If Nils van der Poel skates a 5 kilometer, he does not cover 5 kilometers. He drives between 15 and 30 meters less. He succeeds because he can skate very close to the blocks in the corner, much closer than his rivals. On the 10 kilometers that saves even more meters: between 30 and 60 meters.
Cutting off the 25-year-old Swede, the slated Olympic champion on both long distances, provides crucial time savings. When the 5 kilometers is on the program on Sunday, it can be 1 to 2.5 seconds, depending on how sharply Van der Poel manages to drive the 25 corners.
The cutting is legal. The distance on the 400-meter track is not measured on the lines where the blocks are, but half a meter from there, where most skaters ride. In other words, if you stay less than 50 centimeters from the blocks, you will drive less than 400 meters each lap.
loud laugh
Confronted with that calculation, Van der Poel laughs loudly, speaking to the press in the open air of the Olympic village on the Thursday before the Games in 10 degrees of frost in the open air of the Olympic village. “Fuck, yes,” he yells. ‘I did not know that.’ He himself estimates the distance between his skate and the blocks at about 10 centimeters. He thus rides 40 centimeters within the line that is used to determine the distances on the skating rink.
How much he cuts off with that is a matter of high school math: radius times pi and that times two. With a difference of 40 centimeters, that results in 2.5 meters less skates per round. If he were to skate every corner exactly 10 centimeters from the line, he would finish in the 5 kilometers after 4,969 meters, and the 10 kilometers after 9,937 meters. That makes a difference of 31 and 63 meters.
That calculation is not entirely accurate. No skater drives a perfect semi-circle around the corner. Not even Van der Poel. Both when entering and exiting the bend, he takes a greater distance from the blocks and deviates from that ideal line. But he does that much less than most of his competitors.
He does not drive his tight corners to drive fewer meters and thus save time, he says, although it is a nice side effect. The real reason is another. ‘With a sharper bend you can lean more obliquely and make more speed.’ The more obliquely you hang, the more powerful you can push off to the side. And that’s what a bend is all about: turn left as fast as possible.
It distinguishes him from Jorrit Bergsma, Olympic champion 10 kilometers in 2014. The 36-year-old Frisian is also not afraid to look for the blocks, but does so over a much shorter part of the bend. He goes in and out of the corner as wide as possible.
Balancing power and efficiency
A gentle turn is less taxing on the thigh muscles because the centrifugal force that the skater tries to push out is less. Bergsma thus saves energy. “A five or ten kilometer is a balancing act between power and efficiency,” he says. So Bergsma does not ride semicircles, but semiovals. “I’m trying to make a nice, even arc, not too far from the blocks.”
Patrick Roest, Van der Poel’s main competitor for Olympic gold, drives an oval bend like Bergsma, but stays a lot further from the blocks. The Swede estimates that Roest takes the bend about 15 centimeters wider than him. Based on television images, it appears that he is too nice.
In practice, 26-year-old Roest, who also enters and exits the bend very wide, drives around the half-meter line. He therefore covers 5,000 meters. Roest: ‘I’m going higher into the corner. Although I drive closer to the blocks than I ever did. But Van der Poel does drive extremely close.’
Because Van der Poel does not describe a perfect circular bend, in practice he will not win 2.5 meters per lap on Roest. But even if it is only half, it still provides a considerable time advantage. At the speed that he often drives (laps 29.0), this results in a time saving of 1.14 seconds on the 5 kilometers. That may be enough to defeat Rust. Last year, Van der Poel won the World Cup with that round schedule with a lead of 1.65 seconds over the Dutchman.
There is also a danger in driving close to the blocks. Whoever taps one away with his iron or visibly crosses the line is disqualified. That happened to Kjeld Nuis at the European Championship sprint of 2019 in Collalbo. Bergsma is apprehensive about it. Sometimes he gets a little too close to the line for his liking. “Especially when I’m tired.”
Short training track, more turns
Van der Poel is not afraid of that. He knows exactly how far he can go. He drives more turns per kilometer than the Dutch, because his training track in Trollhättan is only 250 meters long. The curves are similar in circumference to those of a 400-meter track, but the straights are much shorter. His training consists mainly of bends.
Still, the shape of his home job is only part of the explanation. According to him, the key is his solitary skating existence. He has no teammates. Unlike his Dutch competitors, he rarely rides on the ice rink in a train. He also doesn’t understand very well that they do that all the time. “If you’re following someone, you don’t have to exert a lot of force. And you’re not going to try to see exactly how far you can go. Suppose you fall, then you also take your teammates with you.’
In order to know what you should and can do in a match, you have to train in a way that is similar, says Van der Poel. Only so. Only in that way can you find out what works. ‘Only when you drive alone, under your own power, do you get immediate feedback of what you are doing. Then you will experiment how you can go 0.1 second per lap faster without providing extra power.’ He doesn’t need a trainer for that either. ‘I can figure it out myself. I can feel and see it in my lap times.’
Van der Poel has discovered how he can prevent his legs from ‘filling up’ when driving a sharp bend. He doesn’t hang around the bend by bending his knees deeply. Skaters normally do that and that takes a lot of strength. Van der Poel uses his upper body to lean over. It can be clearly seen during his races: he pushes his left shoulder towards the ground.
It hangs so obliquely that it actually falls continuously to the left. While stepping over, he always catches himself. “It’s almost like running. And you don’t sour quickly,” he says. And then, as if he’s spilled a secret: “Don’t tell the Dutch.”