive win (4:12.19, by nearly two seconds over teammate Claudia Pechstein's 4:14.12).

In our "who gets to be third now that Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann is on the sidelines" title, the recipient this week was Renate Groenewold of the Netherlands, whose 4:16.44 was good enough for the bronze. Cindy Klassen of Canada and Groenewold's countrywoman Tonny deJong rounded out the top five. America's Jennifer Rodriguez didn't do quite as well as last week, finishing seventh.

Friesinger leads the 3,000/5,000 combined points standings with a perfect 200 points, followed by Pechstein's 160. Groenewold and Maki Tabata of Japan, who finished sixth, are tied for third with 115 points. Klassen has 110 points for fifth, 10 points ahead of Rodriguez with four races remaining.

Sunday's races had the women going first. Friesinger captured her sixth 1,500m race out of the last seven contested over the past two seasons and fourth in a row, with Rodriguez getting the silver again. The German's time of 2:00.53 was .34 ahead of Rodriguez (2:00.87), followed by Pechstein with the bronze (2:00.91), while Klassen and Groenewold were fourth and fifth. Chris Witty was the only other American in this field, finishing 11th.

With the win, Friesinger opens up a 40-point lead on Rodriguez (200-160), with Pechstein (130), Klassen (105) and Groenewold (90) also in the early hunt for who finishes behind the top two.

The World Cup tour's next stop is the De Uitlof oval in the capital of the Netherlands, The Hague. This will be a critical competition for the long-distance skaters especially, since not only will there be a metric mile skated for each gender, the women will skate the 5,000, and the men go at it for 10 kilometers, instead of the usual women's 3,000 and men's 5,000, respectively. It will be the only opportunity in an international format before Salt Lake City for skaters to compete on the sport's two longest distances.

It's time to explain, in as regular terms as possible, just how a speedskater needs to qualify for a Winter Olympic Games. First, there are certain minimum times a skater must meet per distance to be eligible for a chance to compete. They are:

Distance	Women	Men
500m	40.80 seconds	37.30
1,000m	1.22.50	1.14.20
1,500m	2.06.00	1.54.00
3,000m	4.30.00	none
5,000m	none	6:53.00

Where it gets interesting is the standards for the longest distance for men and women; they are based on the next longest distance. For a woman, she needs to have a 3,000m time of four minutes, 18 seconds to make it; for the men's 10,000, a 5,000m time of 6:40 is necessary.

Second, and most important, a skater must realize these minimum qualifying times at any of the five competitions in a pre-Olympic season:

* International Skating Union Championships and qualifying events for ISU Championships * World Cup races * International competitions open to all ISU member nations * Country matches (skating competitions between two and three countries alone), and * National championships and/or National Olympic Trials.

So far, here are the number of skaters who have qualified for the 2002 Olympics on each distance from around the world:

500m -- 44 men, 26 women 1,000m -- 46 men, 31 women 1,500m -- 59 men, 50 women 3,000m -- 56 women (of those, only 17 have qualified for the women's 5000) 5,000m -- 63 men (of those, just 14 have qualified for the men's 10,000)

These numbers will be whittled down, of course, since the total number of skaters can't exceed 20 -- 10 women and 10 men. For the three shortest distances (500, 1,000 and 1,500 for men and women), each country may enter a maximum of four skaters in each event. Each country can enter a max of three skaters in the women's 3,000 and 5,000, as well as the men's 5,000 and 10,000m.

That's where the Olympic Trials process will kick in, and the closer we get to that, which will be December 17-21 in Kearns for the Americans, and the same week in Heerenveen, Netherlands for the Dutch, we'll explain once the Trials are over, how the two longest distances are seeded. It's not simple, I can tell you that much.

Two schools in the Kearns area have thrown in the towel in terms of trying to conduct partial business during the speedskating competition, due to traffic concerns.

Since there will be heavier than expected traffic around the Utah Olympic Oval, Kearns High School, east of the Oval, and Beehive Elementary, to its west, will close up shop on February 11, 12, 19, 20 and 22 -- days when speedskating events are held.

One-liner of the week goes belatedly to national team coach Tom Cushman, who was asked about how Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann's pregnancy would affect the women's races in SLC. He joked that her condition took care of part of a problem.

"Now if we can just get a couple of the Dutch guys pregnant," he added.

Until next weekend in Den Haag, as the Dutch call their capital city, take care.