Muir Breaks 500m Record - Again!

Day 1 of the Heerenveen world cup has seen Sophie Muir, once again, break her own Australian 500m record for the second time in 6 days.

Sophie skated a strong 10.80 first 100m to knock almost half a second of her previous mark and skate a 39.68, her first time under the 40 sec barrier. Sophie and Desly both believe there are more areas to improve on which means Sophie is well on her way to skating a qualifying time in this distance for the Olympics.

Sophie’s time also saw her finish just outside the top 10 of B division, taking out 11th place and improving two places from the Berlin WC second 500m race. Sophie's time is only .18 of a second off Olympic qualifying

A miscalculation of race timings saw Ben Southee skate his first 500m effectively without a warm-up. Ben finished well down the field with a 37.60, well outside his personal best of 36.78.

Ben later skated the 1500m, skating his 2nd worst time ever, skating a 1:53.03. Ben said that he is still getting used to race pace and varying his speeds throughout the race in an attempt to get things right. He had also made some alterations to his skate setup from last weekend. Ben was not making any excuse and he said that today, he just didn’t get it right and he wasn’t happy with either of his performances.

However, he has taken positives out of both races and he is looking forward to the 1000m and the 2nd 500m in the coming days (500m Saturday).

Josh Lose does not compete in the 5000m until tomorrow afternoon, but he is very keen to get out there and race.

Once again, there are positive signs coming out of every race and given the inexperience of the team at this level, Australian supporters should be very excited about the chance of seeing several skaters competing in Vancouver.

Daniel Greig is floating around and he looks like a wound up rubber band ready to just explode. To have a team that is so competitive is both exciting and frustrating. This is great for the future, but frustrating in the short term in that we can only have one Aussie competing in each distance!

Tomorrow sees Sophie and Ben skate their second 500's and the afternoon will see Josh compete in the 5000m with his new prescription Oakley M frames - so no more contacts popping out mid-race!

If you are impatient about my updates, you can always link to www.speedskatingresults.com as these results are updated reasonably close to real time.

More tomorrow,
Frank