Racing

Day two of racing brought a lot of excitement once again. The 15k elim for senior men was pretty ridiculous with the huge fall with just over 5k into the race. It was probably about a twelve person pile up, all into the wall, which involved Cheex. When the restarted (all 75 laps again) they got just a little further into it then last time and there was another fall, again involving Cheex. The race was not restarted that time but it still sucked that Cheex fell not once, but twice. The other thing to note, is that Joey won that race and by won that race I mean really just ran away from the field on the last two laps with another World Record. Funny thing is if they had not restarted the race the first time it would have been a much, much faster time then what they ran the second time but still a very fast World Record.

The Junior Men's race was also very exciting especially watching our two US skaters Mario and Justin. The thing about the two of them is that it was a points race and they have very, very different styles of skating. Mario is the type of skater who stays up in the front the entire race and does his work in the beginning and up until the middle part of the race. Justin is the type of skater that in the beginning of the race he isn't necessarily concerned with being in the very front and he does most of his damage towards the end of the race. What this did was give us someone to cheer for throughout the entire race. At first it was Mario as he racked up six points which i was almost sure was really eight.. but he ended up in fifth place overall. Then it was Justin who racked up 12 points in the last 16-20 laps I believe and finished just one point shy of a silver medal. With his style of racing it makes it hard not to think if he had gotten two or three points in the first half of the race if his bronze could have been gold.. but a medal is still a medal and it's good to have no matter what.

The last racing of the day was the 1000m final for Mario in which he took fourth place which is the hardest place to end up but the final comes down to a sprint at the end and the top three were the same top three from the 300m. The final race was the senior men's 500m. Joey got out into second place and on the back stretch of the first lap the other Colombian tried to go underneath him but didn't get fully by so in the turn they were two wide and the bumping caused neither to be able to keep stepping which opened the door for Willy (nickname) from Chinese Taipei to pass both of them. In such a short race after the misstep it would have been nearly impossible for Joey to catch the two leaders and he ended up with bronze which is still very good after a tough 15k (20k if you include the first 5k).

Today was another day and a pretty good day of racing although it is not over. We had a Junior Man advance to the semi-finals of the 500m, a junior girl advance to the semi-final of the 500m and the other one qualify for the final, we also have Joey in the 1000m final. We also had the heats for the relays and the Junior Women, Men, and Senior Men all qualified for the final tonight.

Just to point out exactly how fast the track is, every single distance senior men skated, they broke the world record including the 1000m who had about 10 skaters skate under the previous world record.