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December 16, 2006
U.S. Junior Nationals this weekend
U.S. Juniors are taking place this weekend in Wausau, WI. This event will pick the skaters (3 men and 3 women) who will represent the USA at the World Junior Championships next month in the Czech Republic.
Marquette Mining Journal | USOEC skaters to fight for positions
Posted by noelle at 9:09 AM | Comments (18)
December 12, 2006
Video: Highlights from day 3 in Montreal
Lots of video starting to appear on YouTube from Peter Doucet as well as Speed-Skating.net... just keep scrolling down the page!
by Peter Doucet
Posted by noelle at 9:08 PM | Comments (45)
Video: Highlights from day 2 in Montreal
by Peter Doucet
Posted by noelle at 9:06 PM | Comments (3)
Video: Highlights from day 1 in Montreal
by Peter Doucet
Posted by noelle at 9:04 PM | Comments (0)
Video: Men's 500m A final in Montreal
by speed-skating.net
Posted by noelle at 9:03 PM | Comments (3)
Video: Ladies' 3000m B final in Montreal
by speed-skating.net
Posted by noelle at 9:01 PM | Comments (3)
December 11, 2006
Men's relay medal ceremony
click to enlarge
Also
- Short-track rookie Jean skating to World Cup medals
- Roberge and Jean win gold at short track World Cup speed skating
- New crop getting a chance to bloom
- Jean golden as Canada hits stride
- Home cooking works wonders for short-track
Posted by noelle at 1:06 AM | Comments (83)
Women's relay medal ceremony
click to enlarge
Posted by noelle at 1:01 AM | Comments (1)
500m medalists in Montreal
silver-Min-jung Kim, gold-Kalyna Roberge, bronze-Xiaolei Cheng
silver-Francois-Louis Tremblay, gold-Olivier Jean, bronze-Tyson Heung
Posted by noelle at 12:53 AM | Comments (8)
1500m #2 medalists in Montreal
I love this shot! The three Korean guys were having fun practicing flashing their new hand signal in the middle of their medal ceremony before doing it for real on the podium. I think Jordan and some other skaters convinced them to do the 'hook 'em horns' in place of the usual V sign the Asian skaters hold up for photos!
silver-Hyun-soo Ahn, gold-Kyung-taek Song,bronze-Hyun-kon Kim
silver-Eun-ju Jung, gold-Sun-yu Jin,bronze-Chun-sa Byun
Posted by noelle at 12:50 AM | Comments (8)
December 10, 2006
Kalyna Roberge is an unbelievable badass
Women's relay final
The women's relay final is maybe the craziest race I have ever seen... the wildest relay for sure. Korea and China were locked in a tight fight for 1st, far ahead of Canada and Italy, who were fighting for 3rd, when China fell and took out Korea with just a few laps to go... and Kalyna Roberge freaking JUMPED OVER the two skaters sprawled on the ice. She had nowhere else to go - it was either over them or into them.
And we're not talking a little hop either -- we're talking a full-on, ski-jumper-crouching-before-launching-off-from-the-side-of-the-mountain leap to clear the hurdle in front of her. I just stood up and started screaming my head off - everyone did! A lap or so later, Italy then fell with a Korean skater and Canada went on to win the gold... maybe not quite the way they would have preferred but to have stayed on their skates with carnage all around them was incredibly impressive. They showed it again on the video replay after the race and people just went insane seeing what Kalyna did.
1. Canada 4:21.593
2. China
3. Korea
4. Italy
I don't really know how there was no call in that race! I guess they decided Korea and China cancelled each other out.
Men's relay final
Man, this was just an exciting race, nothing very dramatic happened (thank goodness). As expected, the race for gold was between Korea and Canada and the two traded leads, but Canada always got the lead back on the strength of its exchanges. It looked like that would lead them to victory but it was one vbotched exchange that led to the loss, when the incoming skater had a bad slip. In the meantime, I didn't see it, but the USA (ahead of Germany for bronze) fell around this same point in the race and finished 4th. Congrats to Germany - not sure the last time they landed on the relay podium, but the performance gives Tyson Heung his 2nd career World Cup medal of the day!
1. Korea
2. Canada
3. Germany
4. USA
Posted by noelle at 5:14 PM | Comments (20)
World Cup #4 - Montreal day 3 - 1500m #2 and 500m finals
500m gold, gold and silver for Canada!
1500m Finals
Jordan skated great in the men's final, and has no reason for regrets with a 4th place, especially with all three Korean skaters in the race! I think this was probably his first direct experience of that all-too-common scenario. It's pretty awesome that he's skating consistently enough to make both A finals that were available to him this weekend.
Behind the blue train of Korea is never an easy place to be!
We had two American guys in the B final, Ryan Bedford and Travis Jayner. They also did a great job skating through their semi finals today. Travis finished 2nd and Ryan was 5th in the B final. Up-and-comer Maxime Chataignier of France, who has put in strong performances these past 2 weeks, won the race.
Travis and Ryan lead in the 1500m B final
The women's 1500m A final was remarkable with 3 Korean and 3 Chinese skaters. It looked certain to be Jin and Jung 1-2 with Wang getting bronze, but Byun somehow squeaked in at the last millisecond to push the tip of her blade over the line in front of Wang's to take bronze by 8 one-thousandths!
Men 1500m A final
1. Kyung-taek Song
2. Hyun-soo Ahn
3. Hyun-kon Kim
4. Jordan Malone
5. Marc-Andre Monette
6. Baoku Sui
Women 1500m A final
1. Jin 2:23.926
2. Jung 2:24.053
3. Byun 2:24.135
4. Wang 2:24.143
5. Zhou 2:24.207
6. Liu 2:26.850
The men's 500m final was an all-Canadian affair, with the 3 Canuck guys plus German skater Tyson Heung, who used to skate for Canada. For the first time in recent memory, Flou Tremblay started from position 3 after finishing 2nd to teammate Charles Hamelin in the semi final. Flou still managed to be first off the line to get the early lead. A lap later Hamelin passed him and looked like he was probably on the way to his 2nd gold medal in as many days when half a lap later he crashed. Flou was overtaking him again and it looked like they may have clicked skates.
Flou leads Olivier and Tyson after Charles's crash
Olivier Jean went on to take the lead from Flou and win the race - his first career World Cup gold. Tremblay won silver and Heung got bronze - his first career. World Cup medal.
Kalyna Roberge was outstanding to get gold in the women's final. She skated most of the race in 2nd and passed into first with a lap to go. Contact between her and the Chinese skater just after Kalyna's pass didn't result in any call and didn't look to be caused by Kalyna in any case. This very talented skater earns her second consecutive gold medal in front of her home crowd after her 1000m victory in Chicoutimi!
Men 500m A final
1. Jean 42.160
2. Tremblay 42.326
3. Heung 42.516
4. Hamelin 1:14.807
Women 500m A final
1. Roberge 44.713
2. Kim, Min-jung (KOR) 44.850
3. Cheng, Xiaolei (CHN) 45.191
4. Fu (CHN) DQ
Posted by noelle at 4:30 PM | Comments (8)
World Cup #4 - Montreal day 3 - 1500m #2 semi finals
Kimberly Derrick was the lone U.S. woman skating in the semis. She was last in her race. In the same race, Amanda Overland was 3rd. Anne Maltais and Ivanie Blondin both finished 4th in their respective semis.
1500m semi final - Kimberly Derrick
All 3 U.S. and Canadian guys skating in the 1500m semis today. Ryan Bedford had a great race and bettered his personal record in this distance by about 3 seconds, according to his dad. Not bad! Ryan finished 4th and Jeff Scholten was 5th in the race.
Ryan Bedford and Jeff Scholten skate in their 1500m semi
Travis Jayner skated in the second semifinal and unfortunately I think he got boxed in by the large field of 7 skaters. He was at the back of the pack for a number of laps and by the time he was able to begin moving up there was too much distance to cover to try to compete for a qualifying position in the A final. Travis was 4th in the race. Marc-Andre Monette finished 2nd to qualify for the A final.
Travis skates in his 1500m semi
Jordan Malone skated in the final semi with Hyun-soo Ahn, and the strength of both Jordan and Ahn strength was on display. Jordan skated to the front with 7 laps to go and never let go. Michael Gilday was a strong 2nd behind him for much of these laps, while Ahn lingered at the back. Jordan seemed to be picking up the pace with each successive lap and I really questioned if Ahn would be able to make up the distance to move into qualifying position in time, but he made his move in the final 2 laps and passed Jordan for the lead. Jordan was 2nd and will join Ahn in the A final.
1500m semi: Ahn has taken the lead at this point, but no one else is really even close otherwise
Posted by noelle at 3:26 PM | Comments (5)
World Cup #4 - Montreal day 3 - 500m quarter finals
Lots of drama so far today, but not really the good kind. Chinese skater Haonan Li was badly hurt in quarter final #3 this afternoon. He crashed into the boards and was unable to move completely out of the way of the oncoming skaters as they made their way around the track again. The refs had blown their whistles to halt the race, but the skaters couldn't hear them because the crowd was going crazy as Charles Hamelin had just surged to the lead in the race. The race was finally halted and at least 7 or 8 medics worked on Li for 15 minutes or so before he was taken off the ice on a stretcher. Best guess is he may have broken an ankle or another bone. Best wishes to him for a speedy recovery and hope he'll be ok.
On the re-skate, Hamelin won and may have set a new arena record in the 500m
Posted by noelle at 2:48 PM | Comments (6)
More photos from Montreal
The lovely Simon P has posted some fabulous photos from Montreal. See them here!
Posted by noelle at 11:49 AM | Comments (3)