1,000 metres, Men

The 1000 m world record had taken quite a beating before the Olympics. Starting out at 1:11.67, it was first lowered to 1:10.63 by Jan Bos and Manabu Horii, who tied for first at the Calgary World Cup. On the second day of competition there, Lee Gyu-Hyeok again lowered it to 1:10.42, before Jeremy Wotherspoon, brought it down even further to 1:10.16. Of these skaters, the top favorite was Jan Bos, having won the distance twice at the recent World Sprint Championships. He was expected be challenged by the other Dutch and Canadian skaters, though.

With no skaters having approached the 1:11.00 barrier yet, the first to touch it was 500 m champion Hiroyasu Shimizu. Not known for his 1000 ms, the Japanese continued his 500 m form and clocked 1:11.00 exactly, a new personal best. The very next pair featured an outside favorite for a medal, Ids Postma. Not a regular 1000 m skater, he was better known as an allround skater. His Olympics had not been as he had expected, having fallen in the first 500 m race, and losing the 1500 m gold due to a mishap in the last curve. Postma got his revenge in this race, setting the fastest time, by virtue of an excellent final lap. Wotherspoon led Postma’s split at the bell by 0.6 seconds, but dropped back to an eventual 6th place finish. Leeuwangh and Sylvain Bouchard met a similar fate, leaving only Jan Bos to challenge in the final pair. He, too had a half-second lead over his compatriot, but also failed in the final lap, missing the gold by just 0.07 seconds. Ids Postma was a farmer from Friesland, the province in the Netherlands best known for its speed skaters. He was, however, the first Olympic Champion speed skating champion to come from Friesland.