We now know who will be skating this weekend on 1000m and which countries were able to qualify their teams for the last relay event of the season, but that is not what had people talking today.
By Carl Savard
Photo by Martin Holtom
Some big names out and a questionable decision.
Once again today, things started smoothly in the first round of the qualifying stage on 1000m. All the best skaters surfed to the second round and then… things got ugly. The road to the main event was cut short by penalties for Russia’s Sofia Prosvirnova, Netherlands Lara van Ruijven, Korea’s Kim Alang, Hungary’s Andrea Keszler, USA’s Maame Biney and Canada’s Valérie Maltais. As for the strongest skaters on the men’s side of the competition, J.R. Celski was not able to go through the second round but what had people talking today was the penalty given to Hungary’s Liu Shaoang. While it seems on the available replay that Liu never changed his course before colliding with Italy’s Yuri Confortola, the young star was penalised for impeding by the referees bringing a lot of sarcasm on the internet about the incident. Even Liu joked that maybe he deserved a red card for his action.
3000m and 5000m relay
On the women’s relay event, Canada, Italy, China, the Netherlands, Korea, Hungary, Japan and Russia will battle tomorrow in the semifinals to qualify for Sunday’s finals. They are the same eight countries who fought last week in China. The men’s side of the board will see quite a change of scenery though as Canada and China could not go through the qualifying stage.
The World cup season
Even though the focus is on securing olympic spots for their countries, the World cup season is a competition of its own and the ISU tallies results for a final ranking. Right now, Arianna Fontana is your leader on 500m. She is followed by Kim Boutin and Marianne St-Gelais. On the men’s side, Samuel Girard is presently in first place followed closely by Wu Dajing and Hwang Dae Heon but the Korean is not skating the distance this weekend. On 1000m, Kim Boutin is in first place after three events. Suzanne Schulting is in second while Shim Suk Hee is in third. Sjinkie Knegt is leading the men’s 1000m's ranking followed by Wu Dajing and Hwang Dae Heon. On 1500m, Choi Min Jeong is in first place after winning two of the three finals so far and finishing in second place in the third one. She is almost out of reach at the top. The second place is occupied by Shim Suk Hee. Valérie Maltais is in third place. For the men, Hwang Dae Heon is presently in first place followed by Sjinkie Knegt and Liu Shaoang. In the relay event, Korea is presently ahead of Canada and China on the women’s side while Canada is ahead of the Netherlands and China on the men’s side.
The big show starts tomorrow with the 500m quarters, semis and finals, the 1500m semis and finals and the relay semifinals.
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