ISU

For Sofia Prosvirnova (RUS) the 2019 ISU European Short Track Championships summed up all that makes her sport one of the most thrilling rides out there. Dominant displays were jumbled up with dramatic falls, crucial refereeing decisions and healthy slices of luck, all of which resulted in favorites winning, returning warriors surprising themselves and young guns coming to the fore.

Short Track spent an age in Long Track’s shadow – but now the Netherlands are back in style. Discipline Manager Wilf O’Reilly explains how it happened.

New skates, coaches, countries, languages, techniques, mental focus and tattoos – the season following an Olympic Games allows athletes to try new things, and skaters on the ISU World Cup Short Track circuit take every chance to test what could make them go even faster at the next Games.

Olympic 1000m champion Samuel Girard (CAN) says other sports should watch and learn from Short Track Speed Skating’s introduction of a Mixed Relay, in which men and women compete together over 2000m.

As 2018 ends, few Short Track Speed Skaters can look back at a year as eventful as Choi Min Jeong’s (KOR).

Over the past three seasons, Kazakhstan has begun to feature ever more prominently in Short Track’s elite events, after forming a successful training partnership with the Netherlands. A decade ago, few people in Kazakhstan had even heard of the sport, but with Kazakh skaters starting to win ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating medals with increasing regularity, the country is now preparing to host its first ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating event in Almaty this weekend.

Three months ago, the mere thought of competing in a Short Track race was enough to make Elise Christie (GBR) question everything she’d spent the past 16 years working towards.

From Wu Dajing’s (CHN) astonishing world-record performance at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics to Steven Bradbury (AUS) winning Olympic gold as the last man standing at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, Short Track Speed Skating has drawn up plenty of epic moments which have captivated fans and skaters across the world.

It’s a measure of Sjinkie Knegt’s (NED) supreme mastery of the 1500m that the world record holder and Olympic silver medalist can cruise to a World Cup gold medal and yet still claim to be in “not great shape”.

A broad smile breaks across the face of Csaba Burján (HUN) as he explains just how little the people of Hungary know about winter sports. The majority of the country’s population still have no idea that Short Track Speed Skating even exists, despite Burján being an Olympic Champion

Thomas Insuk Hong (USA) was always meant to be a skater. Across the sporting world, it’s common for athletes to speak of a sense of destiny that led them inextricably towards their chosen sport. But Hong’s connection to skating goes deeper than most: he was almost born on the ice.

Camille de Serres-Rainville remembers being a wide-eyed 14-year-old, watching on her living room television, when Marianne St-Gelais captivated a nation by winning the first of her three Olympic medals at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Figure skating’s loss was very much Short Track Speed Skating’s gain as far as John-Henry Krueger goes. The PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games 1000m silver medal winner was first introduced to the ice at three years old, but it wasn’t about skintight suits and racing skates at that stage…

After 22 years of Short Track dedication, Canada’s Valerie Maltais has decided to take up a new challenge and race on the long track.

Sébastien Lepape is contemplating the broomstick-riding, snitch-chasing, fantasy wizard mayhem of Quidditch from his favorite films – the Harry Potter franchise.