Skating World Championships: Day 2 - Enjoyable but not exciting

The morning’s events were to start at 8 in the morning with the 500m heats. Everything was in place to begin on time, but Oostende’s weather had other ideas. Rains lashed down on the town, and all events were postponed to 7 that evening. The 500m races were rescheduled to the next day, and it was decided that only the 15 km elimination heats and finals would take place that day. Ultimately, it turned out that only the senior men had heats, with all the other age groups having direct finals.

This is when things started getting interesting. The finals. The first race to be held was the junior girls’ elimination. The pace was impossibly high throughout the race and as people kept falling by the wayside, it became increasingly clear that the Colombians would eventually end up the victors of the race. And so it was. After 73 laps, the Colombian girls began their sprint with that last reserve of energy that no one else had. The race ended with Colombia capturing another gold and silver medal.

Then came the junior boys. It was a fairly uneventful race up until the 72nd lap. With just 3 laps to go and 5 skaters left, Alfonso (Colombia) took off and within a few seconds had an impressive lead over the others. In the meanwhile, Boris Pena, the other Colombian in the race, held everyone else off by slowing down the pace and blocking them, effectively preventing them from following Alfonso. And so once again, Colombia won gold and silver. It was an extremely impressive race, not just for the quality of skating, but also because we were exposed to the cohesiveness of the Colombian team and the way they work together.

Senior women’s elimination was a bit of a shocker. The race went as it was supposed to with 2 Colombians, 1 Italian, 1 Venezuelan and 1 girl from China in the last 5. The sprint begins and unbelievably, a Colombian falls and the other is pushed to fourth place. The Italian, Francesca Lollobrigida won the gold, with Venezuela coming in second and China finishing third.

Thankfully, the last race of the day ran its course smoothly with the favourite, Peter Michael (New Zealand) redeeming himself by winning gold, after the disappointment of Day 1 when he failed to place in the Points event. The power that these skaters generate and the speeds at which they go is just astounding.

This second day has been enjoyable certainly, but not as exciting as the first day was. Hopefully, tomorrow, Day 3, should be more thrilling, with 3 crowd pulling events lined up, namely the 500m sprint, the 1000m race and the 3000m relay.