Translated material
Alpine ice
Skaters overseas continue to break world records
The Winter World Cup season is gaining momentum. Last weekend, the luge competition started; the second stage was held by speed skating masters. If a week earlier in the American Salt Lake City three world records and three highest Russian achievements were updated, then this time in Calgary, Canada and also at the Olympic skating rink, German Jenny Wolf showed the best result in history in the 500 (37.02 sec.) , the Dutchman Sven Kramer achieved a similar success at a distance of 5000 m (6 min. 03.32 sec.). Russian sprinter Dmitry Lobkov set a new country record in the five hundred - 34.35.Let us recall that the skating rink in the capital of the Mormon state of Utah, Salt Lake City, was built specifically for the 2002 Winter Games, and the ice oval in Calgary has undergone significant modernization since the 1988 White Olympics. It is on these indoor skating rinks, located in the highlands, that world records have been broken recently.
In athletics, in the 100-meter race, humanity, represented by the best athletes in the world, has already come close to the physical limit of its capabilities. But speed skating, as a more high-tech sport, involves a constant assault on unprecedented heights. There are too many factors to improve results - ice quality, new models of blades and tracksuits that improve aerodynamics, etc. And still, every new record in the classic sprint distance of 500 m is considered a serious event. Moreover, the authors of world achievements in Salt Lake City and Calgary have approached magical milestones. Just over a week ago, Canadian Jeremy Wotherspoon knocked off the Korean Lee Kang Seok's record by 0.22 seconds, showing a result of 34.03. That is, for men the goal now is to get out of 34 seconds, and for the fair sex - out of 37.
Jenny Wolf beat her own record time, dated March of this year and shown in Salt Lake City, by just a moment - 0.02 seconds. If you follow the dynamics of the women's record in the 500, this is the smallest delta over the past 32 years. In 1975, Soviet speed skater Lyubov Sadchikova at Medeo dropped 0.01 seconds from the achievement of her compatriot Tatyana Averina-Barabash. True, ten years ago, Canadian Catriona Lemay-Doan showed exactly the same record results for two days in Calgary - 37.90.
As for the achievements of Sven Kramer, the list of the world's best achievements at this distance has been kept for more than a hundred years, since 1890, and the first in this list is the Norwegian Oscar Fredriksen with a monstrous time by today's standards - 9 minutes. 19.8 sec. Our Boris Shilkov was the first to reach the eight-minute limit in the 1955 season, and 22 years later the legendary Norwegian Kai-Arne Stenskhemmet also conquered the seven-minute limit, doing it on Medeo.
In Calgary, Kramer achieved the almost impossible - he not only regained the 5000 m record that had belonged to him since November 2005, but also exceeded the achievement of the Italian Enrico Fabris a week ago by 4.08 seconds. Since 2000, when another skater from the Land of the Tulips, Gianni Romme, set a record in Calgary, world achievements have amazingly alternated between this skating rink and the Salt Lake City oval. Calgary reclaims the record for the third time.
Our Dmitry Lobkov has already covered the 500 mark in 34.35 seconds, but this happened last spring in Kolomna at an internal competition of a minor level, and therefore that result was not officially recorded as a national record. At the first stage of the World Cup in the USA, Lobkov ran the sprint in 34.37 (acceleration - 9.68), and now he has improved his Russian achievement by 0.02 seconds, winning the silver award. In the second race, the Russian finished fifth. Dmitry takes an honorable third place in the cup standings at this distance (230 points) after four starts and is second only to Lee Kang Seok (280) and Wotherspoon (400), who won all the races this season.
The Russian team received another award, bronze, in the women's team pursuit race (six laps of 400 m). Ekaterina Lobysheva, Ekaterina Abramova and Galina Likhacheva started in the same race with the German stage winners and were able to take the pace suggested by their rivals. Between the result of the German team and the Russians, the owners of the skating rink, the Canadians, were able to wedge themselves at the end of the competition.
According to the results of the first stage of the Luge World Cup, the Russians have nothing to boast about. In the men's single sleigh, Viktor Kneib finished 10th, silver medalist of the Turin Olympics Albert Demchenko - 20th. In doubles, Mikhail Kuzmich and Stanislav Mikheev completed the top ten. The victories were won by two-time Olympic champion Italian Armin Zoggeler and the Austrian tandem of Turin 2006 triumphs Andreas and Wolfgang Linger.