Speedskaters seeking revenge, redemption
One by one, race by race, U.S. speedskaters shuffled through the basement of the Adler Arena at the 2014 Sochi Olympics with ashen faces and met reporters’ questions with blank stares or quivering lips.
An epidemic of sub-par performances spread through the team like a virus and in the end, the Americans left Russia with no medals — the first time the U.S. long-track team had been shut
out at the Olympics in 30 years.
Over the ensuing weeks and months, U.S. Speedskating analyzed every facet of the team’s training, equipment and preparation, determined to do everything in its power to see that what happened in Sochi never happened again.
There is no guarantee the long-track team will win a bunch of medals — or any, for that matter — when speedskating gets underway Saturday at the Pyeongchang Olympics. The team is not as strong as it was in 2002, 2006 and 2010 when it won a combined 31 medals.
But there is a quiet confidence among the Americans that they will skate much better this time around.
“We have a lot to prove,” said Brittany Bowe, who has won two world sprint titles since Sochi. “We’re out for redemption.”
Four years ago, as the disappointing results and frustration mounted, fingers of blame pointed everywhere.
Some of the skaters thought a new skin suit, developed by Under Armour with help from Lockheed Martin and unveiled at the Games, was slowing them down, despite hundreds of hours of wind tunnel testing to the contrary.
Others thought it was a bad idea to hold a pre-Olympics training camp at altitude on an outdoor rink in Collalbo, Italy, given that the Games were held in an indoor oval at sea level. Even the way the team’s skates were sharpened was brought into question.
The Sochi collapse was unexpected because the Americans had paraded to the podium during the fall World Cup season, and many speedskating experts were predicting the team would win as many as 10 Olympic medals.
“It’s easy to cast stones,” said Joey Cheek, who won gold in the 500 meters in 2006 and will work as a television analyst for NBC in Pyeongchang. “When we won a bunch of medals in recent Olympics and now we’ve won none, the story is, ‘Who screwed up?’ It wasn’t idiots making idiot decisions. That was my only frustration with some of the coverage and how much people piled on.”
In hindsight, the expectations were unrealistic. The Netherlands had a much stronger team, but the Dutch don’t care about World Cup results in an Olympic year and so the Americans had an inflated sense of how good they really were.
As the Dutch continued to pile up medals in Sochi (they would win a staggering 23) and take delight in the failing of the U.S. team, which they considered arrogant, the Americans lost confidence and became demoralized.
“Energy is contagious, right?” Bowe said. “So when one person doesn’t meet expectations it’s like, ‘Oh, dang.’ And then when the second person doesn’t, it’s like, ‘Man.’ And then the third person … it’s kind of a snowball effect.”
So what has changed? Just about everything, starting with Canadian Guy Thibault replacing Finn Halvorsen as the team’s high-performance director.
“We had weeks of meetings and trying to analyze every number. Anything that could have gone wrong, any possibility that should have been better, could have improved, I think we acted on it.” Guy Thibault Team director
“We had weeks of meetings and trying to analyze every number,” Thibault said. “Anything that could have gone wrong, any possibility that should have been better, could have improved, I think we acted on it.”
U.S. Speedskating determined the team’s poor performance in Sochi was not related to the Under Armour suit. Still, the skaters have been testing the newest iteration of the suit for months. There will be no surprises in Pyeongchang.
Instead of holding its Olympic trials at altitude in Salt Lake City and its final training camp on an outdoor oval in the mountains of Italy, U.S. Speedskating held the Olympic trials and a final two-week camp at the Pettit National Ice Center.
Training sessions were held in the late afternoon and evening, because that’s when the competitions will be held in South Korea.
The organization asked Paul Golomski, the icemaker at the Pettit, to closely simulate the conditions that the skaters will encounter at the Gangneung Oval.
“The Pettit Center has been awesome working with us and trying to set up conditions that are going to be similar to South Korea,” said U.S. sprint coach Matt Kooreman. “The ice temperature, the humidity, the air in the arena are all being matched up to what we expect in South Korea based on the data we collected there (during the World Single-Distance Championships) last year.”
Golomski explained that the air is 3% to 5% more dense at sea level than it is at altitude. Skaters have to get used to pushing through “thicker” air on slower ice, which requires subtle changes in technique.
“I think at this Olympics, whatever the outcome might be, at the end of the day there can’t be any blame placed on U.S. Speedskating, that they didn’t prepare their athletes well,” Golomski said. “This comes down to the athletes now, and really, that’s how it should be.”
Joey Mantia, one of the U.S. team’s top medal contenders, agreed.
“I think we’re very motivated,” he said. “This is a chance for redemption for us. Obviously, Sochi was a disaster. I think we have fixed every problem we had in Sochi and now at this point it’s up to us.”