Speed Skating ISU World Championships 2021

[Dennis 712]

And the final distances of the tournament. There have been no international competitions on the 5k and 10k yet this season, so this should be interesting.

 

Women's 5.000m:

1.  Martina Sáblíková
2.  Natalia Voronina
3.  Irene Schouten
4.  Isabelle Weidemann
5.  Carlijn Achtereekte
6.  Marina Zueva
7.  Claudia Pechstein (unless her back still bothers her, then she'll finish last)
8.  Valerie Maltais
9.  Nadezhda Morozova
10.  Ragne Wiklund
11.  Francesca Lollobrigida
12.  Anastasiya Grigoreva (weird choice when you have skaters like Sokhryakova/Lalenkova/Golubeva)

Men's 10.000m:

1.  Nils van der Poel
2.  Patrick Roest
3.  Jorrit Bergsma
4.  Patrick Beckert
5.  Ted-Jan Bloemen
6.  Alexander Rumyantsev
7.  Davide Ghiotto
8.  Timothy Loubineaud
9.  Ruslan Zakharov (no Semerikov?)
10.  Peter Michael
11.  Jordan Belchos
12.  Michele Malfatti (I would have expected Tumolero here)

[CCB 565]

Tomorrow the last day of the championships  and also of the speedskating season.

 

My predictions:

 

1500 women - Brittany Bowe  for sure, she is so much better than the rest at the moment (with the exception of Takagi from Japan)

1500 men - Patrick Roest  hopefully for him finally his first individual WC-medal, the harsh conditions are in his favor

5000 women - Martina Sablikova  still the best on the longest distance

10000 men - Nils van der Poel  

 

[Monzanator 4,503]

5 hours ago, OlympicsFan said:

I would like to know how Norway manages to develope so many great athletes. Speed skating isn’t exactly the most popular sport over there and still they produce tons of great talents while Germany hasn’t developed any in a long time. I get that most kids in Germany don’t care about speed skating, but the same is true in Norway and still they develope tons of talents despite having a much smaller population.

 

Norway is non-existent in traditionally popular sports in Europe - football or athletics to begin with. Hell, Norway is non-existent in any summer sports barring some one-hit wonders like the Ingebrigtsen siblings or Hattestad. Handball might be the only exception. Their most successful Summer OG sport is... sailing (I'd have never guessed that w/o checking)   Second best is shooting. I don't know any country in Europe that can say sailing & shooting are their best "summer" sports

[Dennis 712]

Wiklund! 

[Monzanator 4,503]

I see Olga Fatkulina is still winning WCh medals even after the age of 30

[Dennis 712]

29 minutes ago, Monzanator said:

I see Olga Fatkulina is still winning WCh medals even after the age of 30

So are Brittany Bowe and Martina Sablikova for example, who are both older than Fatkulina. 

[Monzanator 4,503]

5 minutes ago, Dennis said:

So are Brittany Bowe and Martina Sablikova for example, who are both older than Fatkulina. 

Yeah, but sprinters are more vulnerable with age? Erbanova retired way too early for whatever reason. Sablikova will be winning WCh medals until she's 40yo and Bowe probably keeps going until she wins an individual Olympic medal (while Richardson also retired prematurely). I imagine Leenstra was feeling the heat from Dutch competition and she was never a pure winner to begin with. Always behind someone's back.

[heywoodu 15,141]

Wow, insane 5k by Schouten  

[OlympicsFan 858]

18 hours ago, Monzanator said:

 

Norway is non-existent in traditionally popular sports in Europe - football or athletics to begin with. Hell, Norway is non-existent in any summer sports barring some one-hit wonders like the Ingebrigtsen siblings or Hattestad. Handball might be the only exception. Their most successful Summer OG sport is... sailing (I'd have never guessed that w/o checking)   Second best is shooting. I don't know any country in Europe that can say sailing & shooting are their best "summer" sports

1) Norway non-existent in athletics?

2) Norway has 2 amazing football players, I think they could qualify for some tournaments in the future. Also i think it is difficult to be good at football when you can barely ever play it outside ... (although Iceland has done an amazing job)

3) There are a lot of other „comparable“ countries that aren’t (much) better than Norway while being much worse in winter sports (Portugal, Israel, Ireland, Singapore, Belgium, Greece). I think for their size Norway is actually doing a good job in summer sports.

[Dennis 712]

40 minutes ago, Monzanator said:

Yeah, but sprinters are more vulnerable with age? Erbanova retired way too early for whatever reason. Sablikova will be winning WCh medals until she's 40yo and Bowe probably keeps going until she wins an individual Olympic medal (while Richardson also retired prematurely). I imagine Leenstra was feeling the heat from Dutch competition and she was never a pure winner to begin with. Always behind someone's back.

To some extent. However, Nao Kodaira will also turn 35 this year. Jenny Wolf was also still world class at age 35 and skated her personal records on the 500m and 1.000m when she was 30+. What Fatkulina is doing here is impressive, but not exceptional.