Skating World Championships - Day 1

Bart Swings celebrates after winning the final of the men’s 10000m points-elimination race

The day started off with a bang with the track 300m time trial races. The junior women (under-19) were the first to compete in this year’s championships. While us mortals were awestruck at skaters who were finishing the distance in 27-28 seconds, the pair of Colombian girls came in like a force of nature and outdistanced themselves from the rest of the field by almost an entire second. 26.6s is an unbelievable time.

And then came the junior boys – again, the first 2 places went to Columbia with a winning time of 24.37s.

Senior women were the major news breakers. The first Colombian, who skated, finished her race in 2nd place. It was unexpected, to say the least, and it was the girl from Chile who was in the first place. Then, Yersey Puello got onto the start line. Her time trial was sheer perfection all the way through. 25.993 seconds flashed on the display and the crowd went wild. A new world record had been set. Both the Colombian girls embraced before picking up the Colombian flag and going around for a victory lap.

And then we moved on to the most anticipated age group – the senior men – with the two fastest men alive competing for that coveted gold medal – Pedro Causil and Andres Munoz, both from – where else, Columbia. Pedro was the current world record holder and defending champion with a time of 24.24s.

Pedro skated first, obliterating his own record and creating a new record of 24.11s. And just when we cheered and gasped at his time, along came Munoz, who blew past the new record and created his own with an unbelievable timing of 23.89s. It was a magical moment. The crowd went wild and Columbia again took gold and silver, with Ioseba Fernandez of Spain (200m road time trial record holder) settling for bronze.

As expected, the Colombians had won all the golds up for grabs that morning, finishing with 4 golds, 3 silvers, and 1 bronze. It’s true what they say, everybody else can be great,but Columbia is just better. The Indian skaters were at least 2 seconds off the winning time.

Next on the agenda were the point to point races. The junior women’s race was fairly simple with Colombia winning both the gold and silver, dominating the rest of the competitors. The junior men was less straightforward. Skaters from different countries kept attacking and kept the pace of the race high at all times. Eventually, it was Boris Pena from Colombia who went home with the gold.The senior women’s race was the first one where the Colombians were completely ousted from the victory podium, with Chinese Taipei winning gold, followed by China and Italy with gold and silver, respectively.

The last race of the day was the senior men’s point to point, which was popularly being billed as the batlle between Peter Michael (New Zealand) and Bart Swings (Belgium). Both are world champions and fierce competitors. Bart Swings stayed at the front of the pack from the start, whereas Peter Michael unfortunately found himself caught in the middle of the pack. Then, the two Frenchmen sprinted away from the pack taking Bart Swings with them. That was when the race effectively ended. By the time Peter Michael caught up to the first group that had thetwo2 Frenchmen, a Colombian and Bart Swings, it was already too late. The Belgians in the stands could sense this and a constant roar resonated from all around the rink as the Belgian hero Bart Swings moved closer and closer to another world gold medal. At the end of that 10km race, it was safe to say that the evening had been another episode of the ‘Bart Swings Show’.

The first day of the Oostende World Championships was a thundering success. Hopefully,the next 10 days will be as action packed and adrenaline pumped.