New Star, Old Stuff: Norway Hits Gold

NAGANO, Japan —  It wasn’t Koss the Boss out there, skating in the red slick suit of Norway in the men’s 1,500-meter speedskating race Thursday at the M-Wave. But it might as well have been.

Same results.

Norwegian gold. World record.

This time, it was Aadne Sondral’s turn. Finally.

With a retired Johann Olav Koss watching in the broadcast booth--he does TV analysis for an Australian network--Sondral burned the Dutch skaters, zip strips and all, just as Koss had done in this event in the last two Olympics.

The Netherlands had been looking for a possible medal sweep--Jan Bos, in fact, had just finished the race in Olympic-record time of 1 minute 49.75 seconds--when Sondral laid waste to that scheme.

With a strong finishing kick--he had the fastest final lap of the race--he blew past Dutchman Ids Postma, his skating partner, clocking 1:47.87, then watched as Rintje Ritsma, the last Dutch hope, failed to beat either his or Postma’s time.

This, after having finished second to Koss in Albertville in 1992, then fourth to Koss’ first four years ago before the home folks at Lillehammer, where Dutch skaters with silver and bronze separated the Norwegians.

“I think I’ve been almost everything in skating,” Sondral said. “I’ve been the big talent. I’ve been the one who failed. I’ve been the one who was always second. Now I’m winning. It feels good at the end to have a medal.”

A gold medal.

The Dutch skaters caused a stir when they showed up here for the Games with rubberized strips attached to their skating suits between knee and ankle. No one was quite sure whether the strips were aerodynamically sound or simply a psych move, but when Gianni Romme and Ritsma finished 1-2 Sunday in the opening race, the 5,000, and both had beaten the previous world record, it wasn’t hard to conclude that the Dutch had something going for them.

Bos was the first of the Dutch skaters Thursday, and he turned in a credible time of 1:49.75, bumping American KC Boutiette out of the Olympic record he had skated only two pairs earlier.

Then Sondral and Postma went at it. There is no telling now if Postma might have won, but he was only half a stride behind and had the inside lane when they came through the final turn. Then Postma momentarily lost his footing, stood nearly upright to collect himself and saw Sondral streaking to the finish.

“It went pretty well until I had a little bit of failure on the last lap,” Postma said.

That left it to Ritsma, sort of the Dan Jansen of the Netherlands. He has won all over the world, except in the Olympics, and it was his two-month-old world mark of 1:48.88 that Sondral had just broken. But, unlike Jansen at Lillehammer, he couldn’t remedy that situation. Instead, he skated 1:48.52, settling for bronze.

Boutiette had been the top U.S. hope, but a poor start ruined his chance for a medal run and he finished fifth.

“I was confident,” he said. “I was just sitting on the [starting] line, thinking, ‘I want it! I want it!’

“The gun went off, I missed a few strokes and in trying to get that back I was slipping all over the place. . . . “I had a good first turn and first straightaway, then in the second turn I made another mistake. I can’t help but say that might have cost me a little time. I just got off balance at the start and I worked so hard to get it back that I was making mistakes I don’t usually make.

“Right after that, I settled down and I built [the race], just like I’d been going over in my mind.”

And he did have the Olympic record, if only for a while.

“It was nice but I knew it wouldn’t stand,” he said.

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MEDALISTS

Speedskating

MEN’S 1,500 METERS

Gold: Aadne Sondral, Norway

Silver: Ids Postma, Netherlands

Bronze: Rintje Ritsma, Netherlands