(Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
Howdy friends. I’m about to hop on a plane so I don’t have time to do a thorough re-cap of today’s skating but - wow. It was an amazing day for the US Speedskating team at the 6th ISU Speedskating World Cup in Heerenveen, Netherlands. Heather Richardson won her first ever world cup gold. (Correction: Heather won two gold medals last season at the world cup in Obihiro, Japan. Sorry Heather!) She bested second place, Dutch skater Ireen Wust, by a huge six tenths of a second in the 1000m and, in so doing, moved herself into 3rd in the 1000m overall rankings, with one world cup to go. In the same race, Brittany Bowe had her best ever world cup showing, finishing 5th – just .32 seconds from the podium. Bowe’s finish moved her into 9th in the 1000m overall.
In the men’s 1000m, Shani Davis continued his second-half-of-the-season assault winning the 1000m and bringing him 40 points from the lead in the 1000m world cup overall standings. Davis also won the 1500m on Friday.
The mass-start races were awesome – just fantastic to watch. In the women’s race, Maria Lamb had a strong race to finish 5th. In the men’s race Jonathan Kuck skated a masterful race hanging out in 4th for most of the 25-lap-race before making a huge push with about 300m to go to pass three dutch skaters and take the win. It was unbelievably exciting and as I sat here watching the livestream, I actually found myself yelling at the computer screen: ‘Go, go, go!!!’
I’m usually quite reserved.
Full Results of Day 3, ISU World Cup 6.
Ok, off to visit Mama Cheek for her birthday and then to Charlotte, NC to take in the Pentathlon world cup. I’ll try and get the very beautiful Margaux Isaksen on camera to explain some of the more confusing intricacies of the sport. Don’t forget – the US Olympic Weightlifting trials for women start at 4pm EST today. We’ll put up a link to the livestream in a little bit.
