I'm surprised to hear you can even see it in the US.. As you can tell from Lefty's comments even the UK doesn't care..
It is very big here in Holland where it's our national winter sport (Since we don't have any hills to go skiing......). Other countries that participate are Norway, Germany, Russia and some of it's former states, Japan, Korea, Finland, Canada, the USA and a few others.
Shani is one of my few not-Dutch favourites; He just does things his way, and he's won just about everything there is to win. Very few skaters have won both Sprint and allround titles plus olympic medals as well!
Nothing wrong with speed skating - very skilful stuff. (and EPIC pile-ups!) But nobody has answered my question - how do you start ? All the ice rinks I've ever seen are either full of hockey players, curlers or little girls trying to be Katarina Witt! I would have thought that taking up an entire rink for three or four skaters would become very expensive indeed ?
We have several full length (500 meters) ice ovals around here where skaters can train. I think there's an unwritten rule that the speed skaters usse the outer tracks, and the recreational skaters will use the inside.
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