First silence descends, slowly the audience falls silent. A whistle calls the skaters to the line. A few times they pound their back shoes on the ice; it must soon have a grip on sales. Then they open their front leg so that they can, as it were, fall over it – forward.
Now the skaters are perking up their ears. “Ready,” they hear stretched out. They collapse. Only the hum of the electrical installations that regulate the ice, light, air extraction and other aspects in Thialf can still be heard. And then, after a long beat, the shot rings out. Go.
An old skating adage states that you cannot win the five hundred meters with a good start, but you can lose with a bad start. “Open hard and turn left twice,” is how sprinter Dai Dai N’tab described the shortest skating distance ever. A fast first hundred meters is very important for a fast finishing time.
But how difficult it is, when the pressure is at its highest, to stand still on the ice on slippery blades, collapse and wait motionless but patiently for the starting shot, as N’tab, who is now absent due to illness, knows all too well. At the OKT towards the 2018 Games, he started as favorite in the five hundred meters twice: his Olympic dream is gone.
In a chaotic race, there were seven false starts and three crashes in twenty stages.
The men who were allowed to appear at the start twice at the OKT on Saturday evening to realize their Olympic dream in the five hundred meters seemed to be equally bothered by it. In a chaotic race, there were seven false starts and three crashes in twenty stages. “It didn’t really go well and then all kinds of things go through your mind,” Merijn Scheperkamp expressed his experience of the match. In his second ride, his opponent started falsely. “You have to stand still at the start.”
Fall forward
When the match in Thialf ended on Saturday, it was not surprising that the two men with the fastest openings were also at the top of the rankings. Both Jenning de Boo (opening: 9.52, final time: 33.96) and Sebas Diniz (9.48, 34.14) rode their first hundred meters faster than ever. They can prepare for the Olympic Games, although Diniz (like number three Joep Wennemars) will have to wait and see how the rest of the OKT goes because the second and third places in the 500 meters are low in the selection order.
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Diniz said afterwards that he had trained specifically for his start last week. “They didn’t run all the way yet this year, so I rode another hundred meters last week.” That was not specifically to be better equipped against pressure from the OKT, Diniz said. “It had to be technically better, and we succeeded.”
Things went wrong for Kayo Vos, who finished seventh with 34.83. In both his races he started falsely and then opened with 9.8. “If I don’t make a false start, I can shave off one-tenth of a second. The lap then often goes one-tenth faster, then you can compete for the podium,” said Vos, although he did not come close to Joep Wennemars’ third time of 34.48.
For Vos it is also a matter of improving his technique, he says. “I usually collapse faster than my opponent and therefore have to stand still longer. At a certain point I fall forward. I can just work on that, it’s that simple.”
Wennemars has a different opinion. “Standing still at the start and slowly collapsing is very difficult. But we are professionals so you have to deal with that, even if your opponent starts false and you have to go again. We just have to do it.”
Don’t think
That seems to be the mantra of all sprinters. Above all, don’t think too much, rely on the routines they have practiced hundreds of times, ‘just’ do what they always do. “I mainly try not to make it bigger than it is,” says Sebas Diniz. “When I stand there, I try not to see the audience anymore. Then I focus only on the finish, that’s my trick.”
The past few days had been terrible for winner Jenning de Boo, he said afterwards. “In the run-up to the OKT, skating is not fun at all. You only have nerves while you have to wait until you are allowed and you can only lose. I was just afraid: suppose it doesn’t work out.”
But once De Boo stepped onto the ice on the inner lane of the full Thialf, his head went blank. “That helped enormously. Because if I start thinking during a five hundred meters, I already know that I have too much time and am therefore not going fast enough.”
That’s exactly what happened to De Boo in his first ride, when his opponent made a mistake in the first corner and then abandoned his race to avoid getting in De Boo’s way. “Very sporty, but then I had to switch gears, and you simply cannot miss that time.” He skated a disappointing time of 34.36.
In the second round, in a direct duel with Diniz, things turned out all right for De Boo, partly thanks to the fastest opening of his career. “I got off the line quickly, even left before Sebas, that doesn’t happen often to me.” It must have been the fear of losing and the frustration about his first ride, De Boo thinks. “It was all emotions in one.”
Discharge from Jenning de Boo, who qualified for the Olympic Games thanks to his time of 33.96 in the second round.
Photo Sem van der Wal/ANP
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