awenborn wrote:
I'll fully admit that I'm an uneducated armchair critic, but I've just been watching some of the short-track speed skating semi-finals and am I the only one that thinks it's a bit of a joke?! It's like the BMX of the Winter Olympics; a good starting sprint is obviously very important, as is line and positioning through the corners and ultimately it's decided by good and consistent surges of speed out of each corner. That's all very well and good in terms of the athleticism, but the reality is that, like BMX, every race seems to be decided by crashes and ill-discipline between the racers with often the best-athletes hitting the deck before the race is over.
It seems like if you're outside the top 3 coming into the last few laps the usual modus operandi of the skaters is to sling a stupid move up the inside of the next bend and take everyone else out because you have nothing to lose. Otherwise, if someone makes a legitimate move on you and you're too gassed to respond, then just cut them off on the next bend, again because you know your race is done anyway.
To my uneducated viewpoint the whole sport could do with some more discipline and/or regulation such as individual athlete lanes, as per long-track skating, or at least leader/overtaking lanes as per track cycling? At the moment, there's not much pleasure in watching the best-athletes run off the ice and supposedly the pinnacle event of the sport being decided by the commissaires.
Go ahead, shoot me down!
I have only done long track and not short track for most of the reasons you mention, however, all the items you mention is part of the sport. Everyone knows it going in....so you're either a small agile lightweight and you roll the dice in short track or a big guy with long levers and a lot of weight (power/Cda) and you do long track. There is no place for small guys in long track and big guys in short track, just like there is no place for big guys in ski jumping and tiny lightweights in downhill or super G!!!
I really don't know how you change short track either than 2 person racing with 2 lanes with crossover points, which arguably is a possibility, since they do it in long track, ,or you do like cycling and have a single lane and make the skating loop larger and have a 2 man pursuit format. I don't think what you are saying is impossible. Might be nice to see a few events that are 2 man head to head. In XC skiing there are the sprint events which after the prelim rounds are head to head, and there can often be a lot of body/ski/pole contact and often the strongest skier does not win, and that's OK, as tactics should be part of racing, just like in bike racing.
At 5'6" 138 lbs I have the perfect body type and muscle composition for short track (way too much fast twitch for an Ironman guy) and exactly wrong mental profile for short track.
Last edited by:
devashish_paul: Feb 10, 18 11:51