Last Day of Track Racing

The last day of track was another action packed day. Despite a lengthy rain delay, things were quite heated as the action moved to the 500-meter and relay races.


I know that you know this guy between Jesse and I: It’s Mau Pan Lau, all the way from Montreal! He was shouting ‘Peter, Peter!’ right when I was cooling down on the road after our relay heat. I was so happy to see him. He was in Hong Kong for a few months and now he's on his way back home. You can look for him at the WIC in Suzhou, China next week.

There was a whole situation where a Colombian skaters was disqualified from his semi-final but after a protest, was allowed to move on to the final. Joey Mantia was supposedly disqualified for the same infraction, but the protest was not upheld. The crowd got behind Mantia’s back, shouting ‘Mantia! Mantia!’ as he skated around. Watching him from the stands, he was very composed and a class act.

The other fun thing that happened was in the athlete’s area. The Outback restaurant has been providing teams with boxes of bread each day. Today was different because one piece of bread flew from one of the change areas into another country’s changing area, and a massive food fight erupted. It continued until a bunch of security guards in suits rushed into the huge tent to control the situation. This brought back memories from the massive food fight at the party at the 2000 world championships in Barrancabermeja, Colombia.



Jesse Pauley getting his posted signed by Luca Presti.

Relays took place today. The USA broke out of their what I would call ‘medal slump’ and earned a few including a win the senior women’s race with Jessica Smith out-hawking Colombia’s superstar Cecilia Baena. There were of course a few crashed taking teams out of contention including Italy in the junior men’s and Chinese-Taipei in the senior women’s. The Korean junior men won the relay by a significant margin, with the finishing skater giving high fives to the crowd as he came up to the finishing straight.


Chris Creveling skating in the 500-meter quarter final.


Andrew Gonzales ahead of Cecilia Baena and Jessica Smith- Smith crashed right after I took this picture.

Kalon Dobbin won the senior men’s 500-meter final, stopping a Colombian medal domination. I was talking with Jesse Pauley while we were watching the Colombian team win I think 5 medals in the span of about 5-minutes. The Colombians won more medals in 5 minutes than Canada has won in 30 years! That makes them probably about a billion times better than us!


Kalon Dobbin after his victory in the 500-meter.


Bodies all over the place during the senior women’s relay final.


USA senior women holding their flag up high and proud after their victory in the relay.


The French relay team leads the way in the senior men’s relay on their way to a gold medal.

Jade and Alex skated their 500’s in low 48’s. I think Andrew was in the 47’s while AJ was in the 51’s. I think Sigrid came in the 54’s, but the track was wet- she skated right before the rain delay was called, so she got the short end of the stick with this one. The junior guys skated a good relay heat and just missed finishing it by about 1-lap. The seniors, Andrew, AJ, and I lasted 7 ½ laps. Eek, the other countries are fast!


The skaters from the Netherlands were happy. They had a good reason. They placed 2nd in the junior men’s relay final! It was so nice to see such joy from these guys who put together a solid race. This is their first ever junior world medal.


Jesse Pauley with Chinese Taipei’s Chris. Jesse and Chris are going to trade skin suits after the uniform. Each time a skater from Chinese Taipei crashes, Jesse is quite concerned whether it is Chris or not.

Today; rest day. Yay! Over and out!