Rarely have winners looked as sad as on Monday evening, after the men’s 1,000 meters at the Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OKT). Four top skaters competed for three spots at the Games in Milan, one — Tim Prins — didn’t make it. He was 0.005 seconds slower than Kjeld Nuis in the final stage and finished fourth. Seven and a half centimeters, one-fifth of a skate blade – that kept him from his Olympic dream.
Prins stormed off the center of Thialf almost immediately after the ride, full of anger and disappointment. But surprisingly, none of the three qualified skaters showed any form of joy. In the tunnel that connects the center court with the changing rooms, they were especially upset about how merciless the OKT can be. “Four boys for three places,” sighed Joep Wennemars, who had just finished second, “it should be banned.”
The Dutch men have been exceptionally good at the 1,000 meters for years. This is also visible in the selection order that the KNSB skating association uses to allocate starting places at the Olympic Games: numbers one, two and three are immediately assured of a ticket to Milan – which is not the case with any other distance. That was also the case four years ago, when the 1,000 meters at the OKT ended in a similar tragedy – then with Kjeld Nuis as the victim.
Favorite Jenning de Boo was the winner on Monday evening, in 01.06.84, the second time ever in Thialf. It was his “best 1,000 meters ever,” he said afterwards. Yet there was little joy on his face. To start with, the tension at De Boo had once again been enormous, just like in Saturday’s 500 meters. “Those nerves are really not fun, it is no longer a healthy tension. Now I am happy, but before races like this I prefer to go home and stop skating.”
But above all, De Boo was sad about the fate of Prins, his teammate and “one of my best friends”. Top sport can be that hard, and especially the OKT, but De Boo still found it “difficult to see” that his buddy did not make it in five-thousandths of a second. “Such an OCT brings a lot of tears. Perhaps more tears than laughter.”
Inhumanly difficult
Wennemars, who came second in a good time of 01.07.34, was also closer to crying than laughing. His ride had been “inhumanly difficult,” he said. Yes, he had made it and was now assured of two starting places at the Games — on Friday he already qualified for the 500 meters. But he was also particularly upset about what had happened to Prins. “It is actually just ridiculous if only three are allowed to go to the Games if we are so good. But yes, those are the rules.”
And then number three Kjeld Nuis appeared, also qualified for Milan. He had achieved an incredible performance, with those five thousandths on Prins, four years after the same thing had happened to him at the OKT. Reason for joy, perhaps even euphoria, you might say. But during his finishing lap it was already noticeable that Nuis looked straight ahead and did not raise his arms in the air. The reason, he said in the tunnel: the fate of his girlfriend Joy Beune, who had finished fourth in the 1,500 meters earlier in the evening – and according to the strict logic of the OKT, is not allowed to take action in Milan at her favorite distance.
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“What ridiculous shitty rules we have here,” Nuis started. “Your goldcrest, the best in the world, will now be missing from the 1,500 meters.” When he entered the skating hall, he bumped into Beune, he said. She was shaken and sad. There was no time to comfort his girlfriend. After that everything happened in a blur. He actually wasn’t looking forward to his ride anymore, and had even skipped a large part of his usual warm-up.
How did he manage to finish third? “No idea, I almost didn’t think.” Yes, once, in the last corner, his thoughts went back to the previous OKT, when he had lost to Hein Otterspeer. “I thought: four years ago Otterspeer rode there. Exactly there. That won’t happen again.”
Was Nuis not satisfied with that, even if it was only a small one? “Tomorrow morning, when I wake up.” And then we hope that he can motivate himself for the 1,500 meters – the distance for which he is the reigning Olympic champion. “That will certainly also become a battlefield.”
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