World Cup #6 500m Races
Short Track Speed Skating's Last 500 Results and Standings
Speed Skaters from around the globe competed in the last of the World Cup racing series. The season ended with familiar faces atop the podium.
Ladies 500m
In the qualifying rounds, the top two fastest skaters in each group advanced to the quarterfinals alongside the next four fastest skaters out of all the contenders. USA’s Carly Wilson skated into the quarterfinals. Tina Koenig had to prove her mettle in the repechage before advancing.
All 8 groups in the ladies 500m (2) quarterfinals began their races slowly, reminding spectators that short track speed skating often involves more strategy than speed. It’s a good thing skaters race against each other and not the clock. Top finishers skated an average of one to three seconds slower than they did in the semi’s and finals.
Racing officials could call for a re-race if the pace is too slow, but it never came to that at this meet. Slow starting laps were merely annoying to spectators, but the ladies sped up with each lap. The ladies had some incentive to finish their races with decent times. T
he top two finishers in each group advanced automatically, but so did the next five fastest athletes out of all the contenders. The following ladies were disqualified in the preliminary quarterfinals: USA’s Lana Gehring, Germany’s Christin Priebst, and Bulgaria’s Marina Georgieva-Nikolova.
Nannan Zhao (China), Quihong Liu (China), Tian Yu Fu (China) and Evgenia Radanova (Bulgaria) took one-two spots in the 500m (2) semi-finals. When they got to the A Finals, Bulgarian Evgenia Radanova skated .1 second faster than China’s Tian Yu Fu, the ladies posting times of 43.769 and 43.838 respectively. Quihong Liu, the champion from China, came in third with a time of 44.191.
Men’s 500m
The men’s 500 had lots of actions. Jeff Simon qualified for the main event in the repechage finals but ended up injured after trying to pass on the last turn. In the semifinals, Si-Bak Sung and Yoon-Gy Kwak, both Korean skaters, won their heats. They were joined in the A finals by Jialiang Han (China) and Francois Hamelin (Canada.)
The B Final top two competitors were Americans Simon Cho and J.P. Kepka. They raced against Yuzo Takamido of Japan and Wim De Deyne of Belgium.
The B Finals concluded with De Deyne on top, followed by Takamido, Cho, and Kepka, respectively. Interestingly, the guys finished in exact reverse or der of their starting positions, the Americans skating 4 and 6 seconds behind the others.
The A finals were extremely close, with first and fourth place finishers separated by less than half a second. The Koreans dominated; Sung took the gold and Kwak brought home the silver medal. Hamelin earned the bronze, and Han finished in fourth place.
World Cup Standings
World Cup Classification finalized for the event. Si-Bak Sung ranked first overall and took home the check. For the women, Meng Wang ended the season nearly 2000 points ahead of her competitors. She also took home a check for her first place overall standing.
