Short-track speedskating, according to Team Newfoundland and Labrador’s Ashley Higgins and Thomas Park, is much harder than it looks.
Team NL’s two-person speedskating team aim to gain experience, improve on personal bests
Short-track speedskating, according to Team Newfoundland and Labrador’s Ashley Higgins and Thomas Park, is much harder than it looks.
From a distance, and to the casual observer, the sport may look like skatings equivalent to NASCAR. Skaters take off from a start line and tear around a 111.2metre track for upwards to 27 times.
But on the ice, there’s a lot more going on.
“There’s a lot more to it than just skating. It’s more technical than it is just speed,” says Higgins, an 18-year-old from Corner Brook who’s been on the ice with the Humber Valley Speed Skating Club for four years.
“You have to do certain things at certain times, and focus on the corners mainly. It’s hard to keep yourself controlled in the corner sometimes, hard to find the balance.”
And while the speedskaters one might see on television dur- ing the Winter Olympics make it look effortless, Park says the sport is quite taxing physically.
“When you’re running normally, you can go a lot longer than you can in speed skating. It takes it all out of you so much quicker, it requires so much more of you,” says the 15-year-old Park, who is from Irishtown, outside of Corner Brook.
“You can run for an hour, but you can probably only speed skate for 5 minutes.”
Higgins and Park are Team NL’s only speedskating representatives at the Canada Winter Games in Prince George, B.C., this week, simply because they were the only members of the Humber Valley club old enough to attend.
“We’ve got a lot of young skaters in our group,” says coach Melissa O’Brien, noting just one skater, Corner Brook’s Bronwyn Woolfrey, competed at the 2011 Games in Halifax, finishing 46th.
“In 2019, you’ll see a different team all together. We’ll have a relay team, five male, five female, and maybe we’ll have long track as well.”
Like Woolfrey before them, Higgins and Park are not expected to find a spot on the podium at these Games, but there’s an expectation that both will improve on their personal best times across the 500-, 1,000-, 1,500-, and 3,000-metre events.
“I just want to have fun, beat my own personal best times and get as many pins as I can,” says Park, already sporting a fine collection two days into the Games.
While Higgins will be aged out for the 2019 Winter Games in Red Deer, Alta., Park will be eligible to return. O’Brien says the experience he’ll gain this week and over the next four years will make a huge difference when he returns.
“This will give me the best idea how it’s going to feel next time and give me more confidence for the future,” says Park, who hopes Team NL will send a full contingent in 2019.
“Hopefully, (the others) will be up to par and able to come.”