More symbolism is probably hardly possible: Moscow’s Krylatskoje Hall, Russia’s first speed skating hall, opened with great pomp in 2004 and the scene of Anni Friesinger’s triumph at the all-around World Cup in 2005, has been converted into a corona clinic. The ice was cleared away, there are now 1,300 beds, 100 doctors are taking care of Covid patients. So 2020 are the logical priorities. Speed skating is not one of them.
While the ski jumpers start their season at the weekend in Wisla, Poland, the alpines in Finland go to their World Cups and the bobsleigh riders throw themselves into the ice channel in Sigulda, Latvia, the speed skaters don’t yet know whether they will be able to compete in any competition this winter . What used to be the blessing to compete in the hall and to make yourself independent of the rigors of the winter weather is now a curse: Indoor sports and Corona – not a good combination.
On the website of the German Association DESG you can read it under “Events like this”:
20.11.-22.11. Resigned: ISU World Cup Speedskating Stavanger (NOR).
28.11.-29.11 Declined: ISU Junior World Cup Speedskating Minsk (BLR).
4.12.-6.12. Abgesagt: ISU World Cup Sppedskating Salt Lake City (USA).
11.2.-13.12. Abgesagt: ISU World Cup Speedskating Galgary (CAN).
It goes on in this tour.
World Cup is canceled, hope rests on the EM
A few days ago the world association ISU called off the world championship in Beijing, which was planned for February, and the pre-Olympic competitions in China have also already been canceled. Supervisors and athletes are now hoping for the European Championship in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, which is scheduled for mid-January. The plan: For three weeks in Heerenveen, the athletes will be wrapped in a sports bubble in which they will remain completely to themselves. Then you could not only host the European Championship during this time, but also two World Cups. “At least it is a fixed point that we can work towards,” says the new head coach of the German association, Jenny Wolf.
In view of the threatening corona situation in the Netherlands, however, this plan is on shaky ground. If that doesn’t work out with Heerenveen, the season could actually be completely canceled. And the speed skaters went into the Olympic year completely without a competition winter.
“This is a catastrophe season,” complains Claudia Pechstein, who is well tried in ranting. Without competitions, her “self-motivation would come up against previously unknown limits,” she told the German Press Agency. Pechstein will be 49 years old in February, a lost season hits her far harder than the younger athletes who can tick off one winter and bet on the next.
Inzell plans thwarted by Corona
Like Patrick Beckert. At 30, he is no longer a junior either, but is still taking the missing competitions calmly. He enjoys being able to “train in Erfurt without restrictions”. The only thing that he lacks for a normal season, he tells the dpa, is traveling to the World Cups. But that’s what you usually do.
October showed how delicate things can be for speed skaters in the Corina pandemic. The new DESG boss Matthias Große had already announced before his election as president that he would make Inzell in Bavaria “the new hotspot” in German speed skating. In the autumn it actually did – but differently than Große had thought. The Berchtesgadener Land, whose neighborhood Inzell also belongs, had the highest infection values nationwide, and two German athletes who were there for training also tested positive for the corona virus. It also hit the Dutch world class runner Kjeld Nuis, who was in Inzell with his teammates.
The entire German team had to be quarantined and the Max-Aicher-Halle closed. In the meantime it has been released for training again for squad athletes, but the German Championship, which was supposed to take place there at the end of October, was of course also canceled.
The lofty sporting plans that Große announced when he took office are now on hold. Which does not prevent him from further massively advancing the conversion of the DESG in his favor. The association’s office has been relocated from Munich to Berlin, there is a new national trainer for “science, education and training”, and the DESG has now officially been renamed the German Speed Skating and Short Track Association. What is still missing: That the speed skaters can also ice speed skate.
