SPEEDSKATING: Your turn, Kearns...

Speedskating: The Final Inner

Last night, speedskating's regular season ended in Calgary, Canada, before a packed house at the Olympic Oval. The third and final day of the Essent ISU World Cup Speedskating Finals brought down the curtain on the 2000-01 campaign with the promise of high drama as the final two disciplines still to be contested would close up shop - the 500 and 1500.

Chris Witty, who set a national record of 38.47 seconds yesterday on the 500, opted to race the metric mile instead, so at the halfway point of the race, Svetlana Kaikan of Russia led with a 38.53 time, in the second pair. By the time Svetlana Zhurova of Russia's rematch with Japan's Eriko Sanmiya took place, teammate Tomomi Okazaki held sway over the field - until Zhurova went under 38 seconds for the second time in her career. Then Monique Garbrecht Enfeldt took Aki Tonoike of Japan to school with a 37.68. Which led up to the final pair of Catriona Lemay Doan of the home team vs. Sabine Volker of Germany.

Lemay Doan had absolutely nothing to gain by going full throttle; after all, she had clinched the world cup 500m points title on Saturday. But the world record she felt was within reach yesterday, so she stated she would give it the ol' college try one last time on her home ice.

And damn near did it - Lemay Doan won her pair in 37.43 seconds, just .03 off her world record of January 6th at the Canadian Sprint championships. Volker tied with Garbecht-Enfeldt for the silver.

The victory capped a near-perfect season for the 'Cat, as out of a maximum 1000 world cup points, this is what she wound up with...

1. Lemay Doan 970
2. Garbrecht-Enfeldt 730
3. Zhurova 633
4. Sanmiya 571
5. Volker 467

She will be the overwhelming favorite to wrest the World Single Distance 500m championship from Garbrecht-Enfeldt next Saturday in Kearns, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City and home of the 2002 Olympic speedskating venue.

The men's 500 finale was next. With the format of saving the best skaters for the last pairs instead of the first (which was adopted in 1996), the races have become somewhat of a waiting game, as this was in itself. In the end, there were four skaters under 35 seconds, but none close to the current world mark of 34.63. Toyoki Takeda edged out Fitzrandolph for the eventual bronze medal by .03 (34.91 vs. 34.94). Then in separate pairs, the world cup points title would be decided between Hiroyasu Shimizu of Japan and Jeremy Wotherspoon of Canada.

Shimizu went first and got the measure of his countryman Manabu Horii in 34.82; Wotherspoon wound up skating alone as Ireland took a big-time tumble during his race. The Canadian finished .05 behind Shimizu in the season finale. As the points standings tell the tale...

1. Shimizu 862
2. Wotherspoon 780
3. Takeda 586
4. Horii 463
5. Ireland 419

So the Olympic Oval was 0-for-2 in the world record department. The chances ran down to a precious two as the women kicked off their final 1500m racing of the season. Cindy Klassen wowed the Canadian crowd with yet another national record in her season of much contentment, seizing the lead at the halfway point of the event. When the sixth and seventh pairs failed to produce movement at the top of the classification, the world cup points leader/world allround champion and her teammate would try their luck.

In the case of defending world allround champion Anni Friesinger of Germany, luck had nothing to do with her success this season. Her metric mile races were without peer, and she was able to finally break through and get her own share of world championship glory. Teamed with Claudia Pechstein, the sub-4 minute woman from Friday's 3000, off they went. World record alerts were being sounded in the press area when Friesinger went 25.54 on her first 300 meters. The prior world record split was the Netherlands' Annamarie Thomas' 25.75 (on her way to a 1:55.50 time from March 20, 1999 which, truth to tell, was speedskating's oldest standing world record, and the last one set in the 20th century).

Friesinger cruised through the 700 meter split at 54.39. She lost a lot of her gap there (Thomas' time was faster at 54.37). So Calgary would still be on three world records and holding going into the men's 1500.

Her 1100 meter split; ergo, with one lap left, was 1:23.85. She gained .14 on Thomas’ split of 1:23.99). At this point, Pechstein was still 6/10ths of a second behind her countrywoman. So in order to catch Thomas' world record, Friesinger would have to skate a 31.64 final lap to claim the metric mile mark as her own. As with Pechstein, Friesinger caught her second wind...and roared to a 30.53 final lap.

1:54.38. Friesinger had not only beaten Thomas’ time. She nuked it. Pechstein also slid under the world record with an equally amazing 1:54.83. Those are times their partner, Gunda Nieman-Stirnemann could not match (1:55.62, nevertheless, a personal best). So it came down to Jennifer Rodriguez, who in an unusual instance, even though she was not in the top two of the 1500m points standings, skated last against the Dutch's Barbara deLoor. In the 10 events in which the final pairing was taken into the mix, eight of those events ended with one of the final two winning a gold or silver.

Or in Rodriguez's case a minute, 55.3 seconds later, the bronze.

J-Rod reset her own national record on the metric mile and puts the capper on a stellar weekend for the host nation of next weekend's World Single Distances. Hats off to Team USA for a truly good show. Momentum is critical in any sport, and this was a textbook example of it. It may be safe to suggest that unlike last year, Chris Witty won't be the only medalist in this version of WSD...

The 1500m final points standings:

1. Friesinger 480
2. Niemann-Stirnemann 320
3. Pechstein 282
4. Rodriguez 278
5. deLoor 230

The men's 1500 was the end of the meet, the weekend, and the season. So how were the 20 gentlemen who would skate in 10 pairs top what had just happened?

Well, try this...

No Dutchman finished in the top dozen of this race, a feat not accomplished since, well...never.

Three Russians (OK, two from the Russian Federation, one from Kazakhstan) finished in the top five.

Ådne Sondral of Norway won in another near-miss world record performance in 1:45.68. Aleksandr Kibalko was the runnerup in 1:46.51. Sergei Tsybenko of Kazhakstan picked up the bronze medal in 1:46.93. Derek Parra was the best American finisher, in sixth place.

And one of those Russians who didn't finish lower than fourth in a 1500 all season, yet never won one, either, wound up with the season's points title...

1. Kibalko 350
2. Sondral 300
3. Rintje Ritsma (NED) 274
4. Erben Wennemars (NED) 210
5. Parra 203

Final thoughts on this crazy weekend...The door has not only been left slightly ajar, it has been swung wide-open for Kearns, Utah's oval to secure a majority of the 10 race world records which will be up for grabs as never before at the World Single Distance Championships.

Don't get me wrong; there was superlative racing this weekend from the first pair to the last. But for fans who have weaned on Calgary as something special, who have grown up and have come to expect it to be the absolute ruler of the speedskating world record roost may be in for a most rude awakening a week from Monday.

This weekend, Calgary offered their best shot. Next weekend, it's Kearns' turn. Will Utah’s speedskating facility live up to its now-revised "Olympic Oval name?

The answer to that one takes shape beginning next Friday at 2PM eastern time. And we'll give it the full-court-press that it deserves.