Ready… The preliminary round of the women’s 500 meters, the very first match of the Olympic short track tournament in Beijing, is about to start on Saturday. Four women from four different countries slowly collapse. They each take a different starting position. In starting position two, the Dutch Selma Poutsma is in the traditional starting position. Her skates are apparently perpendicular to each other, the left skate facing forward. Her three competitors each take a different attitude.
Then the starting gun sounds. Poutsma quickly moves her left skate out to make room for the right one. She almost falls forward, but each time she quickly takes a new step. Left-right, left-right, left-right, left-right, eight paces she ‘runs’ to the corner, after less than three seconds she dives into the first corner behind the Canadian Florence Brunelle for the rest of her race.
The complete program of the Winter Olympics
The new Olympic champion in the 500-meter short track will be announced this Monday, and the start can play a key role in this. The part is only about four and a half laps and is therefore a long sprint to the finish. There is hardly any time to catch up.
At the shortest distance in a sport in which it is not about time but about position at the finish, the first steps are of vital importance. “In the first meters before the bend you can win or lose positions,” says Suzanne Schulting, one of the contenders this Monday. She calls the start “the most beautiful part of the 500 meters”.
The start is not only important to get a good position, but also to stay out of the ensuing jostling, says national coach Jeroen Otter. „Look at the Chinese Wu Dajing [olympisch kampioen op de 500 meter in 2018]. He drives from the start just one and a half meters in front of his opponent. He cannot be overtaken, let alone overthrown.”
At the start it is important that the weight is more on the front leg. The back leg should have a grip on the ice. This is where the take-off takes place, so that the front leg can make the first step, after which the skater can start the fall movement forward. To make the take-off as explosive as possible, the skaters have to collapse, but not too low; then the body has to rise and that takes precious time.
Traditional starting position
Judging by the different starting positions, every short tracker approaches this differently. Schulting, reigning world champion in the 500 meters, has a traditional position. She may be one of the favorites, but within the Dutch selection she has competition when it comes to the fastest start. “Selma is really fast in the first half round,” says Sjinkie Knegt. “She immediately takes a good starting position.” “A rocket start”, Xandra Velzeboer calls the first meters of her teammate. “I have less of that.”
Poutsma, third in the 500 meters at the World Cup last year, knows that her start is good. But Poutsma finds it difficult to say why she is so fast. Her skates aren’t quite at a 90-degree angle, she says, because she’s a bit more stable if she leans her left skate a little more. “But I couldn’t give you a tip. I prefer to start by feeling, that’s when it goes best.”
Of course Poutsma watched video images of herself. She then sees that she does not have the fastest reaction time, or the best first step. It’s the seven steps after that with which she launches herself, she says. “I just try to look forward and move my arms and legs as fast as possible. If that goes well, others will say that I am flying.”
She does train her start, says Poutsma, especially not to keep her arms too wide during the first steps. “I tend to make ‘wings’. While it is important that you determine the rhythm of your steps with your arms. Actually, it’s like running, you can’t do that with your arms all over the place.” Still, it’s mostly instinct that gives her her quick start, she says. She was known for it before.
Attention is the cork that drives Suzanne Schulting
pick start
“Starting is really a matter of: you either have it or you don’t,” says Schulting. She recalls moving from fifth to second place in the 500m final as an eighteen-year-old at the 2016 European Championships in Sochi. Unlike Poutsma, Schulting relies on her reaction speed, she says. “I know I’ll be off the line soon. You might be able to train that a bit, but I got that from myself.”
Monday afternoon Dutch time, Schulting and Poutsma, and also Velzeboer, can show how far a good start can take them in the decisive matches on the 500 meters: quarterfinals, semifinals, final. In it, they have to deal with Arianna Fontana, among others. The Italian is on the hunt for a ninth Olympic medal, which would make her the most successful short tracker ever. The 500 meters is Fontana’s favorite distance; four years ago, she won gold in this event in Pyeongchang, after she got off to the best start in the Olympic final and ducked into the corner first.
#rocket #start #meter #short #track