Salt Lake City Day 1: Happiness and disappointments

After the World cup in Calgary last weekend, the skaters are facing each other again this weekend but this time in Salt Lake City, USA.

By Florence Gauthier

Photos by Danny Kim

On Friday, the skaters took part in the qualification process for each of the distances, both individual and team relays.

Shaoang Liu powerful in the 1000m

Park Ji Won and Ren Ziwei, respectively second and third on the distance in Calgary, qualified easily in the 1000m (1). As for Shaoang Liu, he managed to qualify, but less easily. During his race, the French Tristan Navarro made a bad passing and Liu found himself 4th. With his power, he was able to come back and qualify for the quarterfinals. Despite an injury last Sunday, Kim Gun Woo came back and finished first in his race. In the 1000m (2), all the strongest skaters managed to qualify.

As for the women, it's no surprise that skaters like Suzanne Schulting, Sofia Prosvirnova and Véronique Pierron qualified in the 1000m (1). Canada's Alyson Charles managed to make her mark by finishing second in her race. In the 1000m (2), Hanne Desmet received a yellow card following two penalties in the same race. She will not have any ranking on this distance.

Sarault and Hamelin qualified in the 1500m

In the women's 1500m, Courtney Sarault and Ekaterina Efremenkova, who were on the podium last weekend, both qualified. Choi Min Jeong, the overall world champion, managed to finish first and qualify with a typical Korean overtaking. By finishing 3rd, Cynthia Mascitto and Claudia Gagnon managed to qualify thanks to their time.

In the quarterfinals, Charles Hamelin finished right behind Hiroki Yokoyama and Sébastien Lepape. He then had to wait until the end of the races to see if his time would allow him to qualify, which was the case. The other two qualified Canadians are Pascal Dion and Steven Dubois. The three skaters on the podium in Calgary, Kazuki Yoshinaga, Lee June Seo and Vladislav Bykanov all made it to the semi-finals.

A surpise during the 500m

The women's 500m was not filled with a lot of surprises. The bests in the world, such as Choi Min Jeong, Suzanne Schulting and Yara Van Kerkhof, qualified for the quarter-finals. The two winners of the A finals of the World Cup in Calgary also qualified, which are Natalia Maliszewska of Poland and Lara van Ruijven of the Netherlands. The surprise of the day came from Danae Blais who is competing in her first World cup. She finished 3rd in her heat and managed to qualify thanks to her time.

In the preliminaries, Park Ji Won was advanced after he was taken into the fall of Japanese Hijiri Iwashita. Shaolin Sandor Liu was 4th, but thanks to the fall of two skaters ahead of him, he qualified in 2nd place. The storm calmed down in the qualifications with the best skaters managing to qualify without surprise.

Colorful relays

In the quarterfinals, it’s with no surprise that China and the Netherlands qualified in the mixed relay. The countries accompanying them in the semifinals will be the United States, Russia, Poland, Canada and France. Surprisingly, the Republic of Korea failed to qualify after falling seven laps from the end.

After the bronze medal at the Calgary World cup, there was hope for Canadian women to return to the podium. Unfortunately, their course stopped in the quarterfinals after a fall. The Republic of Korea, China and Russia all won their quarter-finals, which allowed them to advance to the semifinals.

The male relays were filled with unexpected moments. During the Dutch relay, the last push between Dennis Visser and Daan Breeuwsma did not go well four laps from the end, which prevented them from qualifying. A loss of balance prevented a relay for Korea. They were unable to catch up, so they did not qualify. All this happened to the benefit of Poland, France and Italy, who might not have qualified otherwise.

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