Posted at 8:35 p.m.
(Beijing) We see him coming from afar, his face flushed, still shaken by what has just happened. Not to happen.
He sees us from afar with our heads of condolences, as if he had personally disappointed us by returning without a medal. He knows he will have to suffer a lot of questions he can’t answer.
It is the ritual of defeat.
One top 10 in the 5000 m, there is nothing dishonouring. But when your name is Ted-Jan Bloemen, when you’re Olympic vice-champion, third in the world this season… it’s like taking the field on the highway on a clear day.
The two-time Canadian medalist from PyeongChang started off at a brisk pace and had the best time at 1200m. But everything went off the rails, he couldn’t keep up the pace and he finished 10and in his first race.
A Chinese volunteer hands him our phones on a tray. He looks at us behind his mask, crestfallen, sorry, confused.
“Yeah, I’ve been preparing for this race for a long time, I had a good plan, everything was going really well for four laps and… everything went wrong. I have no explanation… I couldn’t keep up the pace. »
The training difficulties for two years? COVID-19? How is the ice cream? The canceled training camps, it must play … The pressure of having seen the Olympic record fall before his race?
No, yes, of course… the others also experienced this. There are no excuses really. He lends himself to the game as he can, but in the end he has no idea what happened.
The journalists encourage him: there are still two races left, the 10,000m, where he took gold in 2018, and the 1500m…
I don’t know, I’m going to calm down a bit, I’m going to make my plans…
Ted Jan Bloemen
His trainer, Bart Schouten, was equally mystified.
“He loosened his technique and his position was worse by the sixth or seventh lap, but the question is why that happened. »
He tells us that Bleomen has been sick this winter and missed a bit of training, but the times in training lately indicated a full recovery and hinted at a great performance.
Sometimes a few slightly too fast laps at the start of the race can sap energy and throw everything out of whack.
In this sport where you race not against the other skater but against the stopwatch, when the laps start to be slower, you know that there is nothing more to do, the spiral is irreversible. The next round will be worse, the next even worse, and the legs will never get better.
Except maybe if your name is Nils Van der Poel and you are the world record holder. After slowing two-thirds into the race, he picked up nearly two seconds in the final two laps to move from third to first.
PHOTO PAUL CHIASSON, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Nils Van der Poel
As his name does not indicate, Van der Poel is Swedish. And precisely because he has a Dutch name (his grandfather emigrated to Sweden), a trainer suggested to his father that he try out speed skating, after training in “bandy”, a kind of Swedish hockey .
He now has the world record for the 5,000m and 10,000m and on Friday he intends to take the Olympic title from Bloemen.