48 Fun Facts About Speed Skating

How long is a standard long-track speed skating oval?

400 m, the same lap as a running track. Skaters go off two at a time and race the clock, so a champion may never share the ice with the runner-up.

A short-track speed skating oval is marked out on a rink built for which sport?

Ice hockey: the 111-metre lap fits a standard 60 by 30 metre rink, so any hockey arena can stage short track, while long track needs an oval of its own nearly four times the size.

In which direction are speed skating races run?

Counter-clockwise, so every bend is a left turn: short-track skaters lean so far over that they steady themselves with a hand on the ice, and their gloves carry hard fingertip caps for it.

In a short-track speed skating relay, how does a skater usually hand over to a teammate?

A push from behind: there is no baton, so the incoming skater shoves a crouching teammate to pass on speed, and teams may swap whenever they like except in the last two laps.

One of the earliest recorded speed skating races was a 15-mile dash across the Fens of which country?

England: racing on skates is thought to have begun in the Netherlands centuries earlier, yet one of the earliest races written down crossed the frozen Fens, from Wisbech to Whittlesey.

Which Dutch town is home to Thialf, the country's best-known speed skating arena?

Heerenveen: Thialf opened there as an outdoor rink in 1967, and when a roof went on in 1986 world records fell at most distances inside a single winter.

The Thialf arena, the Netherlands' great skating temple, is named after a character from which mythology?

Norse: Thialfi was Thor's fleet-footed servant, who ran three races against a giant's champion and lost every one, because his rival turned out to be thought itself.

Speed skating's Olympic debut came at the first Winter Games, in which French resort?

Chamonix staged it in 1924 as an International Winter Sports Week; the meeting went so well that the IOC decided afterwards to count it as the first Winter Olympics.

Speed skater Charles Jewtraw won the first gold medal ever awarded at a Winter Olympics, competing for which country?

The United States: Jewtraw, a sprinter from Lake Placid, won the 500 m, the first event decided in 1924, and later gave his gold medal to the Smithsonian.

Clas Thunberg won three speed skating golds at the 1924 Winter Olympics for which country, also home to runner Paavo Nurmi?

Finland: Thunberg won five Olympic golds in all, then stayed home from the 1932 Games rather than race under rules he believed were stacked in the hosts' favour.

The 1932 Lake Placid Olympics used which controversial race format, letting the hosts win all four golds?

Mass-start pack racing was the North American way, settled by tactics rather than the clock; European skaters were so angry that the Games went back to timed pairs four years later.

Women's speed skating joined the Olympic programme in 1960 at which mountain resort?

Squaw Valley gave women their first Olympic medal races; they had skated at the 1932 Games too, but only as a demonstration, and waited 28 years for the real thing.

Which Soviet skater was the first to win four individual golds at one Winter Games, in 1964?

Lidiya Skoblikova won every women's race at Innsbruck, the 500, 1,000, 1,500 and 3,000 m, and within weeks added the world title by winning all four distances again.

Which Dutch skater won three golds at the 1972 Sapporo Games, a fall in the 500 m costing him a possible sweep?

Ard Schenk then joined a new professional circuit, which shut him out of the Olympics; it folded within two years, and he retired at 30 without racing at another Games.

After sweeping five golds at the 1980 Winter Olympics, Eric Heiden turned professional in which other sport?

Cycling: Heiden won the national professional road race title in 1985 and started the 1986 Tour de France, only to crash out with concussion five days from the finish.

After skating, Eric Heiden earned a medical degree from Stanford and became what?

An orthopedic surgeon: Heiden qualified in 1991 and was soon patching up professionals in another sport, as team doctor to the NBA's Sacramento Kings.

Olympic champions Chad Hedrick and Derek Parra both came to the ice from which wheeled sport?

Inline skating: Hedrick, a serial world champion on wheels, took to the ice only after watching fellow inline skater Parra win Olympic medals in 2002, and was a world champion on ice within two years.

Bonnie Blair won all of her Olympic gold medals in which two distances?

500 m and 1,000 m, the sprints: Blair won the shorter one at three Games running, the last two only two years apart because the Winter Olympics moved to a new four-year rhythm after 1992.

Brittany Bowe gave up her 2022 Olympic 500 m place so that which teammate, who had slipped at the trials, could race?

Erin Jackson took the place and won gold in Beijing, becoming the first Black woman to win an individual title at a Winter Olympics.

What happened to Dan Jansen on the morning of his 1988 Olympic 500 m race?

His sister died of leukemia hours before the race, and he fell in both his events; six years later he finally won gold and skated his victory lap carrying his baby daughter, named Jane after her.

Norway's Johann Olav Koss won three golds at the 1994 Lillehammer Games and later founded which charity?

Right To Play grew out of Olympic Aid, the relief fund Koss backed in 1994 by giving away a gold-medal bonus and auctioning his skates for the war victims of Sarajevo.

The clap skate has its blade attached to the boot by what?

A hinge at the front lets the heel lift away, so the whole blade stays on the ice through the push; a spring then snaps it back against the boot with the clap that gives the skate its name.

The modern clap skate was developed at a university in which city?

Amsterdam: Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau built his prototype at the Vrije Universiteit in 1980, yet top skaters ignored it for a decade and a half, until the Dutch women's team began winning on it.

The 1998 Winter Olympics, where clap skates produced a flood of world records, were held in which city?

Nagano saw world records in five events, and in one men's race the mark fell three times in a single afternoon as skater after skater went under it.

The Elfstedentocht is a roughly 200 km skating tour visiting eleven cities in which Dutch province?

Friesland: the tour needs natural ice 15 cm thick along the whole course, and all 22 district ice wardens must agree before it is called, usually with barely two days' notice.

Since 1989 the Alternative Elfstedentocht has been skated in which country?

Austria: the Weissensee, a mountain lake in Carinthia, freezes far more dependably than Dutch canals, so the stand-in draws some 3,000 skaters a year, most of them Dutch.

Elfstedentocht skaters prove they have completed the course by collecting what in each of the eleven cities?

A stamp on a card, and every one counts: Olympic champion Piet Kleine finished fifth in 1997, then was struck from the results because a single stamp was missing.

Which member of the Dutch royal family completed the 1986 Elfstedentocht under the pseudonym 'Van Buren'?

Willem-Alexander, then an 18-year-old crown prince, borrowed one of his family's lesser titles for the day, and used the same alias six years later to run the New York City Marathon.

At the Elfstedentocht's kluning points, what must skaters do?

Walk on their skates: the Dutch call it klunen, the way past ice too thin to carry the crowd, and before a race organisers even transplant slabs of ice to mend weak spots under bridges.

Short-track speed skating became a full Olympic medal sport in 1992 at which Winter Games?

Albertville: the sport had been tried as a demonstration four years earlier, and so impressed IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch that it was given medal status at the very next Games.

What happened on the last corner to give Australia's Steven Bradbury 2002 short-track gold?

Every skater ahead of him crashed, and not wholly by luck: knowing he was the slowest man in the final, he had deliberately hung at the back to stay clear of any pile-up.

Eight-time Olympic short-track medallist Apolo Ohno won which television contest in 2007?

Dancing with the Stars: Ohno won it with Julianne Hough, then went back to the ice and added three more Olympic medals at the Vancouver Games of 2010.

After Apolo Ohno's disputed 2002 gold, a South Korean goalscorer mimed speed skating at which event?

FIFA World Cup: under four months after Kim Dong-sung's disqualification handed Ohno the 1,500 m, South Korea's Ahn Jung-hwan headed in an equaliser against the USA and glided away like a skater.

Apolo Ohno was raised by his Japanese-born father in which city?

Seattle: his father, raising him alone, sent the teenager across the country to Lake Placid, where he became the youngest skater the Olympic training centre had ever accepted.

Ireen Wüst, the first Winter Olympian with individual golds at five Games, won her first aged 19 in which 2006 host city?

Turin: she arrived as an outsider and left as the 3,000 m champion, and within four years she was cutting the ribbon on a new rink in Tilburg that bears her name.

Sven Kramer won a record nine world titles in which speed skating format?

Allround: Kramer won four in a row, lost a whole season to a nerve injury in his leg, then came back to win five more.

Sven Kramer lost a certain 10,000 m gold at Vancouver 2010 when he was disqualified for what?

Changing lanes incorrectly: coach Gerard Kemkers shouted him into the wrong lane late in the race, and Kramer crossed the line four seconds clear only to learn that the gold was gone.

Sven Kramer won the same Olympic title at three straight Games from 2010 to 2018, over which distance?

5,000 m: Kramer won it in Vancouver, Sochi and Pyeongchang, yet an Olympic gold in the 10,000 m, where he was several times world champion, always escaped him.

Germany's Claudia Pechstein was banned for two years in 2009 on the basis of what?

Irregular blood values: no banned substance was ever found in her tests, so the case rested on indirect evidence alone; she sat out two years, then came straight back to win world championship medals.

Short-track great Ahn Hyun-soo took a new first name, Viktor, and won three golds at the 2014 Olympics for which adopted country?

Russia: left off his native team for 2010 after a knee injury, he took Russian citizenship a year later and repaid it in Sochi with three golds and a bronze on home ice.

Which Chicago-born skater was the first man to defend the Olympic 1,000 m title, in Vancouver?

Shani Davis joined a speed skating club at six at his mother's prompting, and in 2006 became the first Black athlete to win an individual gold medal at a Winter Olympics.

Sweden's Nils van der Poel gave away what in protest after the 2022 Beijing Olympics?

One of his golds: he handed the medal to the daughter of Gui Minhai, a Swedish publisher jailed in China, to press for his release.

Which Italian won the 3,000 m on her 35th birthday at the 2026 Winter Olympics?

Francesca Lollobrigida, great-niece of the actress Gina, opened the speed skating in Milan with gold and an Olympic record, then won her second, longer race five days later by a tenth of a second.

In a speed skating team pursuit, the clock stops when which skater crosses the finish line?

Third: all three skaters must finish, so the clock stops on the last of them and a team is only ever as fast as its slowest member.

Short-track skaters race shoulder to shoulder, so the rules require gloves, shin guards, a neck guard and which other item?

A helmet: with several skaters leaning through tight bends together, falls into the padded boards are routine, and the gloves and neck guard are there to stop a rival's blade.

Which 21-year-old won two speed skating golds and a silver at the 2026 Winter Olympics, with Olympic records in both wins?

Jordan Stolz took up skating at five after watching the 2010 Olympics on television, on a pond behind the family home that his father lit so he could skate at all hours.

Bart Swings's speed skating win at the 2022 Olympics gave which country its first Winter Games gold since 1948?

Belgium: Swings had been runner-up in the same race in 2018, and his win ended a wait that went back to a pairs figure skating title in St. Moritz.

Which two high-altitude indoor rinks overtook Thialf as the 'fastest ice in the world' after 1988?

Calgary and Salt Lake City: thinner air at altitude means less drag on a skater, and when the Olympics came to the Utah oval in 2002 the Games record fell in every one of the ten events.