Speedskater Wust stuns home team, winning gold in the 1,500 with blistering final lap

Wust stuns home team with 1,500 win

RICHMOND, British Columbia — The line on the scoreboard told Ireen Wust all she needed to know, even while the last two skaters were still on the track.

The Dutch skater had locked up her second Olympic gold medal.

So much for all those who thought the first one was a fluke.

Making up for the disappointments that followed her breakthrough performance in Turin, Wust won the women’s 1,500 meters Sunday with an astonishing final lap that dealt another blow to the home team.

The Canadians figured to have a good shot at their second speedskating gold medal with stars Christine Nesbitt and Kristina Groves leading the way.

Groves won the silver, but the favored Nesbitt just couldn’t match Wust’s sizzling pace on the final trip around the oval, fading to sixth.

Coasting along in the practice lane, Wust looked up to watch the line superimposed on the video screen showing her pace compared to Nesbitt, who raced in the final pairing. The line kept pulling farther and farther away from the Canadian. She was still at least 50 yards from the finish when Wust began celebrating in the middle of the first turn.

“I was looking at the time line on the television and that’s what made it so exciting,” Wust said. “They were always in front of it until the end.

“But my coach (Gerard Kemkers), he said with two laps to go that it was good for gold. From then on, I had to bite my nails.”

Skating in the 15th of 18 pairs, Wust was faster than anyone on the last lap except Martina Sablikova of the Czech Republic — a distance specialist who took a while to get up to speed — and powered across the line with a time of 1 minute, 56.89 seconds.

At the 2006 Winter Games, a 19-year-old Wust won gold in the 3,000 and bronze in the 1,500, raising expectations that she would be the next great skater from the Netherlands. But the last two years were a bit of a struggle, leading some in the Dutch media to wonder if she’d ever fulfill her potential.

“Turin was incredibly beautiful,” Wust said. “You think you can only win. There is nothing else you can even imagine.”

She learned otherwise.

“I have gone through depths and faced many disappointments,” said Wust, who broke down crying on the medal stand while the Dutch national anthem was played. “Not everything was that bad, but the highest step on the podium was not there often enough.”

Wust was feeling better about her skating heading into Vancouver, then struggled to a seventh-place showing in the 3,000. Suddenly, those same ol’ doubts started to return.

“It made me sick to my stomach to see me perform like that,” she said. “I used that aggression for this race.”

Nesbitt had the advantage of skating last and sent the crowd into a frenzy when she was seventh-hundredths ahead of Wust’s pace with a lap to go.

But Wust put up an amazing time of 31.54 on her final trip around the oval — a pace that Nesbitt simply couldn’t match in a race that requires both the speed of a sprinter and the stamina of an endurance skater. Sablikova was the only one to manage a better time on the final lap, 30.82, but she wasn’t as fast as Wust on any of the other 2 3-4 laps.

Nesbitt, by comparison, finished up in 33.05 for a time of 1:58.33 — nearly 1 1-2 seconds behind the gold medalist.

Groves took the silver in 1:57.14, adding to the bronze she won in the 3,000. Sablikova also became a double-medalist, following up her gold in the 3,000 with a bronze at half that distance in 1:57.96.

“I’m glad I got a silver, but I’m a little disappointed with how I skated,” Groves said. “It wasn’t my best race. That last lap I kind of faded a bit. Maybe I had too much excitement.”

Ditto for Nesbitt.

“Our teams are doing pretty well, but speedskating is tough,” she said. “You can’t always perform and there’s all kinds of factors that limit or stop you.”

Nesbitt struggled across the finish with her head down, knowing her time wouldn’t be good enough for a medal of any color after she won the 1,000. That remains Canada’s only gold at the speedskating oval; the host team was expecting a better showing, especially after it stirred up complaints from other countries that it was hogging the practice time in suburban Richmond.

The Dutch won their third gold medal at the oval, and they’re likely not done with world-record holder Sven Kramer going next in the men’s 10,000 on Tuesday.

The Americans were no factor. Heather Richardson was 16th, Jennifer Rodriguez 18th, Jilleanne Rookard 24th and Catherine Raney-Norman 31st.

Rodriguez, who won two medals at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, retired after a disappointing performance at the Turin Games. But the Miami native decided to return for one more Winter Games, her fourth, and was skating in the last individual event of her Olympic career.

It wasn’t the way she wanted to go out. Ahead of Wust’s pace at the 700-meter mark, Rodriguez faded badly over the final two laps and crossed in 2:00.08.

“It was a terrible race,” she said.