Long track skridskor
Long-track speed skating , usually simply referred to as speed skating , is the Olympic discipline of speed skating where competitors are timed while crossing a set distance. It is also a sport for leisure. Sports such as ice skating marathon , short-track speedskating , inline speedskating , and quad speed skating are also called speed skating. The roots of speed skating date back over a millennium to Scandinavia, Northern Europe and the Netherlands, where the natives added bones to their shoes and used them to travel on frozen rivers, canals and lakes.
In contrast to what people think, ice skating has always been an activity of joy and sports and not a matter of transport. For example, winters in the Netherlands have never been stable and cold enough to make ice skating a way of travelling or a mode of transport. This has already been described in by William Fitzstephen, who described a sport in London. However, skating and speed skating was not limited to the Netherlands and Scandinavia; in , a Scotsman designed a skate with an iron blade.
It was iron-bladed skates that led to the spread of skating and, in particular, speed skating.
Long Track Speed Skating
By , the first official skating club, The Skating Club Of Edinburgh, was born, and, in , the world saw its first official speed skating race, at Wisbech on the Fens in England for a prize sum of 70 guineas. While in the Netherlands, people began touring the waterways connecting the 11 cities of Friesland, a challenge which eventually led to the Elfstedentocht.
By , North Americans had discovered a love of the sport, and indeed the all-steel blade was later developed there. The Netherlands came back to the fore in with the organization of the first world championships. By the start of the 20th century, skating and speed skating had come into its own as a major popular sporting activity. The Elfstedentocht Eleven Cities Tour was organised as a competition in and has been held at irregular intervals whenever the ice on the course is deemed good enough.
Other outdoor races developed later, with North Holland hosting a race in , but the Dutch natural ice conditions have rarely been conducive to skating. The Elfstedentocht has been held 15 times since , and, before artificial ice was available in , national championships had been held in 25 of the years between , when the first championship was held in Slikkerveer , and Since artificial ice became common in the Netherlands, Dutch speed skaters have been among the top long-track speed skaters and marathon skaters in the world.
Short Track vs Long Track: Understanding the Differences
Another solution to still be able to skate marathons on natural ice became the Alternative Elfstedentocht. The Alternative Elfstedentocht races take part in other countries, such as Austria , Finland or Canada , and all top marathon skaters as well as thousands of recreative skaters travel from the Netherlands to the location where the race is held. According to the NRC Handelsblad journalist Jaap Bloembergen, the country "takes a carnival look" during international skating championships, despite the fact that "people outside the country are not particularly interested.
At the Olympic Congress, the delegates agreed to include long-track speed skating in the Olympics , after figure skating had featured in the Olympics. However, World War I put an end to the plans of Olympic competition, and it was not until the winter sports week in Chamonix in —retroactively awarded Olympic status—that ice speed skating reached the Olympic programme.
It was the only time an allround Olympic gold medal has been awarded in speed skating. Norwegian and Finnish skaters won all the gold medals in World Championships between the world wars, with Latvians and Austrians visiting the podium in the European Championships. At the time, North American races were usually conducted pack-style, similar to the marathon races in the Netherlands, but the Olympic races were to be held over the four ISU-approved distances.
The ISU approved the suggestion that the Olympic speed skating competitions should be held as pack-style races, and Americans won all four gold medals. Canada won five medals, all silver and bronze, while defending World Champion Clas Thunberg stayed at home, protesting against this form of racing. Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Japanese skating leaders protested to the USOC , condemning the manner of competition, and expressing the wish that mass start races were never to be held again at the Olympics.
However, ISU adopted the short-track speed skating branch, with mass start races on shorter tracks, in , arranged international competitions from , and brought them back to the Olympics in In the s, women began to be accepted in ISU speed skating competitions.
Regler och riktlinjer
Although women's races had been held in North America for some time and competed at the Winter Olympics in a demonstration event, the ISU did not organise official competitions until However, Zofia Nehringowa set the first official world record in Women's speed skating was not very high-profile; in Skøytesportens stjerner Stars of the skating sport , a Norwegian work from , no female skaters are mentioned on the book's nearly pages, though they had by then competed for nearly 30 years.
The women's long-track speed skating was since dominated by East Germany and later reunified Germany , who have won 15 of 35 Olympic gold medals in women's long-track since Artificial ice entered the long-track competitions with the Winter Olympics , and the competitions in on Lake Misurina were the last Olympic competitions on natural ice.
Lidia Skoblikova won two gold medals in and four in