Speed Skating

General Rules

Long-Track Speed Skating Rules

• Only two skaters compete at once in this format except for the team-pursuit and marathon events. In team-pursuit event, two teams having three players in each team compete and in the marathon event, a large group of skaters compete over long distances.

 

• Skaters must change lanes in every lap without impeding each other.

 

• Skaters may be disqualified from the race if they make a false start (starts before the signal), for impeding the opponents by pushing or blocking them, for going off-track or going inside the blocks marking the track or for any other rule infringements.  

 

• All rankings in this format are by time, so if a skater misses his/her race or falls, he/she has the option to start again.

 

• In team pursuit event, two teams start from opposite sides of the rink. Their skating time completes only after the third skater of the team crosses the line.

 

Short-Track Speed Skating Rules

• Four to six skaters compete in a race.

 

• Skaters may be disqualified from the race if they make a false start (starts before the signal), for impeding the opponents by pushing or blocking them, for going off-track or going inside the blocks marking the track or for any other rule infringements.

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Officials

Chief Referee

The overall in charge of the competition who also decides all protests.

 

Assistant Referees

Assist the chief referee in taking all the decisions and make sure that lane changes are made legally.

 

Starters

Responsible for starting the race and for the start area. He/she calls the skaters to the starting lane and manages them until a valid start of the lap is done. 

 

Finishing Line Judges

Makes sure that the skaters finish legally and determines the winner of the race or in case a tie occurs.

 

Timekeepers

Responsible for keeping track of the time taken by each player to reach the finish line. There can be manual timekeeping or an automatic one.

 

Lap Scorers

Responsible for displaying the number of laps remaining (still to be skated).

 

Track Judges

Track judges include corner judges, crossing controllers and judges observing the finishing straight. All these authorities ensure that no rule infringement takes place on the track by the skaters and check the correctness of the skaters moving on the track.

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Events

Long Track Speed Skating

• The long track speed skating formats are allround, sprint championships, single distances and team pursuit events.
• In allround format, men participate in 500m, 1500m, 5000m and 10000m and women participate in 500m, 1500m, 3000m and 5000m.
• In the sprint, skaters (men and women both) run over 500m and 1000m distances.
• Single distance races take place over 500m, 1000m, 1500m, 3000m (for women only), 5000m and 10000m (for men only) tracks.
• In team pursuit event, the skaters use only inner lane of the long-track and the distance covered is eight laps for men and six laps for women.

 

Short Track Speed Skating

• Men participate in 500 m, 1000 m, 1500 m, 3000 m races and 3000m and 5000 m relay races.
• Women participate in 500 m, 1000 m, 1500 m, 3000 m races and 3000 m relay race.

 

Marathon Speed Skating

Marathon event takes place on long tracks over long distances, around 40 km in indoor tracks and it can be around 200 km for outdoor/natural ice tracks.

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Techniques

Short Track Speed Skating

During skating, skaters lean their body forward, bend the knees and usually swing their arms to maintain momentum. When passing through the corners, the skaters lean very low and often touch the ice with the inside hand.

 

Long-Track Speed Skating

Long track skaters also follow similar techniques and usually keep one arm behind their back to reduce drag while skating. Crossovers are also used by skaters that help them crossing the corners easily.

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Participants

Male and female skaters participate in various events of speed skating as individuals or teams.

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Playing Area

The two main types of speed skating (short track and long track formats) take place on oval ice tracks having different dimensions. Short track oval has a circumference of 111.12 m and the rink has at least 60 x 30 m dimension. Long track is a double-laned 400m oval having two curved ends each of 180 degrees. The inner curves of the long track have a radius of around 25-26 m and each lane have the width of 4 m.

General

Speed Skating started as a quick type of transportation crosswise over frozen lakes and streams. It is one of the most ancient kinds of sport on the planet and amid the nineteenth century it advanced in both Europe and North America into a cutting edge, aggressive game turning into the quickest non-mechanical game. Skaters can achieve speeds more than 50 km for every hour (31 miles for each hour) fueled just by their body and particularly their legs.

 

From soft caps to skin-tight streamlined racing suits and the presentation of the slap skate, Speed Skating has enormously developed through the span of its 120 years of presence. Aside from the first four distance Championships for men, separate World Championships were presented for women in 1936, for Sprinters in 1972 and junior division in 1974. These Championships reliably clung to the rule of a World Championships with four distance.

 

Speed Skating made its introduction on the Olympic program at the 1924 Winter Games. For quite a while, the Olympic Winter Games were the main event for Speed Skaters to pick up titles in the individual distances. Just since 1996 has there been the ISU World Single Distances Championships consistently, under the ISU banner. In 2005 the ISU presented the Team Pursuit and after ten years the Team Sprint. In 2011 the Mass Start was brought into the official competition and made its Olympic presentation at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games.

 

The Dutch were seemingly the most punctual pioneers of skating. They started utilising waterways to keep up the correspondence by skating from town to town as far back as the thirteenth century. Skating, in the end, spread over the channel to England, and soon the first clubs and artificial rinks started to shape. Energetic skaters incorporated a few rulers of England, Marie Antoinette, Napoleon III and German essayist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

 

The first known skating rivalry is thought to have been held in the Netherlands in 1676. Be that as it may, the first official Speed Skating occasions were not held until 1863 in Oslo, Norway. In 1889, the Netherlands facilitated the first World Championships, uniting Dutch, Russian, American and English groups.

Ice Dance

It's a variant of speed skating which consists of a couple (traditionally a man and a woman) who dance on the ice while holding each other. Jumps and throws aren't allowed in this type of speed skating.

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Short Track

it's a more safe version of speed skating which is contested on a short track of 111 meters having more safety precautions like guards, etc. 

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Long Track

It's a variant of speed skating which consists of competitions conducted on a 400 meters rink while using a significantly less amount of safety precautions as compared to short track speed racing. It's held for both men and women, but women are allowed to cover less distance.