Suzanne Schulting | The one who doesn’t know how to lose

Dutch short track speed skater Suzanne Schulting is one of the most dominant athletes on the planet. She begins her title defense in Montreal this weekend in hopes of ending her withdrawal. Her career, she wants to live it with a medal around her neck.

Schulting has finished atop the world short track speed skating rankings every season since 2019. She’s untouchable.

The 2022-2023 season will be another opportunity to prove it. Each season, the pressure increases. The more time passes, the more titles she has to defend.

All week, the preparation for the first meeting of the campaign went off without a hitch. When they weren’t on the skating rink at the Maurice-Richard Arena, she and her teammates explored the Quebec metropolis by bike, in various parks, or on foot, during outings downtown.

” It is so hot ! It’s usually cold when we come here,” she recalls, laughing in one of the arena’s locker rooms, on the edge of the ice surface.

Just after the Dutch team’s practice on skates, she showed up wearing a tracksuit in her team’s colors, a yellow water bottle in her hand.

A slender athlete who looks taller than her profile indicates, Schulting maintains exceptional physical condition. At just 25, she is probably in the best shape of her life.

While she’s armed with unwavering confidence, it’s been a long time since she last competed last spring. The first day of the World Cup will be an opportunity for her to compare herself again to the other skaters.

The art of dominating

Most of the time, the Dutchwoman writes history between the moment she ties her skates and the moment she unlaces them. Since the start of her prolific career, she has won six Olympic medals, three of them gold. At the most recent Games, in Beijing, she eclipsed four Olympic records and a world record.

In the world championships, she won gold seven times. In 2021, at home in the Netherlands, she won all the gold medals that were at stake.

“Gold motivates me to get up and train, because winning is the best feeling in the world,” she says, playing with the gold rings that adorn her fingers.

Last year on the World Cup circuit, she was excluded from the podium only twice, but she kissed her medal on the top step of the podium on seven occasions.

For her, “winning is a drug”, but success does not happen by chance. It is the result of a happy mixture of discipline and wonder.

She dedicated her life to speed skating, to excellence. His daily life is all about training, eating well and sleeping well. “I like this way of life,” she insists.

There is also this quest for surpassing oneself, at the heart of the approach of the greatest athletes. Although Schulting can sometimes be harsh on herself, she is also able to recognize her good moves. Like the fact of having already experienced the perfect race, the one that some will chase in vain their entire career.

According to her, this perfect race took place at the Beijing Olympics, during the quarter-finals of the 1000 m. It was on this occasion that she broke the world record by covering the nine laps in 1 min 26 s 514.

“It happens to have the perfect race, but it doesn’t happen often… I can even say that in the 1000m final, even though I won gold, I didn’t have a perfect race. »

Schulting has great qualities, but two factors make her the best skater in the world. First, its ability to generate a lot of speed in a few pushes. Then, his way of defending a lead. It leaves no space for its rivals, while maintaining a TGV rate.

“I’m in my natural state when I’m in the lead,” she says when it comes to race management.

Time passes quickly between the tee shot and the finish line. Despite the sound of the blades biting into the ice, the breathing of her rivals and their hands that sometimes touch her back to avoid falls, she explains that skaters don’t really have time to realize what’s going on around of them. You have to trust your instincts and especially your preparation.

What is most difficult for Schulting to deal with is more what revolves around the competition than the competition itself. Lucid, she admits that it is sometimes difficult to be the fastest skater in the world.

“The hardest thing is to keep your concentration all year round. With the stress and the pressure that comes from all sides, added to the pressure that I put on myself, it is more difficult to assimilate than leading a race. The preparation is more demanding than the execution. »

Nevertheless, the pressure she puts on herself is necessary, because without this desire to always do better, she thinks it would be impossible to win so many medals. Schulting is more fueled by the feeling of having won than skating to win: “That’s the feeling I’m looking for. Every race, I want to win for it. »

Getting bored to come back better

Last year, she had to give up on the Worlds at the end of the season, in Montreal, since she had contracted COVID-19 a few days before the competition. “I was really sad not to be able to participate. The Dutchwoman was having the best season of her career and she had the ambition to defend her five titles.

“It was difficult mentally, because I wanted to bring home the gold at all costs. This is the most important thing for me. »

“I really like this sport. I love this life. And then they took that away from me. It was really frustrating. But it allowed me to think and get bored,” she says, tapping gently on the table, taken by the passion that inhabits her.

“I’m out of competition right now. »

At 25, Schulting is entering what could be the pinnacle of his career. She is in a phase where all the elements come together for her to shine even more than before. “They say when you get to 26 you’re at the top of your game. I feel very good. »

With nearly 1 million followers on Instagram, Suzanne Schulting ignites passions and inspires people around the world to get interested in speed skating.

The skater who grew up “in the middle of nowhere” in the north of the Netherlands now has the potential to become not only one of the greatest athletes in the history of speed skating, but also in the history of sport. Still, she doesn’t overthink it. For now. “When I retire, people will decide what category I’m in, but right now all I care about is winning. »