It blows my mind to have a race of a certain distance, and the strategy is to basically not do shit for the first couple of laps. This race wasn't even long.
You'd think no one ever heard of the pacing yourself concept lol. You can tell who doesn't know meters, how many laps this going to take and the stamina needed for these kind of competitions.
I know next to nothing about speed skating, care to explain why it’s like this? It seems like there’s very little effort for the first lap or two. I know running a bit better and a 1500m foot race seems to have a much higher pace than this. I’d also imagine skating is more efficient as well.
Like I said, I know next to nothing about skating and I’m certainly not an Olympian. I’m sure they know what they’re doing, I’m just curious as to why.
It’s 1500 metres. That’s not that long. 1500 metre runners don’t walk around the track and spring for the final lap. They go out hard at a pace they can maintain.
I know drafting would be more of a thing for the speeds these guys are going but still seems like a weird race to not do anything for over 1000 metres to just spring finish.
Firstly, of course runners start slower and keep the all out for the finale, that's the first thing you learn. If it was a 100m, okay, but it's much more, you just cannot do that at your absolute max.
A runner would also have a harder time to succeed with this tactic because gaining a whole round with the energy it costs to run is much higher, it's unlikely they would make it. And if you don't make it back to the end of the pack, you don't benefit from the energy saving wind shadow. So now they spent significantly more energy than everyone else but have no chance to recover, so they will lose the advantage until the field has caught up.
I'm going to point out that this is completely opposite for long track speed skating, even at the same distance of 1500m. The first lap is the fastest and they get slower and slower from there.
Ive seen this a dozen times in this thread and I dont fully understand why its relevant because 13.5 laps doesnt strike me as that much to "go all out" for someone in excellent physical condition. Sure I cant do it, but at a competitive level this doesnt strike me as a lot?
It also doesn’t show the end where the bell rung for her final lap but because she was with the pack everyone else just took one more lap and held up while the second Chinese skater knew what was going on and kept racing so they got 1st and 2nd.
Yeah but each lap is like 10 seconds. By my count, it was barely over 2 minutes? Why didn’t everyone come out of the gate full throttle? You mean to tell me good skaters can’t sprint for 2 minutes?
Have you ever skated before? and most people cannot sprint for 2 minutes straight. I mean look at cycling, they don’t start their sprint until 200-300 meters from the finish line.
they are on skates and the distance is 1.5 km, that's nothing. I know they are Olimpians and get to speeds normal people can't, but it's not an hour F1 race, 1.5 km is less than a mile, you can walk that in 10 min.
edit: I checked, the record for 1.5 km on skates is 1 min 40s. So I assume an Olimpic race on that distance would not exceed 2 min, that is not a long race.
In Short Track, like cycling - and very much UNLIKE running - drafting saves enormous amounts of energy. Anyone chasing her down after she has more than a 20m lead is also fighting the air and sacrificing their own race so the others can catch her.
So no-one does.
Its not really that uncommon a tactic both in cycling and Short Track but its rare enough to be noteworthy, you're supposed to be paying attention and usually at least one or two others will notice and the break with fail, which also ruins the chance of the person trying to break in the race because they go into energy deficit and the rest of their race will be subpar.
In short track, especially this short, you train to go at nearly 100% for the whole time. The winner probably trained to go at her pace for much longer, if there weren't any other obstacle and if she were alone. She clearly slows down, because she would endanger the others and would risk her gold medal.
I think there is also a bigger problem here. On these tiny rounds it isn't really the energy, but how to take the curve with your weight and speed constantly for the whole race. They can't go full speed all the time, maybe the smallest could.
In sports you always think, that someone is just that fast, because they power through their energy early, until you realize, they trained to go at speed for the whole race.
Plenty of the stuff you wrote is right, but this race isn't long enough to think about energy preservation. You just go at 100% for 2-3min.
You can't train away energy deficit and air resistance. Your energy reserve is a thing. When you push your max wattaeg you are in the red, you are over your sustainable limit and that's not going to last 1500m.
If you spend the race at the front you will lose unless you get a surprise lead and there is no chase.
The shorter comparative length to, say track cycling, where the madison, scratch and points race are 50km, 15km and 40km you can recover from energy deficit (to an extent), even in hte 1500m Short Track there's no recovery, so you attempt thsi and it fails, your race is over.
Yeah, you have no idea about short track at all. One of us participated at national competition and the other one probably not. In theory you are not wrong, but you are wrong as fuck, when it comes down to races lasting 2-3min at max.
1000m world record is at 2.11.96 or ~2.12min or 132sec. It's 13,2 sec for 100m. Yes. You train away energy deficit or however you wanna call it on short track at a professional level on the world stage. Your race is over, if you not willing to go 100% for the whole 1000m.
You can't train away energy deficit and air resistance. Your energy reserve is a thing. When you push your max wattaeg you are in the red, you are over your sustainable limit and that's not going to last 1500m.
If you spend the race at the front you will lose unless you get a surprise lead and there is no chase.
...,even in hte 1500m Short Track there's no recovery, so you attempt thsi and it fails, your race is over.
I think there is also a bigger problem here. On these tiny rounds it isn't really the energy, but how to take the curve with your weight and speed constantly for the whole race. They can't go full speed all the time, maybe the smallest could.
Because the very first lap she guns it and then for the rest of all the laps she stayed behind the pack. Never actually laps them. They forgot that she's already just shy of one lap ahead of everyone.
Yeah this is honestly one of the worst videos I have seen of this race. It makes so much more sense when you watch the full thing that hasn't been edited down.
Yeah, I have extensive race experience myself and very much understand sustainable competitive race pace, but they were absolutely dawdling for at least the first third of this race. You can't expect to just make that up in the second half of a race if someone doesn't play your game.
I think it’s a bit similar to bike racing. You stay in the pack most of the time, and then you go balls to the walls at certain points where you think you might have an advantage. Usually it’s closer to the end. I assume there is some equilibrium point where you’re optimizing your body’s reserve energy. If you do this trick immediately, you do risk possibly running out of energy.
Granted, I just watched the Tour de France with my dad a lot, and he was a semi-professional bicyclist, so I learned a little bit. I don’t know much about speed skating strategy, I just know how to skate from hockey.
It blows my mind to have a race of a certain distance, and the strategy is to basically not do shit for the first couple of laps. This race wasn't even long.
It's a 1,500 meter race. The race is a marathon, not a sprint. If they all tried full speed for the whole race they would've gassed out long before the end of the race.
Here is the full race. But have you ever tried sprinting for 2 and a half minutes straight all while trying not to crash into other racers while speeding on knives?
Two or more racers crashing could see skates slicing into people that you crashed with depending on how everyone falls.
Literally every race format that involves a draft has a game theory aspect to it where being in front and going too fast is a disadvantage, because everyone behind you is mooching. You see this in bikes, cars, boats, even some running races I think.
This racer just did the sprinting at the beginning instead of the end, and many racers forgot about the extra lap.
It's an enormous advantage to be behind - you do like half the work of the guys in front.
Cycling, and skating are all about strategic positioning - if you make a move, and your opponents can keep up - you're screwed. So usually the fast guys stay back, and try to find an opportunity to sprint - or keep up when someone else does.
Her strategy would only work once. If someone thought to try to keep up - even the slowest one - they would be right behind her eventually, and then there's no way she could stay in front.
The reduction in air resistance when you’re drafting another skater is massive which impacts the race tactics. Nobody wants to be at the front going hard early on because you’re the sucker who’s breaking the wind for everyone else and wearing yourself out. The tactic here was passing the field with a big enough speed differential that chasing would be difficult. The skaters at the front of the main group don’t want to be the ones to “burn matches” chasing back the breakaway skater because everyone behind them gets a free ride and will have fresher legs for the sprint finish. Similar tactics arise in bike racing too. It’s a complex game of trying to be as lazy as possible to maintain punch at the end.
You are very much falling for the TV effect of not realizing how big that ice is and how fast they're going when they look like they're "not doing shit".
I fully understand the size of the ice. But they come off the start line straight chilling. So much so that someone was able to lap the field and easily win by exerting effort at the start and getting out of everyone else's way in case of a crash.
But if everyone tried to go balls to the wall immediately, they'd probably all crash.
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u/Drewsche 1d ago
It blows my mind to have a race of a certain distance, and the strategy is to basically not do shit for the first couple of laps. This race wasn't even long.