Illinoistocht

What amazing fans.  The NBC television network in the USA did a video feature on the Dutch and speed skating, talking not only about elite level competitions, but also about the Elfstedentocht and Flevonice.  But no mention of Kleintje Pils, whom you are hearing oompah-pahing in the background at the Richmond Oval during the Olympics. 

I would have toasted with the old beer ad slogan, "This Bud's for you", but since there was that trademark dispute between Budweiser and Budvar in the Czech Republic, I changed the slogan / toast.   And more important, Martina Sablikova grew  up training on a frozen pond according to press reports, and the Czech national championships were on natural ice.  Check out this video, (or wait through some dialogue and watch this other video I found).   Big congrats to Sablikova on a good Olympics so far...gold in the 3000m and bronze in the 1500m, with the 5000m yet to come.  Gotta love a skater that has spent so much time on natural ice, or as the Dutch say, natuurijs. 

Like everyone else, I was surprised by the Netherland's Mark Tuitert's gold in the 1500m, with Shani Davis getting a silver and Chad Hedrick finishing in 6th.   Shani Davis won all 4 world cup 1000m events this season and 4 of 5 1500m events--the only time he didn't win the 1500m was to Hedrick, and Shani set a new world record in the last world cup 1500m.  (Hedrick's bronze in the 1000m qualifies as a surprise as he was ranked 7th in the world cup results).  Shani also skated 0.07 faster than his winning 1500m time at the March 2009 single distance championships held at the Richmond Olympic Oval.  For this season so far, Tuitert was 5th in world cup points at the 1500m, but he didn't skate in the last event.  His training may have peaked at the right time, and he was able to skate with abandon yet skate what was for him his own perfect race.

Good luck to all the skaters in the Olympic competitions.  Both short track and long track speed skating have competitions today.  For the USA skaters, the men have a good chance for multiple medals in the 1500m, with Shani Davis favored to win gold.  In short track, Apolo Ohno and Katherine Reutter skate in their 1000m and 1500m individual events, respectively. 

I mentioned other outlets for information on skating and Olympics news in my last post--for basic information on your local speed skating scene, check out the Clubs & Programs tab on US Speedskating's website.  Other than the world class inline skaters that switched over to ice as adults, most speed skaters begin as young kids and compete in various age classes (the Tiny Tot age class cutoff is younger than 5 years old, as I recall, while other kids start out a little older).   Its a great activity if your kid wants to get involved.   There are also adult recreational classes with Masters age competitions.  

The 2010 Winter Olympics are upon us!  Some tidbits to ponder while Jeffrey Immelt and Jeff Zucker of GE / NBC jealously look at their peers in Korea and Japan, where the upcoming duel in ladies figure skating between Kim Yu-Na of South Korea and Mao Asada of Japan will likely produce a television ratings boffo for their networks (see '88 Katarina Witt vs. Debi Thomas, or '94 Kerrigan, Harding, and Baiul) while Zucker continues to be the butt of jokes about the Leno-Conan programming fiasco.  But on to the rest of the Games, which promise plenty of drama and excitement. 

A huge congratulations to Apolo Ohno on tieing Bonnie Blair for the most medals by a USA athlete at the Winter Games, and even more so to JR Celski for his bronze in 1500m short track.  Just last fall, JR had a horrific accident in one of the last races at the Olympic trials, where his blade caused a deep gash in his thigh.  I'm so happy he overcame the mental challenge--he's young and he's going to be around as a skater for a long time and there's plenty of time to recover physically for his future skating career, but the challenge of overcoming The Fear after a terrible crash is definitely a problem in any sport with risk.  Okay, I know they would have placed fourth and fifth but for the three Koreans colliding in the last turn allowing Ohno and Celski to "pull a Bradbury".  But like the Australian, Celski had to mentally battle back from a horrific injury to just get to where he was in the race.

Nice to see Katherine Reutter on the first time Olympic athletes television program that aired just before the opening ceremonies in some cities.  I contributed to her sponsorship by buying her Rootin' for Reutter sweatshirt--see her website (note that I'm pretty sure they won't be shipping until after the Olympics are over as Mom and Dad Reutter have journeyed to the games.)

I loved the feature NBC did with Mary Carillo talking about Dutch speed skating fans in the Netherlands, the Elfstedentocht, and Flevonice.    I'll try to post a link if NBC or Universal Sports puts the video on their respective websites. 

A few plugs: I'm enjoying the "Sports Center"-like coverage on Universal Sports in the morning at the Olympics.  Also, the "Zen" blog on speed skating continues to have terrific, original content on speed skating and is definitely worth following, and even offering up a "virtual tip" to buy the host a cup of coffee. 

Lastly, beyond the Games, its winter everywhere.  There were some skating tours this weekend in the Netherlands.  The northeast of the US (Vermont - NH - NY) area is enjoying some great natural ice skating conditions.  And one hopes that the snowed-in people in the mid-Atlantic region are creating their own bobseld runs out of the deep snowbanks.  I have memories of "The Course" from such a record snowfall from my childhood, where we rode plastic-sheet toboggans skeleton-style down a banked course we iced over--our neighborhood backyard skeleton / bobsled course.  We all still talk about it, so if you are a parent in the mid-Atlantic tell your kids to unplug the Wii or the PS-whatever and build their own Course.    

The 2010 Winter Olympic games Opening Ceremony is now less than two weeks from now, so its time for a bunch of newsbits and miscellaneous.

I like the video from the Verizon ad with the outdoor skating oval, which looks to have been filmed on natural ice cleared of snow.  Surfing YouTube turns up several cool videos on US Speedskating's video channel. 

Found a link on CNN's website of the top 15 USA Winter Olympic moments; and I noticed that 5 of the 15 were from speed skating: Charles Jewtraw (1924), Jack Shea (1932), Dan Jansen (1994), Bonnie Blair (1994), and Eric Heiden (1980).  Pretty impressive list, and after 2010, there could likely be a Shani Davis "moment" on this list (if not the 2006 gold medal), and maybe an Apolo Ohno moment as well--although I might put Ohno's gold medal in the 500m at the 2006 games to represent his career.  But perhaps the best moments are not about gold medal counts for a country, but as the filmmaker Bud Greenspan might say, instead "stories that resonate", and speak to a universal experience--or note the Visa "Go World" television ads, or better yet, listen to the joyous exclamation by the Norwegian television broadcasters in this clip from Dan Jansen's 1994 race in Lillehammer. 

Show your support for Team USA's speed skating team in a number of ways...donate through Colbert Nation or US Speedskating.   Or to individual athletes such as short track World Cup medalist Katherine Reutter, who is raising funds for her family to attend the games by selling a nifty sweatshirt.

Finally, today was the Alternative Elfstedentocht, held on an alpine lake near Innsbruck, Austria.  Jorritt Bergsma won the 200km men's race in 5 hours 27 minutes and 7 seconds.  Interestingly, Jorritt, a Dutchman who has a Kazakh passport, passed up an opportunity to skate in the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver to skate in the Alternative Elfstedentocht.  On a personal note, I'd thought of entering into one of the Weissensee skate week events this year as I left off cycling season with a high level of fitness and my training transitioned into skating pretty well in October, but other aspects of my life intruded too much into my training and my end result would have been a "just finish it" effort, which I've done in previous marathon skates--I had hoped to truly "race" this time, not among the leaders but to race at a much faster pace than I've done before. 

As editor of this blog, note that I live in California so it is impossible for me to assess ice conditions unless I'm travelling, which is very infrequent to rare.  The window for a skate on the I&M or the Hennepin Canal is very short if at all in a given winter, so chances are I'll probably miss it unless I'm very lucky.  There are several Yahoo Groups where natural ice skaters can seek each other out: a very active one for the NH - VT area, and another one for the Montana reservoirs.  Besides ice conditions, these Yahoo groups facilitate connecting people to enable a buddy system, a key facet of ice safety. 

So if you're a skater, check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midwest_ice/     

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games Opening Ceremony is four weeks from now so its time to talk about the US speed skaters headed to Vancouver. 

The men's long-track team is led by Shani Davis, holder of the current world records at 1000 meters and 1500 meters--he'll be skating in all five distances at the Olympics.  In the World Cup meets this season, Shani has dominated and won the 1000 all four times it was competed and four of five times at the 1500, finishing second on one occasion to Chad Hedrick, who returns to the Olympics to skate in three distances.  (Shani subsequently went out and broke his own world record in the final 1500 held in December.)  Otherwise, the Olympic team is pretty much the same as this season's World Cup team, except that Mitchell Whitmore will skate the fourth 500 meter spot, replacing Brent Aussprung and Matt Plummer from the World Cup team.  (Who skates what distances is a little different than the World Cup team, see US Speedskating's News section of its website for details.)  Brian Hansen will skate with fellow Illinois native Jonathan Kuck, along with Chad Hedrick and Trevor Marsicano in the Team Pursuit event. 

The best possibilities for a gold medal for a skater from Team USA are in the middle distance events.  Shani Davis has dominated this season, and barring a surprise should win gold in the 1000 and 1500m events.  Chad Hedrick and Trevor Marsicano both had World Cup victories in calendar year 2009, so there is an outside possiblity of a US sweep, perhaps in the 1500m.  The 500m event could be won by any one of 8 - 10 skaters from many different countries--for the US, Tucker Fredricks is the best bet, being in fourth place in World Cup points this season.    At the 5000 and 10,000 meters, look for Dutch skater Sven Kramer to be the gold medalist with the US skaters an outside shot for a podium finish.   

The women's long-track team is pretty much the same as the World Cup team.  Jennifer "Miami Ice" Rodriguez, a two-time medalist from the 2002 Games, returns for another Olympics and is joined by eight other skaters from the World Cup team.   The US women's team has several skaters with an outside shot for a podium finish but the medals will probably be won by skaters from other nations.  Some of the highlights: look for Germany's Jenny Wolf to duel with China's Beixing Wang in the 500m, while at the long-distance events, Czech Republic's swan-like Martina Sablikova will attempt to outlast Germany's Stephanie Beckert.

The short track team features Apolo Ohno for the men attempting to be the most decorated US Winter Olympic athlete of all-time--he's been skating well and won three medals during the World Cup circuit this past fall.  For the women, Katherine Reutter has a good chance at a few medals, having won two races (a 1000m in Beijing and a 1500m in Montreal) during the World Cup season with four overall medals won during the four meet series.  JR Celski continues to heal after his crash (see the video below).  Here's a breakdown of the short track skaters from the USA.

Since this blog is Illinoistocht, I should mention all the Illinois natives on the team: Shani Davis (Chicago), Brian Hansen (Glenview), Jonathan Kuck (Champaign), and Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr. (Wheaton) will compete in long-track speed skating while Lana Gehring (Glenview) and Katherine Reutter (Champaign) will compete in Short Track.   Nice article on Brian Hansen and Lana Gehring here. 

See the preview from US Speedskating's YouTube video channel (below) or at Universal Sports.   

Follow-up to last post.  Dutchnews.nl reports that:
"this [past] weekend's snow has finally put paid to hopes of staging the 200 km Elfstedentocht outdoor skating race around the 11 cities of Friesland, the organisers said on Monday.

'The ice is far from Elfstentocht-worthy,' spokeswoman Immie Jonkman told news agency ANP. 'The ice first has to thaw and then freeze again.' Snow not only spoils the surface of the ice but acts as an insulating layer to stop it thickening.

At least 15 cm of ice is needed for the race, which attracts thousands of skaters, to go ahead. It last took place in 1997."

But here's some cool photos of the 100km marathon race held at a lake:
2010 Dutch Skating Marathon on Universal Sports.com

I'll try to get a report on the Illinois canals.  Lake Ellyn in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, IL has a track cleared of snow and is open for skating.

Temperatures have been very cold in the midwest leading to possible conditions for a tour skate on the Hennepin Canal, but the snow cover puts a tour beyond reach for the moment.  If you have an ice report, be sure to send it.   

Simultaneous with the cold in the USA, there have been fairly cold temperatures (albeit with some snow) in Europe.  It looks like the Dutch will skate outdoors this weekend.   Check out these links... http://www.knsb.nl/natuurijs/ and the "skate maps" at http://www.schaatskaart.nl/ .  Interesting to note that the 12 skating "classics" haven't been held since either 1996 or 1997, so this is something to watch.  http://www.natuurijsklassiekers.nl/

It's already 2010 in some parts of the world, and will be shortly in the Americas.  In addition to the usual festivities and football games, for the third year in a row, the NHL will play an outdoor hockey game.  This year's NHL Winter Classic 2010 will feature the Boston Bruins playing the Philadelphia Flyers at historic Fenway Park.  There could be snow, which would be like the Penguins - Sabres game in Buffalo a couple of years ago.  Despite what can be dicey ice conditions, the game is a lot of fun to watch.  By contrast, the football bowl games, mostly bereft of the top teams that play later in BCS matchups, are less interesting--only the classic Pac-10 vs. Big-10 matchup in the Rose Bowl featuring #7 Oregon vs. #8 Ohio State seems compelling to me.  I'm tired of hearing the broadcasters go on and on about Tim Tebow and Florida so I'm skipping the Cincinnati / Florida Sugar Bowl.   

I'm hoping that someday the NHL will feature an outdoor game in Ottawa, maybe between the Washington Capitals and the Ottawa Senators.  Instead of a New Year's Day matchup, why not in February during Winterlude at Ottawa's Frank Clair Stadium in Lansdowne Park, right next to the Rideau Canal.  Add to the festive atmosphere by setting up big screen televisions for people to watch the game from the canal making for a great celebration of hockey and winter activities.  The stadium needs some work--an outdoor NHL game might be the catalyst for Ottawa to make some needed improvements to the facility.