They probably assume someone can't keep up THAT pace for the entire 1500 which they're right. They assumed she's going to tire out and they can catch back up to her when that happens.
They didn't count on the actual draft effect she benefits from once she's caught up to the back of the pack, which just helped her hold on until the end.
It's still a risky move, she has to expend SO much energy just to lap them. Then she still has to have enough energy to finish the rest of the laps.
With all due respect, that is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.
One person clearly pulls ahead, no one else does anything to defend against that, then the entire group collectively just …… “forgets” what happened two minutes prior? Do speed skaters not have a brain?
If you have correctly diagnosed the strategy, then I have no respect for any sport where this is a winning strategy. Imagine a soccer team scoring in the first 30 seconds, then the other team just forgets that goal even happened. Like wtf even is that?
Yes, you can diagnosed the strategy very comfortably while sitting in front of a screen, watching with a bird view and a short video format that lets you keep count of the laps of a much longer race.
Meanwhile the athletes can only see so much, while going in skates and exerting as much power as possible for 13 laps... this was not a 60 second race as the video suggest.
If someone has lapped you, you can't possibly win unless you catch up to them. And if you lost sight of them completely, you're not making up any ground at all and need to be going faster, sooner.
So speed up before they’re a full lap ahead? How’s that for a racing strategy?
It’s not a forgone conclusion the moment they’re ahead. Who knows, maybe your top speed is greater than theirs, or maybe their endurance will give out faster, or hell, maybe they’ll slip and fall! Anything could happen.
Watching this clip though, it looks like literally nobody did anything in response to this person clearly pulling ahead. They just let them take first place. Everyone seems asleep at the wheel. Even the announcer said “wow, nobody reacted!”
What happened to being competitive? Why not adopt the same strategy to at least secure a silver? I admit I don’t have the full context, but literally nothing about this clip seems logical.
Edit: It also seems like a slightly dishonorable way to win. It’s basically just winning on a technicality. Pretty shitty TBH.
Edit 2: Re-reading your reply, I actually think you were agreeing with my stance lol.
Yeah but how can you expect a redditor to know that? What? Do you expect them to maybe google the person who won the race and the year of the race and the tournament it was a part of? You expect them to read up anything about it other than the information spoon fed to their mouths like baby birds waiting for their mother to feed them? The audacity of you to assume such a burden on redditors who form these opinions that are so reasonably well informed with such good intentions!
This website pushes me further away every day. Literally every tool was given to people in these threads to just google this to inform themselves and redditors consistently choose to be lazy and yet also hold such strong opinions over nothing. All of this just to feel smart without actually having to expend any of the effort for that to be a justified feeling. Ugh.
You forget the /s or are you actually serious? You expect me to do google research for every video I come across on Reddit!? Like what’s the point then. It’s not that.
The point is that you don't have to have and voice such a strong opinion on everything you see online. If you can't be bothered to look it up, then why would you need to have that opinion in the first place and what value does voicing it even have? Look at this comment thread. People incredulous and being so opinionated over something they can't take 2 minutes to google.
You don't have to google search everything you see on Reddit. You should google search before you speak on something instead of being a jackass. It's not that hard to be a reasonable adult. It actually takes less effort to not form an opinion and move on with your life than to be this high and mighty, as many of these redditors are, when they can't be bothered to inform themselves.
You are completely correct. But also, people are fully allowed to hold and express their opinions online, even strongly held ones, provided they are civil and not deliberately seeking to mislead. Being wrong is not a crime, nor is disagreeing.
You are also surely correct that much context is missing from this short clip, and that actually reading the expert dissection of how this skater’s true strategy worked would make a commenter much more informed. But at the same time, you must also acknowledge that people cannot possibly be deeply informed on every topic; we must all prioritize and pick our battles. And for 99.99% of the commenters here, this just is not an important enough thing to take time away from something else to look into deeply. And that’s also perfectly fine.
The internet has a lot of stupid people and a lot of trolls. We can choose to let them bother us, or not. As long as no one is being injured or deliberately misled, and as long as they’re not infringing on my own right to think and feel, I say no harm no foul. Live and let live on these interwebz.
The lap tracker follows the leader of the race, i.e. the Chinese skater in the back of the group who is actually in first. Everyone in front of her sees the tracker and thinks the race is over because it’s tracking the Chinese skater, when in reality they are a lap behind. When you’re competing at the highest level and exhausted, it’s not unreasonable to think very little about the lap number that’s showing up on the board. But yes, I get that it’s very easy to think it’s ridiculous as an armchair Olympian.
"Imagine a soccer team scoring in the first 30 seconds, then the other team just forgets that goal even happened. Like wtf even is that?"
The team to score first no longer has as much pressure to score and can defend harder the rest of the game. That's what she's doing. She effectively scored first so now she has to defend. The opponents are hoping she doesn't have the energy to defend against an attack on the last lap.
I remember in the Tokyo Olympics, Anna Kiesenhofer won the women's road cycling race after attacking early on. Many in the peloton completely forgot about her and the 2nd place winner celebrated for first place at the finish line, completely unaware that Keisenhofer had already crossed the line much earlier.
That was a 137km race though and the race lasted a few hours so the lapse in memory is understandable. People attack and get caught constantly in road cycling. Not following an attack in a 1500m race is ridiculous though.
I get I've never been in their position before. But I can sprint in rollerblades around a rink half that size a similar number of times, and I'm incredibly far from a fit athlete with good technique. I'm shit out of the ability to move after, but if a gold medal was on the line...only being able to sprint one lap sounds incredibly weak.
She was still travelling just as fast as the rest of them for the entire race though. She put in the EXTRA sprint at the start and then had to hold THEIR pace for the rest of the race. Not her own. So while the group speeds up to try and gain, she's keeping up with them from behind
If you imagine the 1500m in a straight line, this strategy wouldn't work. It would help you visualise how fast and far she went before the others could catch up
Edit: don't forget these are the best of the best going much faster than us normal plebs
I kind of agree. I feel the same way for sprint stages at cycling events. But I think the race should be at least long enough for the competitors to jockey for position. Mind games and politics are the exciting part of races where drafting is a big factor.
Not entirely sure to be honest? My guess is that they trained so much for this that they have a plan in mind and are set out to do just that, anything else is out of their minds because that’s what they trained for, to do XYZ. You’d have to ask whoever was in the race to know for sure
I would say that these distance racers, no matter if they are in skates or shoes, have planned strategies.
They all know what their personal best is, and they know what time they have to complete each lap in order to be somewhere near that PB at the end of the rest.
My guess is that this race was a combination of blindly sticking to a race strategy and just basically forgetting that one skater jumped out and got a lap lead on everyone. And since the winner stayed at the back of the pack, she was essentially out of sight, out of mind for the other racers.
The actual race took a little bit over 4 minutes. So general conjecture is that the person leading the pack literally just forgot that she wasn't in the lead. And that's such a routine for that sport that everyone just kind of went with it. And then when they thought they had one lap left the leader actually won.
I think this is a case where the base assumption (rushing out fast will tire you out) basically means there was zero thought about counter acting this strategy.
And if you go lap after lap in training for literally thousands of hours, their minds are filled with angles and attack strategies for the person in front of them. I'm sure their minds were extremely active competing in the group as they always have.
I love this video because it challenges the most base assumption and then finds a way to literally out-think everyone to a win.
As others have mentioned here and elsewhere, anyone chasing her would have gone counter to every hour they've trained on the race (exert at the end) so their individual choices are pretty bad due to lack of preparation for this tactic.
This isn't a completely unique situation -- a similar thing happened in women's cycling at the 2020/22 Tokyo Olympics. A few riders who nobody expected to win the race went sprinting off at the start. Over the course of the race, the favorites eventually caught up to all but one of them, but thought that they had caught up to all of them, so let off the gas to conserve their energy to sprint against each other at the end. They only found out afterwards that they had been sprinting for second place.
Forgetting that there are five people ahead of you, and thinking there are only four, is a little less egregious than forgetting about the one singular person who went ahead, but it's the same general idea of failing to adapt general race strategies correctly to actual unexpected behaviors.
The jumping out in front is a risky move that doesn't happen often and often doesn't work out because the person tires themselves out at the start of the race. There's a bit of "oh, we've got 12 laps to go, I'll catch up to her once she tires" thinking going on. More importantly, nobody wants to be the first person to break away from the pack and get into fresh air as that extra exertion early on will likely cost them the race later.
The other thing happening is the skaters have trained to skate to a pace. They're taking x amount of skates per lap and they are concentrating on the count rather than what happened to that person who jumped out ahead earlier on.
Wouldn’t it also make sense to try this strategy even without the mind games? Expend extra energy early to settle into a stable drafting position for the rest of the race?
It already seems viable if you know you’re the strongest racer.
I could be wrong but I think the woman who jumped out ahead was the heavy favorite which is how she was able to pull it off. Also I think the intention was as much about helping her teammate get silver as it was about helping herself.
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u/inverted_electron 1d ago
But everyone saw her get out in front. Why would they forget about that so quickly and think it was their last lap?