When Gerard van Velde visits the press after the Olympic 1,500 meters, there is no trainer, but an admirer of Ireen Wüst. The 50-year-old coach knows what it’s like to win gold. He was the best in the Olympic 1,000 meters in 2002. But that was only once. He just saw his rider drive to her fifth individual title at her fifth consecutive Winter Games.
The last 300 meters, which were the ultimate proof of her class, says Van Velde. How Wüst drove to the finish line with his hands behind his back, decisively pushing off sideways. Rhythmic like a metronome. ‘Like she had another round to go. She continued to drive efficiently and under that tension. That’s really one of her talents.’
Wüst’s 1.53.28 proved too sharp for her main rival, Japan’s Miho Takagi. The world record holder rode exactly on her schedule until the bell for the last lap, but had to bow her head in the final lap. With 1.53.72 the Japanese was second at 0.44 seconds. European champion Antoinette de Jong (1.54.82) finished third at an appropriate distance from Wüst.
Driving on with your hands behind your back is something that Wüst has often been doing in recent years. It’s something others imitate her. Sometimes she also gives it as a tip, for example to Kjeld Nuis. It works better than sprinting like crazy to the finish. Only Irene Schouten can sprint like this, according to Wüst, but most others lose speed when they try.
Nuis, who will defend his Olympic title in the 1,500 meters in Beijing on Tuesday, and Wüst have been in the team for two years now. He looked in awe at his teammate on Monday morning, he said after their morning practice. “I thought as I walked in, I think I’m more nervous than she is, and she has to drive today and I won’t be until tomorrow.”
Nuis predicted before the race that she would ‘get it’. “Of course she’s nervous, but she doesn’t show it. She has planned everything down to the minute and leaves nothing to chance,” he said. ‘And at the same time she doesn’t make it bigger than it is. She says: I’m going to do this. Three and a half rounds, kabam, put your hands behind your back and go.’ He himself has that much less. Nuis, two-time Olympic champion, has to put in a lot of effort to keep his nerves under control.
Peaks at the Games
Van Velde and his colleague trainer Michel Mulder, also once Olympic champion, watched with amazement the metamorphosis that Wüst went through last month. The training schedules were obviously aimed at her getting better on her way to Beijing, but that turned out even better than expected. ‘You can build a physical program in which you determine where you peak. But you have to be able to carry that in your head’, says Van Velde. Wüst can do that like no other.
The more important a match, the better it is. She doesn’t consciously make decisions that put her in that state. That goes without saying. Her world narrows in the months leading up to the Games and she feels herself getting stronger and stronger. She doesn’t have that at other championships, not even at World Cups.
Once on the track, she is very nervous, just like everyone else. But those nerves also evoke something else in her: a desire to skate. She finds it difficult to explain how that works. The knot in her stomach that prevented her from eating only three bites of pasta on Monday is also the signal that the will to win is at its maximum. And that motivates.
Setbacks
Winning an individual medal at five consecutive Games: it was not in the stars that Wüst would build such a career. After her thunderous entrance with gold in the 3 kilometers in Turin in 2006, she often had to deal with setbacks. She overtrained in 2008 and took almost three years to feel like herself again. After her second title, in the 1,500 meters in Vancouver in 2010, she got a contract extension with TVM, but she had to give up her salary.
Later, when the TVM squad ceased to exist in 2014, it turned out that Wüst was not considered commercially attractive despite her 3,000-meter gold from Sochi. She started her own team in 2015, but had to put money into it herself first. Only after a while a sponsor was found. Despite that, nerve pain and an ankle injury, she took gold in the 1,500 meters in Pyeongchang in 2018.
Fate struck the worst in 2019. Her best friend and former teammate Paulien van Deutekom died of lung cancer. It’s still an open wound. Even after her victory, she cannot hold back her tears. She misses her every day, so even at a peak like this.
Wüst is not a machine. She also has doubts and weaknesses, and for the past year and a half, time has seemed to get a hold of her. She won nothing on the individual numbers during that period. No world titles, no European gold, no Dutch championship. Not even a World Cup game.
But standing on the ice beneath the Olympic rings releases forces that make her unbeatable. Also in the last year of her career. Whether Van Velde knows another athlete like Wüst? “No,” he says. And then, after a long silence in which he seems to enjoy that realization, again: ‘No, not like them. I consider it a privilege that I was allowed to work with her.’