Oh, Canada; your title drought is done

You think 20 years without a championship is a drought, as Philadelphia can attest? Try only two titles in 106 years, which is what Canada had to show for its performances at the World All-round Speed Skating Championships, the premiere event of a non-Olympic season for the sport.

Until Sunday afternoon.

Cindy Klassen ended 22 consecutive years of European hegemony (and more to the point, 20 of those 22 being exclusively German) by capturing the first world title of her career Sunday in Grafteborg, Sweden's Ruddalen Arena, holding off the challenge of Claudia Pechstein of Germany, who captured the silver, and teammate Daniela Anschutz, who won the first-ever medal of her speed skating career, a bronze. The only other non-German woman to win such a title since 1981 was Emese Hunyady of Austria in 1994 at Butte, Montana, when the men's and women's World All-round Championships were separately contested.

Klassen became the first Canadian All-round World Championship winner since Sylvia Burka in 1976. You have to go back slightly longer for the only other time the maple leaf was golden in this competition; to 1897, when Jack McCulloch won the men's championship in its infancy.

It was more of the same, unfortunately, for Jennifer Rodriguez. For the second consecutive year, the Miami skater was in position to get an overall medal and end a 21-year American drought on the women's side, but for the second consecutive year had a poor 5,000 meter race and was denied a medal, finishing fifth. Catherine Raney (more on her later) also qualified for the final distance and finished her highest in a world championship setting, 8th.

Like tennis, there was less drama on the men's ledger for anyone outside of the Netherlands. Gianni Romme held off his countrymen and led a Dutch sweep of the first four places, with Rintje Ritsma (silver, his ninth Championships medal to go with four gold, a silver and three prior bronze), Ids Postma (bronze, and his seventh Championships medal; he was the 1997 and 1998 champion and four times runner-up) and Mark Tuitert, the 1999 World Junior Speed Skating Champion rounding out that quartet. It is the first time in the history of the century-plus history of the championships that one country placed all four of its skaters in the top four overall. Yevgeny Lalenkov of Russia was fifth. It is the ninth consecutive year a Dutchman won a World All round Title.

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The women's championships were racked with problems in the week leading into the event. Defending world champion Anni Friesinger of Germany withdrew Monday from the races with a viral infection which has sidelined her until next month's season-ending World Single Distance Championships in Berlin. Then on Wednesday, Pechstein needed stitches to close a cut above her left ankle when in the course of a training session she sliced it open accidentally with her right skate. And to top things off, Rodriguez would up losing her skates, eventually finding them about 12 hours later after she got off the flight from America.

Competition began Saturday afternoon with the women skating 500 and 3000 meters while the men did 500 meters and 5,000 meters. As expected, North Americans dominated the women's sprint, with Rodriguez and Klassen finishing 1-2 on the 500m with Maki Tabata of Japan third, Annamarie Thomas of Holland fourth and Pechstein and Anschutz a most respectable fifth and sixth. Raney did not start out good, finishing third from last of the 24 competitors.

Postma opened the men's races with a similar victory, with Lalenkov second, Kevin Marshall of Canada third, Derek Parra, bronze medallist from last year's championships fourth, tied with Russian Dimitri Shepel. Postma's three compatriots, as is normal, save for Tuitert (7th) didn't finish in the top 10; Ritsma was 11th and Romme 17th. Other Americans were Chris Callis in 7th, Boutiette was 9th and Shani Davis 12th.

The stage was set for the second-longest races of the weekend. Klassen was 9/10ths of a second behind J-Rod going into the 3,000m, with Tabata 5.64 back, Thomas 5,82, Pechstein 7.14 and Anschutz 8.34 behind. Raney nor Groves were on the radar, each being more than a dozen seconds back.

That would change in a hurry.

Pechstein propelled herself into the medal hunt with a win on the 3,000m, but the Canadians, along with Raney, made their move. Klassen was second, Clara Hughes third, and Groves roared into fifth place. Raney, not Rodriguez, was the fastest American, finishing fourth, and the latter's hopes for a world title were vaporized by a 12th place finish.

Klassen moved into 1st overall, with the 1,500m and 5,000m to be contested Sunday, a comfortable 2.48 seconds in front of Pechstein, 3.61 ahead of Rodriguez, and 5.31 when it came to Anschutz. Groves, 16th on the 500m, soared to sixth overall. In order to qualify for the 5,000m finale beforehand, you need to be both in the top 12 of the second-longest race and top 12 in the samalog classification. Of North Americans, only Hughes was on the outside looking in as Day 1 concluded, with her bronze. So she would have to have a kick-butt metric mile to make it through.

The men's 5,000m closed out Saturday's races. In a foreshadowing of the end result, the Dutch went 1-2-4 with Romme, Ritsma and Postma in that order. Norway's Eskil Ervik was the spoiler for a sweep, getting that race's bronze. Boutiette again was the surprise top American in 10th, while there would be no repeat of Parra's spectacular showing last year. He finished a dreadful 16th, not too far ahead of Davis (18th) and Callis (22nd).

By now, to the assembled at Ruddalen, the realization had set in that there would be a Dutch men's sweep. Postma retained his top spot, with Ritsma settled in second overall, 75/100ths of a second back, with Romme .81 behind. Lalenkov had a respectable ninth place on the 5,000m, which dropped him to fourth overall, with 1.22 seconds to make up. Tuitert with his 8th place, was quite content with his fifth place big-picture ranking going into the 1,500m and 10,000m races Sunday. Like the women, in order to avoid the crucible of having the metric mile be your make-or-break race to qualify for the 10,000m, a skater needs to be in both the top 12 of the men's 5,000m AND the top 12 of the samalog. Parra only fulfilled half of that criteria, as he was currently sitting in 10th on the latter, square on the bubble.

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The focus as Sunday began would be in the leaders and chasers trying to widen (and shorten) time gaps over their competition going into the final races for each. The field of 24 men and women would be cut to 12 each after this set of events.

Tabata pulled a surprise in winning the 1,500m, moving her up to fourth overall, with Pechstein, Klassen and the Netherlands' Renate Groenewold in that order. Rodriguez could do no better than fifth for the best American showing, and Raney was just over a second behind in 8th.

So as the 5,000m loomed, Klassen had a commanding 7.88 second margin for error on the 2000 champion. But the bronze medal overall was wide open; Rodriguez, as was the case last year in Heerenveen, Netherlands at the 2002 World All-rounds, held a significant edge over the fourth place overall skater, Tabata, as in 5.67 seconds, and a humongous 12.64-second chasm on Anschutz. Groves, sixth on the 1,500m also assumed sixth on the samalog classification as well.

Lalenkov at least won the 1,500m to ensure that the Dutch men would not have that one, too, as Tuitert, Romme, Postma and Ritsma followed down the line. In another seismic surprise, Davis, a former short-tracker and the first African-American to be on an Olympic speed skating team last year, served notice for the future with his sixth (and U.S.-best) place. Parra barely cracked the top 10 and failed to qualify for the final distance. Only Boutiette would go through (12th on the 1,500m) as one of the final 12, as Callis brought up the rear for the visitors in 17th.

Romme, the 2000 world champion by virtue of his victory that year in Milwaukee, assumed the overall lead with his bronze, with Lalenkov 22/100ths of a second behind going into the 10,000m. Postma was 1.34 back, Ritsma 9.4 seconds in arrears, and Tuitert exactly one second behind Ritsma.

As the final women's race played out, at the world cup in Heerenveen last November, the only 5,000m race in the world cup setting was won by Pechstein, and she defeated Klassen then by 15 seconds. She was no stranger in mind-boggling comebacks; witness her rally in the Olympic 5,000m last February to defeat Gretha Smit of the Netherlands who had nuked the existing world record in the very first pair of that race, and in Budapest, Hungary at the 2001 worlds, Pechstein made up a 11-second gap on Friesinger in the concluding 5,000m. Not enough to win the overall title that year, but still a point to consider as she and Klassen would decide it in the final pair, head-to-head. Six pairs of two skaters, with the podium likely to take shape from the fourth pair on.

Anschutz and Groves were that fourth pair. In a tighter-than-tight battle, Groves aced her out by 1/100th of a second (7:37.30 vs. 7:37.31). Tabata and Rodriguez followed. It was the latter's first 5,000m of the season... and it showed. Rodriguez finished next to last on the distance, more than 12 seconds behind Anschutz and Groves. Any chance of an overall bronze medal went up in smoke, and Mary Docter's bronze at the 1981 World Championships remains the United States' last medal in a women's all-round title event to date. Rodriguez lost out on the overall bronze by just 19/100ths of a second.

Klassen and Pechstein ended it, with the German trying to maintain the dynastic, generation-long winning streak her country enjoyed. She chipped away at Klassen's lead from the get-go until the 3,400m mark, but the Canadian stemmed the tide by finishing the final four laps in lap times quicker than Pechstein, who won the race's silver medal and preserving 6/10ths of her near 8-second gap to end it.

Klassen also became the first skater in 15 years to win an overall medal in the sprint and all-round world championships in the same year. Hughes won the 5,000m, monumental in itself. It was not only her country's first-ever 5,000m win in an all-round championship, it doubled as Canada's first victory in an individual all-round championships race since Burka's 1,500m win in the 1976 go-round at Gjovik, Norway.

The shocker here was that Raney and Groves rounded out the top five on the 5,000m (fourth and fifth), which propelled Groves to fourth overall while the 21 year old Raney held serve in eighth. She finished 9th on the 5,000m at Salt Lake City last February, and trounced Rodriguez by seven seconds on the 3,000m and 15 seconds on the 5K. If she gets her 500m in shape, then she will statistically achieve what she has done unofficially already; surpass Rodriguez as the country's best hope for all-round title success in the future.

The men's 10,000m was profoundly anticlimactic, with Romme and Ritsma taking first and second, respectively in that race, but Ervik salvaged Norwegian pride with his second individual race medal of the weekend. The Canadian men, who had placed their entire team onto the world all-round competition roster by virtue of their showing at the continental qualifier January 25 at Kearns, Utah, was non-existent by the end. None of the four had qualified for the 10,000m.

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Remember the World Cup? Specifically, all-round World Cups? They're actually back next weekend as the Cup season goes down that final inner into the home stretch. A recap of the Baselga di Pine', Italy, World Cup event, with the introduction of a team pursuit race as an exhibition will be in the cards when we convene seven days hence.