Anni Friesinger-Postma is ending her speed skating carreer- photo from Erik Pasman (www.schaatsfotosonline.nl)
Triple Olympic speedskating gold medalist Anni Friesinger-Postma is ending her career after undergoing an operation on her right knee.
The 33-year-old German says on her website that she had hoped to participate in the 2011 world championships in Inzell. But she added: “I have to recognize now that my knee doesn’t allow me to continue in high-performance sports.”
Working for cheap on short notice wasn’t enough to convince the U.S. Speedskating board of directors he was their man, so Brad Olch opted to step down.
“Let’s just say the board decided to go in a different direction,” Olch said. “I thought things were going along pretty well. I thought everybody was happy.”
Upon discovering he wouldn’t be one of the final two candidates for the organization’s executive director opening, Olch relinquished his role as interim CEO two weeks before Monday’s hiring of Olympian Mark Greenwald.
I am based in the city of Haining, site of the 2009 World Championships. The large Aolin skate team is based here, and 15 of its out-of-town members live with four coaches on the fourth floor of the No. 3 Aolin Apartments. They have two cooks who show up daily to prepare their meals.
This had me revising my comments until the moment I was called up to the podium. Once there, I commended my hosts on the innovation and resolve of the Chinese skating program. But I also suggested some changes, such as ending their practice of having 12-year-olds lifting twice their body weight in full squats. This kind of training might produce some good junior skaters, but in the long run, it could prove unsafe. Any coach who tried this in the West would be lucky not to face child abuse charges.
China has a tremendous potential in inline skating. It has thousands of talented skaters and great facilities. And nowhere else in the world will you find young skaters working this hard.
But China’s inline program needs to divorce itself from the training methods it picked up from ice. Once it does, it will join the ranks of inline super powers.
Here’s some of the latest short track speed skating material to surface online.
Skaters whose career is ice will spend the summer training for World Cup races, then competing in them this fall, winter, and spring, if they are good enough to qualify. Ice skaters (and most other Olympians, in any sport, I expect) don’t just wait for every fourth year to compete; they do it full-time, almost year around. They do it to get the experience of competing against others who will be Olympians, so they’ll know their competition well at the Olympics. They do it to keep their body tuned and their skills sharp; if they get flabby and stale, it’s virtually impossible to catch up to someone who has always stayed the best they can be and is training to get better. (Not that, if they skated inline they’d become flabby in the sense of being couch potatoes, but relatively to someone who’d been skating ice constantly.)
Charles Hamelin leads with Apolo Ohno on the inside- Photo shared here
Despite living as an undocumented immigrant in America from South Korea for most of his childhood, Cho still pursued his dream of speed skating, winning a bronze medal at the Vancouver Olympic Games as the youngest member of his team at 18 years old.
This weekend brought plenty of racing & news, including news that Venezuela backed out as the host nation for the 2010 World Roller Speed Skating Championships. It looks like FIRS and the CIC have a problem on their hands right now. The word on the net is there are a few nations willing to solve this katzenjammer and step in a host.
Here’s ton of news coming from the world of roller & inline speed skating;
NEWS
Now at such short notice where are they going to be, Forget the big extravaganza, we just need the best racing possible, two serious contendors are Chile & Geisengen Germany, at least they are showing an interest for our sport to survive.
Whoever they will have to move quick, do not be suprized if Taiwan also put there hand up.
Caveman “I hate Florida” Swann took 1st in the marathon with a tidy 1:13, some out of town characters took the next few spots and Old Man Peterson took 5th with 1:14. Phil Moen stroked his way into 8th, a phenomenal finish for someone who looks like he does, and John “I skate every race” Schulte placed 10th at 1:16.
Now that we don’t do racing for races at residency like we once did I think it still has a negative impact. Everyone is racing in drills now trying to figure out if they do better in this drill or that drill if it will earn them a race. The idea of a race at worlds occupies the mind throughout residency rather then the prospect of training our ass’ off. That’s another thing, when Sebastian, Jonathon, and Josh came to residency they thought about training not about winning races and that’s what made them successful.
There’s home-ice advantage, and then there’s having your home just metres from the ice. A year and a half ago, Clara Hughes, one of Canada’s most decorated Olympians, rented an apartment with her husband a short walk from the Richmond speed skating oval. The move let her train on the very ice she would race on during the Olympics, while providing her with all the creature comforts of home—her own bed, her own kitchen, and more importantly, her own espresso machine. It worked. In the final race of her long and shining career, a beaming Hughes took home the bronze in the 5,000-m race.
Here are some recent long track speed skating links to stories, news, results, & more;
RESULTS & REPORTS
Canada’s men on their way to a 2nd place finish in the team pursuit at the season’s final World Cup competition in Heerenveen- photo from Passion For Skating
It’s hard to find the motivation after a long ice season and the Olympics. Everyone looked tired and ready to hang up their skates for the season. However, Shane managed to skate an average race, he said “it wasn’t great but it wasn’t so bad either, especially at this time of the year”. Shane ended up just missing out a top ten finish and finished in 11th place 0.7 seconds behind 10th and just outside the “bubble”.
The problems of speed skating in the United States of America extend far beyond those presented in this article. The key problem begins with a board that fails to take personal responsibility for the financial viability of the sport. You cannot expect American athletes to be competitive when they must work to support themselves while the athletes from other countries are fully subsidized. There are considerably more problems which the board is failing to address; and each time that someone points out a problem they react with anger and denial in stead of addressing the perceived problem.
In her book, “Winter of Discontent,” Eva Rodansky discusses her speed skating career and the various problems that she confonted as an athlete athlete. When she complained concerning conditions, policies, and actions of US Speedskating and its board, she was reviled and was treated as a pariah. Rather than investigate and correct inequities and other problems, they took the action of castigating her and making her life miserable.
Sport Navigator.NL is excited to announce that from this date Jeremy Wotherspoon will be joining their effort to broaden development in the sport of speed skating. Wotherspoon, who today announced his retirement from competition, will take on the role of head sprint coach at the “International Speed Skating Academy” in Inzell (Germany). Programs will officially commence in the spring of 2011.
This season a lot of skater retired
Netherlands
Renate Groenewold, Gretha Smit, Carl Verheijen
Canada: Jeremy Wotherspoon, Michael Ireland
PICTURES & VIDEOS
Press conference featuring Claudia Pechstein- photo from DESGphoto
Pour ma part, même si beaucoup de pression sont tombés depuis les jeux, je n’aurais pas voulu terminé la saison tout de suite après. Je suis contente d’aller faire une autre compétition. Nous sommes retournés sur la glace dès notre retour à Montréal et ce, pas à moitié ! Nous avons travaillés fort, puisque pendant les jeux, les entraînements étaient seulement que du maintiens de la forme. Mais ça fait du bien !Même si on aurait tendance a pensé le contraire après ce qui s’est passé au jeux, j’ai hâte de faire des courses, j’adore mon sport ! Ce qui s’est passé est derrière moi et je regarde vers l’avant !
As we inch closer and closer to the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics, there is tons of long track speed skating news, Olympic and non-Olympic, to keep track of.
Speedskating is one of the few places where Southerners can thrive in the Olympics (pushing a bobsled is another). That’s because the skills used in roller or inline skating – which don’t require cold weather to pursue – translate well to ice.
Cholewinski raced for many years on inline skates against Heather Richardson, who is from High Point and has qualified for three events in these same Olympics. Former Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek came from Greensboro and sports a similar inline background.
Netherlands skaters training in preparation for the Winter Olympics- photo from SchaatsENZO
BLOGS
The penthouse suite in our building, which will be sold for around 12 million dollars (give or take a few million haha), is Team Canada`s athlete lounge. No coaches and no support staff – just Canadian athletes. Up there we`ve got a few places to and out and relax, watch the Olympic coverage on the TVs, play some foosball or ping pong, surf the net, and snack when we`re hungry. From the time I’ve already spent up there, it’s going to be an awesome place to hang out and visit with the rest of the team throughout the Olympics.
Right now, my Olympic races are just that. The Target is not the medal, but the performance. To have trained so many hours, and so hard, for so long, I believe that to step up to the line of that Olympic race and feel nervous is an insult to myself. Nervous to me means that I think something is out of my control. So if you see me in person, or on tv, in an interview, training, or warming up for my Olympic race, simply wish me luck and notice how there is no nervousness, but rather a sense of calm anxiousness.
As the weekend inches closer and closer, I’d like to share lots of links to long track speed skating pictures, reports, results, and more.
Before you set off your journey into the links below, have a look at this great video; Open NK Weissensee (kort).
France’s Pascal Briand recently found out he’ll be able to skate at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver;
and yesterday i finally learn i will be in vancoucer…it is such a great news for me , i m so thankfull to everybody that helped me so far…i will make message for all soon but now i m still under the CHOCK news…i enjoy it full…i enjoy every second of my training full…
5 years i m training for this…going is a dream and a step…now all my focus will go on doing my best there…that is why now i m training so hard on inline and short track…using the training tools that make me as strong as possible
Canada’s newest indoor long track speed skating oval, located in Fort St. John BC, home to National Team members Denny and Jay Morrison, will begin the new year by hosting its first ever BC Speed Skating Association (BCSSA) sanctioned event.
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