ISU

The ISU World Short Track Speed Skating Championships 2019 is In Focus. Discover the top pictures of the elite Short Track Speed Skaters as they showed up in Sofia, Bulgaria, for a thrilling battle for a chance to be corwned world's best.

Often, Short Track Speed Skating is a fierce battle between nations. But in the Men’s field this season, it was an internal struggle between the Republic of Korea’s incredible pool of young skaters – culminating in an epic brawl at the ISU World Short Track Speed Skating Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria.

In the almost 10 years since Apolo Anton Ohno hung up his skates, the USA’s most decorated winter Olympian of all time has founded businesses, acted, hosted TV game shows, commentated, danced and much, much more. But even so, the eight-time Short Track Speed Skating Olympic medal winner openly admits that life off the track has been just as much of a challenge as on it.

For Steven Dubois’ entire athletic life, he’s been chasing someone’s tail. The boy from Terrebonne, near Montreal, took up Short Track Speed Skating at the age of 11 – far later than most of his contemporaries – and has been playing catch-up, very enthusiastically, ever since.

Lara van Ruijven didn’t think she was going to have a great 2018/19 Short Track season. In fact, she feared it might be a disaster.

Everyone knows about Korean, Canadian, Russian and Dutch Short Track racers but the Short Track Speed Skating is are a truly international affair – and some teams are one-athlete organizations from countries without any winter sport tradition.

Belgium and the Netherlands have always been huge sporting rivals: Benelux neighbors who particularly don’t like each other on the football field.

Charles Hamelin almost retired last summer, but when it came to the moment of truth, the elder statesman of Canadian Short Track – now 34 and entering his 16th World Championships – just couldn’t do it.

Bulgaria’s Short Track Speed Skaters do not have to look far as they complete their preparations for the coming ISU World Short Track Speed Skating Championships in the country’s capital, Sofia. Not only is one of the nation’s most celebrated Olympians an all-time Short Track legend, she is also the national team coach.

The refereeing system for Short Track Speed Skating has had an overhaul this season, producing a clearer set of guidelines, introducing a new video reviewing process and announcing the awarded penalty via the announcer and new TV graphics.

Young, charismatic and mind-blowingly fast, Hungarian brothers Shaolin Sandor Liu and Shaoang Liu are loving life right now. And, frankly, the Short Track Speed Skating world loves them right back.

Pork belly, deep sleep and the small matter of nine hours’ training per day – these are the ingredients which have turned 20-year-old Korean Kim Gun Woo into one of the most exciting Short Track Speed Skating talents.

Get used to hearing the name Alyson Charles. The 20-year-old has enjoyed a stunning rookie season on the ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating circuit and is at the vanguard of a youthful charge to shake up the sport’s established order.

One year on from having the world’s attention thrust upon her at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, Maame Biney (USA) is mightily relieved to just be one of a number of highly talented young Short Track Speed Skaters attempting to break into the upper echelons of the sport.

The Germans are coming. That is the message coming quietly but confidently from team leader Anna Seidel and new national coach Stuart Horsepool as the penultimate ISU Short Track Speed Skating World Cup of the 2018/19 season got underway in Dresden, Germany.