The Complete Guide to Speed Skating: History, Rules, and Olympic Facts

 Speed skating is exciting! It combines the elements of ice skating and racing into one glorious action-packed ultra-competitive Winter Olympic sport. It’s kinda like auto racing where they go around in circles over and over again really really fast, except it’s people on ice skates instead of driving cars. And it’s cold!

Since its creation literally over a thousand years ago, speed skating has evolved from an efficient way to travel across frozen rivers into the high-octane Winter Olympics sport it is today. What started out on the ice sheets of Holland eventually spread globally to include participants and internationally-sanctioned ice rinks in North America, Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, as well as China.

Don’t know much about the rules and history of speed skating? Neither did we until we did our research for this article!Continuing our Winter Olympic Sports series that includes facts on curling, bobsledding, snowboarding, and biathlon, here are a bunch of facts we learned about speed skating that we are happy to share with you. 

1. When was speed skating invented?

Speed skating is basically a Dutch invention. It originated in the Netherlands at least a thousand years ago when people would strap bones to their shoes to help them travel across frozen bodies of water. The idea of who could do it faster than whom quickly caught on, and it’s even said that Eystein Magnusson — who was the King of Norway from 1103 to 1123 — used to brag about how fast he was on ice. That was about 900 years ago!

2. How iron-bladed skates changed speed skating history

By 1592, people started inventing ways to be better and faster at ice skating. That was the year a Scotsman dude (whose name unfortunately could not be found in our research) designed an iron skate blade that led to skating to gain popularity and spread to other countries. It basically blew up from there and the very first official skating club — the Skating Club of Edinburgh — was established in Scotland by the 1740s. The club even had a motto that they took from Horace’s Odes, which was the Latin translation of “Swifter Than the East Wind.” In 1763, the first official speed skating race took place at Wisbech on the Fenlands in England. The winner of the race received a prize of 70 guinea coins, which is like $100 USD in today’s dollars if our math is correct. By 1805, women were speed skating in official competitions in the Netherlands and by 1851, speed skating hit North America.

3. Who is the official governing body for speed skating?

The official governing body for competitive speed skating — as well as other ice sports like figure skating— is the International Skating Union (ISU), which was founded in July 1892 after organized ice skating races started to become a thing in the 19th century. The very first ISU meeting took place in the Dutch town of Scheveningen with 15 men representing different European countries meeting together to discuss rules and administration of amateur speed skating competitions. The ISU hosted its first championship event in St. Petersburg, Russia in February 1896.

4. When did speed skating debut in the Winter Olympics?

Speed skating made its debut at the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, where Finnish skater Clas Thunberg took home three gold medals out of five speed skating events. Unfortunately, only men were allowed to participate in the speed skating competition in the beginning, but this changed eight years later at the 1932 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. Though women were allowed to compete in speed skating, it was only considered a demonstration sport for female athletes. At the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, women’s speed skating was finally changed from a demonstration sport to an official Winter Olympic event. Lidiya Skoblikova of the Soviet Union won two gold medals across four speed skating events.

5. What kind of skates do they use in speed skating?

The earliest versions of the modern clap skate go all the way back to 1894 when this German dude named Karl Hannes came up and patented the idea of a skate with a hinge. Almost a century later in 1980, a Dutch biochemist named Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau created his first prototype of a hinged speed skate that fulfilled more of what Hannes promised. Though this new-fangled ice skate had its supporters, it took a good 15 years for it to really catch on and become ubiquitous among speed skaters.

By 1996, the Dutch women’s speed skating team adopted them and in 1997, Tonny de Jong won the European Allround Champion on clap skates. She is considered the first skater to master them. These new skates really took hold in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, when speed skating records were absolutely obliterated and demolished, setting new standards for the sport. Speed skating fans who were watching saw 5 world records and 12 Olympic records being set — pretty much all thanks to the newly-received clap skate.

The clap skate has a hinge on the toe of the skate shoe that allows the athlete to have a greater extension and longer stride. To get the most out of every stride, skaters crouch so that their stomachs and thighs nearly touch. The blades of speed skates are thinner and longer than skates typically used for ice hockey or figure skating. Depending on the strength and size of the skater, the blades of the skate can range between 30 cm to 45 cm (12 to 18 inches).

6. What kind of suits do speed skaters wear?

Even with the leap forward speed skating took with the clap skate, all skaters still need to wear aerodynamic skin-tight suits with a hood.Racing suits conform to the natural shape of the athlete’s figure, with thumb loops to minimize the air resistance as a speed skater flies around the track. So what makes a good speed skating suit? With literally every single millisecond counting in a race, a suit must reduce friction to prevent wasted energy while skating. A suit must also reduce drag, allowing the athlete to maintain the fastest speed possible. It must also provide compression for the skater’s muscles. Finally, of course, it should be comfortable and lightweight.

In fact, the kinds of suit speed skaters wear in competition isn’t without its controversies. The US Speed Skating team pretty much bombed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia — and some of the players blamed suits with vents that allowed air to escape and create drag.

7. What kind of speed skating events do they have?

There are three main forms of speed skating: short track, long track, and inline. Short track speed skating takes place on a course that is 111.12 meters (which is roughly 365 feet). Short track competitions may take place on rinks used for ice hockey and figure skating.

Long track takes place on a sheet of ice the size of an athletic track. Skaters reach speeds of 60kph (about 37mph). Skaters compete in separate lanes and aim to set the fastest possible time to win. Race courses range in length from 500m to 200km.

Inline speed skating varies in competitions and includes indoor, banked track, and road racing. Race distances vary from 100m to 26.2 miles, which is marathon skating.

8. What’s the world record for fastest speed skating?

On March 28, 2018, Kjeld Nuis achieve the fastest speed on skates in Swedish town called Lulea near the Arctic Circle. By using an aero shield designed to mimic the perfect outdoor conditions with as little drag or resistance as possible Kjeld Nuis was able to set the world speed skating record after hitting 93kph, which is another way of saying 59 miles per hour. Right now, Kjeld Nuis is the fastest person on ever on ice.

9. Eric Heiden achieves Olympic first in speed skating

At the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, American Eric Heiden accomplished an achievement that no Olympian — winter or summer — had done prior by winning 5 individual gold medals at a single Olympic Games. Eric Heiden also set 4 Olympic records and a world record. All 5 of Heiden’s medals came in speed skating as he won gold in the 500m, 1000m, 1500m, 5000m, and 10000m events.

Eric Heiden is a speed skating legend who has been called the greatest speed skater of all time. ESPN even ranked Eric Heiden 46th in their 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century. What makes Heiden’s accomplishments particularly extraordinary is that he achieved them in both short and long-distance races, which is not something we see a lot of in speed skating. Eric Heiden is a speed skating icon for very good reasons, but the dude has other accomplishments. After he won 5 gold medals at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, he took up professional cycling and was even inducted in the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1999. Eric Heiden also went to medical school at Stanford University, was the team doctor for the Sacramento Monarchs and Sacramento Kings, and opened a sports medicine practice.

Click to buy this book by Eric Heiden!

10. What does it take to be a speed skater?

Speed skating is a great core-strengthening and calorie-burning sport that also works almost every muscle group in your body — especially your lower body. Olympic-caliber speed skaters need to have have strong legs, great balance, flexibility, and agility to compete at high levels. They tend to keep their upper body frame on the smaller side, with a focus on building strength in their back and lower body through exercises like squats, hamstring curls, and wall sits. Speed skaters build agility and speed through plyometric exercises like jump-roping and lunges. Yoga helps with their balance, and running, swimming, and cycling help with their cardio. Ice skating itself is a pretty low-impact exercise, meaning that gliding around a rink takes less of a toll on your body than running around the neighborhood with your feet pounding on the pavement. While ice skating is a great way to build endurance and strengthen your lower body, successful speed skating requires athletes to do a lot of cross-training.

Image Credit: via Wikimedia Commons

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