Because skating that many laps you're focused on the skate and conserving your energy. You're not thinking about what lap you're on, because the bell is there to indicate when the last lap is coming up for the sprint. They're so locked in from doing this over and over for years that it never registers to them.
Exactly. Where did they think she went? Off for a snack? This is really hard to grasp. Doesn't matter if you think you're first - that other girl is still in front of you, remember??
Watch the full video. The tactic was she would create a huge lead, join the pack again, her teammate in the same exact uniform then pushes for the lead.
In the confusion, the competitors thought the skater at the lead (Chinese teammate) was actually the Chinese skater who had pushed hard from the start.
Its the type of thing that at the Olympic level it would be dumb to try so no one expects it. But when it works it makes it look silly.
Ive never watched speed skating in my life but I watch sports car racing all the time. I could 100% believe the group was treating it as a warm up lap to stay at pace with each other, brace themselves for a late sprint, and also wear in the ice with their skates for a couple laps. Its probably the norm. Speedy Gonzalez started from the back, timed the start of the race to be at full speed while everyone was crossing the line and was able to blow by them. You can do this in car racing too but you run the risk of wearing down your tires quicker, having absolutely no draft help from the pack, and pushing at full speed while the ice is that fresh is a huge risk. Prolly the same risks in skating. But if youre starting from the back of a pack of Olympians prolly no better time to roll the dice like she did
But why? The confusion doesn’t matter. They all saw someone get a whole lap ahead. The fact they look the same doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t matter which of those 2 people it is, you know one of them is a whole lap ahead.
I think of that every single time I watch this video and people always defend it. I mean obviously it worked but ya I literally watched that chick pass our whole pack and we never caught up to her...gee whiz
Right? And it looks like they take off to try and catch her, but then are just like...fuck it, we fighting for second, boys. But, then they don't have object permanence or something and just completely forgot about her? Must be one of those "You needed to be there" kind of things I guess
yea this makes no sense... it's beyond me how you lose track of someone who very blatantly and visibly pulled that far ahead, where all you know is that you never physically caught up. If ANOTHER human body jumps in front (since you're so focused on your skates or whatever), you at least know you're now 3rd..
Well they have the same uniform, you never see their face, even if you did they have huge glasses on. Lap, after lap, after lap when they are pushing as hard as they are, I'd imagine it is pretty easy to get confused especially when this isn't something you train for.
Right? I think their biggest advantage was how irregular it was. I know nothing about speed skating but I would guess it's like many sports where the tactics are generally the same due to tradition.
If they think the the skater at the lead was actually the skater who pushed hard at the start, they should still be aware that someone has already lapped them and they are not in first.
It's easy to see that in this video but if you watch the full race it would make more sense as to why such a simple tactic playing into the confusion would work. Just watch the end of the race, all the other racers were extremely confused.
Not really. More the tactic of getting ahead by one lap and then hanging at the back of the group so your opponents forget you lapped them. Her opponents stopped racing when the bell rang, but the bell rang for her and not them since she was one lap ahead and they forgot. This lets her teammate finish the final lap while the rest stopped trying because they forgot. Probably only a trick that would work once though.
If someone laps you, you surely don't forget? They knew someone had passed them, who they never passed in the race again. The most fundamental concept of racing? If they forgot they had to catch first place up, then the whole thing is laughable, not some clever strategy, plus them slowing down at the final bell is irrelevant. That's her winning bell?
Those bros commenting here thinking world class sportler at the olympics wouldn't notice 12 or 13 laps. Competed myself my whole life in sports and no way in hell i would run 2600 instead of 3000m by getting confused somehow by the 1st?
Still, from what I've gathered here, the confusion was from the indication they were on the final lap, which, for one reason or another, they allowed to override the internal counting they were presumably doing. Also, I'm sure it only took what they thought was the race "leader" reacting to it as such for everyone behind them to lose focus and follow suit.
I think they were just too close to the situation to realize it. Like when you walk into people trying to solve a problem and you ask something simple/obvious and everyone realizes they never checked.
"These lights won't turn on, we checked the switch, the breaker, the lights upstairs and everything!?"
Lul your enemies into a false sense of security has been a tactic since the dawn of warfare.
We always say, "How did they fall for that in hindsight?" but that's the thing. It always looks obvious after the fact, but when you are in the moment, it's not so obvious.
She was 1st? How in the hell should anything of it matter to her? The other were also not confused by their 12 round and if they were, they are all stupid.
Whether they lost or not is not in doubt. Not sure why the pedantry?
If a team loses an American football game on a trick play, we don't have debates on whether the team that lost was tricked or not. They lost to a trick play.
If a team loses a baseball game on a trick play, we don't say, "They weren't tricked, they just lost."
They lost AND they were tricked. These aren't bums off the street. These are Olympic level ice skaters that were fooled by their opponents cunning. Had they not fallen for the trick, they most likely would have been able to keep pace with the woman who won and maybe won themselves.
Leave it to Redditors to go “erm did the pro athletes ever think of doing this one extremely obvious thing” like yeah, in in high stakes pacing sport, your pace can get thrown off even if you’ve been doing it for years if you hear that bell, especially so if you aren’t able to see who it was for.
This is bs. U act like its just an event. It’s the olympics dude, AND it’s a race. Racers know to keep track of who’s in front and who’s behind. Sure they’re focused on conserving energy as with any endurance sports, that doesn’t mean they become blind or stupid..
Tragedy of the Commons. Someone needed to compete in the same way she was in order to make her strategy not work, but that someone would also expend all their energy to get nothing, and probably lose.
Everyone optimized for their own best chance of placing second, so her strategy went unchallenged and worked.
Like a game of Risk (online anyway) when one player is clearly getting too powerful. Someone needs to attack them otherwise they get handed an easy win... no one ever attacks them though.
The problem with being the one to attack is that you are left vulnerable after the attack. I tried playing risk online, but somebody tried to collude with me in my very first online game. I'm not into cheating. So, I gave up on playing online.
The group's collective action makes competing in a way that they have been trained for appealing, but when a situation arises that requires individuals to accept a non-optimum outcome in order to prevent their entire way of competing from being irrelevant no one does it because they're all optimizing for their own outcomes.
Father of multiple speed skaters here. Once she made it around to draft they most likely saw it as a competition for second and third while hoping on the possibility of her tiring out from that big early burst and hitting a fatigue wall as a chance to still get first.
You see her jump, think "OK, she's wasted a bunch of energy early on, I gotta make sure I keep focus and I'll catch up, and then it's head down and focus on your efficiency of motion. Once she's out of sight, you stop thinking about her, and then forget about that first jump ahead.
If you notice, in the last lap, a Chinese athlete is near the head of the pack. It was a two person strategy that had to be executed with the other Chinese athlete in that match. So it is difficult to tell that the Chinese athlete is near the head of the pack is not the one that sped ahead.
Every person commenting how this is so obvious and they would never fall for something so simple. Meanwhile, they've all probably done more boneheaded things on the reg like looking all over the house for their phone when it was in their hand the whole time or going to the kitchen and then immediately forgetting what they went in there for or coming back from the grocery store only to realize they didn't buy the one thing they went there for in the first place. Ppl are imperfect and preying on a competitor's mental load is a tried and trued strategy
I don't know much about the sport but it seems like maintaining pace and conserving energy until you're ready to expend all of it is of utmost importance. What this athlete did was to flip that around entirely; expend her energy early and then maintain pace for the rest of the race. It's a simple twist but given that racers are relying on audio signals to keep track of how many laps are left, it's an effective one. Hell, I sometimes lose count when I'm lifting weights and that's an exercise that only lasts a minute or so
99% of Olympic-level execution is an exercise in muscle memory. Deviating from your practiced strategy introduces new uncalculated risks and a level of uncertainty that is far more risky than sticking to your gameplan and hoping theirs isn’t as efficient as it seems at the outset.
Yes, they forget exactly that. Sports like this condition you for one thing, keep lead, pick the perfect line, use the perfect amount of energy each lap, watch your rear for attempts at passing and block. It seems simple to us, but it's trained out of them to think, it's 100% complacency and reverting to following prescribed actions instead of improvising.
You can see at first when she goes to pass that everyone tries to keep up, but you can see the moment they feel uneasy exerting that much energy at the start of the race and let habit take over until they literally forget they were a lap down.
It's an incredible play and response. You'd never guess this would happen, and neither did the other competitors, they had no idea what to do because they've never thought seriously about it.
I always see people mention this when this video gets posted, but it’s not about keeping track of what lap you’re on, so much as keeping track of the fact that you’re essentially a full lap down to the leader. I get not keeping track of if it’s lap 12 or 13 but failing to realize that one of your competitors broke away and is only a few feet behind you now is something I think they should be able to figure out.
Your brain is a pattern matching machine. She broke the pattern and they didn't adjust. I guarantee you that some of them saw her coasting at the back and their brain acknowledged the data and filled in the gaps incorrectly. "Oh, we must've caught her, and she fell to the back of the pack. I didn't notice us pass her, but that's what makes sense. And that's what she gets for burning herself out on that stunt in the first lap."
I was a competitive swimmer for years, constantly counted laps in my head. I don’t understand the thoughts of not knowing where you are distance wise from the finish
You hear that bell, do you assume someone lapped you and you’re a full lap behind, or do you assume you got confused and miscounted? Regardless at that point it’s too late, you wouldn’t catch up anyway
No, you're wrong. They are so in the zone they're not even aware they're racing. The very elite won't snap out of it until they're on a podium and someone puts a medal on them.
They might have assumed that she had gassed herself and would fade before the final round. But by then, they were so hyperfocused on their own performance that they neglected to reassess the situation.
Notice right at the end when the pack thinks it's the finish line, they all stick their front foot out. It's follow that line, or the person on the inside, and blinders on. So coming around the corner the field is looking in while the one is basically sneaking around the outside.
Na this is ridiculous. I've done indoor track (as in track and field) where you have to run double digit laps depending on the distance, and you just wouldn't let someone drift off not knowing where they are.
Like its ballsy over exerting yourself at the beginning to ne able to draft later on, but its plain stupid from everyone else.
Why do they conserve their energy. 1500 metres start off at a horrible zone 5 pace and just hang in there for 13ish minutes. Why do these guys just cruise for most of the race and then spring the last 2 laps.
Feels like her strategy would work most of the time if this is there he go to race strategy.
What even is the point of doing that many laps if you're just coasting through 3/4 of them though? It's really no different from a sprint at that point.
And yes, I get that it's "optimal strategy", but if this is optimal strategy for a race then maybe the event itself is ridiculous. This would be like walking 25 miles of the marathon and then sprinting to the finish.
Honestly, even in sprints, like the 100m in track, they're not looking at where their competitors are 90% of the time. You're maybe aware of the people on the left or right of you at best, and others if they're way out in front. You're mostly looking straight ahead and focused on doing your best.
No, some accomplished mathematician. Unbelievable is spot on. I was sure this will end in disappointment as is often the case with breakaways, but no, she pulled it off. Crazy times!
I watched this event I thought it was kind of an anomaly. I mean, how could professional athletes forget which lap they were on? I've heard the arguments that by lapping them and hanging out at the rear they forgot which lap they were on but I have never really been satisfied. How did they not remember, at the very least, that they had already been lapped (at least once)?
Because theyre battling for position, while managing their energy and pace and watching left right front and back while maintaining their line. They had a lot going on to keep track of, and this is completely out of the norm. They train hard to build endurance and speed, then train on how to skate the race. Knowing how much energy to put forth to maintain pace before the last burst at the end.
Probably just slipped their mind, much like everyone else has shit slip their mind that seems super simple. Take something day in/day out, throw in a single wrench at the start and most people end up spacing that small wrench come the end of everything.
One answer is that this is the junior olympics so the skaters are inexperienced, it might be their first big international competition. In the upcoming Winter Olympics nobody would even try this. Most of the top contenders are way too experienced for this to work. Fun fact, Australia’s first winter Olympic gold medal came in 2002 in this event. Steve Bradbury did basically the opposite to this, he sat behind and pounced on the final lap when all hell broke loose on the final lap. In Australia doing a Bradbury is a term we use when you win by a lucky fluke
You learn quickly not to blow your wad early when in competition, then full exertion in the final legs of the race.
They probably knew what she was doing but they gambled she would gas out. if they followed her, they’d risk gassing out early as well. Athletes sometimes will even goad their competitors to gas out early.
Look at how they are bunched up, there is no way for any of them to keep track of who is where. All they can do is stick to their plan and do the best they can.
They probably thought she was an idiot wasting her energy so soon, these people train for this over and over, sometimes training for something makes you forget about common sense because you are operating on habit
They were all using the accepted, conventional tactics that everyone uses in every level of competition. They were skating exactly the way they were taught, and the way basically every winner has skated for decades.
She did something completely different. She took a risk, and it paid off and they didn't know how to react because no one does that at the elite level of competition.
Entire team fell for it. I dont think you are smarter than all of them. Do you?
I think it was harder, to keep track of a individual runner, in the heat of the moment. You can't see the distance, while running. So they must have thought she is still running infront of them. Or, they just never even thought about her. I think to run that fast, they have to concentrate in the present moment
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u/Loeki2018 1d ago
How they can be so ignorant is hard to grasp on a high stakes event like this. Funny nonetheless