Parade of ice machines overshadows speedskating
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 | 1:40 PM ET
CBC Sports
A second ice resurfacing machine goes over the ice during the men's 500-metre speedskating final on Monday. The zamboni breakdown caused a 1½-hour delay. (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)RICHMOND, British Columbia — To all the other woes of these Winter Olympics, one can add malfunctioning ice resurfacing machines. At the Richmond Olympic Oval on Monday night, two machines broke down while smoothing the ice midway through the first round of the men's 500 metres, causing a delay of over an hour.
The scene — call it Keystone Kops on Ice — overshadowed the speedskating, which as far as the partisan crowd was concerned was probably just as well.
After the machines sputtered, so did Canada's favourite speedskating son, Jeremy Wotherspoon. Trying for the fourth time to win his first Olympic gold medal in his specialty race, Wotherspoon finished ninth. Mo Tae-bum of South Korea won the gold with a total time of one minute 9.82 seconds. He was followed by Japan's Nagashima Keilchiro and Joji Kato.
As Wotherspoon removed his skates on the infield, he was serenaded by a Dutch band, which played, "I Just Called to Say I Love You."
After waiting out the delay and posting the 18th-fastest time among the 39 starters, the American Shani Davis withdrew from the second round. He was using the 500 metres as a final tune-up for his defense of the 1,000 metre title on Wednesday. Asked about the lengthy wait, Davis said: "It's part of the game. It happens. Bad ice is bad ice."
An ice-resurfacing machine also broke down Sunday, midway through the women's 3,000 metres. "Three Zambonis," the American Nick Pearson said. "That's a world record."
Magnus Enfeldt, the venue manager, apologized to the athletes and the spectators for the lengthy delay and said that an ice resurfacing machine was being shipped immediately from Calgary. "We're doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again."
Dutch crowd provided entertainment
After the first malfunction on Monday, a Dutch oom-pah band led the crowd of 7,000 in song as a third-string machine, with nary an Olympic decal on it, chugged into view to try to resurface an oval that was in worse shape than the potholed Daytona International Speedway track.
But it too soon disappeared because of some defect. It made a brief reappearance before the first machine returned to finish the job. The ice was resurfaced twice more during the night without incident.
The surface here has been carved up more by the skaters' tongues than their skate blades. They have variously described it as "humbling" and "worker ice" because of its frostiness, painting a picture of a course perhaps better suited for plow horses than thoroughbreds. After the first event, the men's 5,000 metres on Saturday, the United States Coach, Derek Parra, said he planned to ask that the ice be resurfaced twice (instead of once) during the two longest events, the men's 10,000 metres and the women's 5,000 metres, to stave off frost buildup.
The slow ice, he said, can prove a great equalizer, allowing stronger, heavier skaters to bull their way to the top of the podium. Asked about the ice conditions, Katrin Mattscherodt of Germany, who competed in the 3,000 metres, said, "The later you start, the worse it becomes."
Mark Messer, the plant manager and ice specialist at the Olympic oval in Calgary who is in charge of the ice here, said Sunday that the conditions were fine.
"The first skater and the last skater have to have the same conditions and they did," he said. "I'm quite positive they did."
