2016 Worlds of Speed Skating: Senior Men’s sprinting pronostics

Pronostic

As I’ve mentioned earlier when talking about sprinting, it is hard to look past the Colombian dominance. In fact, in men’s sprinting they have won every 300m TT since 2010, and every 500m since 2011. Andres Munoz and Pedro Casuil were the main « reason » for this dominance. They were constantly pushing each other to go faster, and when they combined their powers together in the national team they were close to unbeatable. However, there is a lot people hungry to knock the Colombians from the top step of the podium, these challengers is lead by German sprint ace Simon Albrecht.

Incredibly close!

The differences between the fastest men in the World are smaller than ever. As seen in last year’s 300m TT results. Andres Jimenez won by the large margin of 0,27 seconds, so take him out and from 2nd-12th position were only separated by less than 0,6 of a second, or the fight for the medals is incredibly close with 2nd-6th spanning only 0,208 seconds. With such tight margins, the smallest details come the biggest deals on race day. All the guys are fast, is mostly about who handles and skates the track the best.

Form heading into the championships it’s hard to look past the Colombians, but the king of the sprints from 2015 Andres Jimenez is coming off an injury earlier this season. As for Europe the best chances lie with an always improving Simon Albrecht, and the equally impressive Gwendal Le Pivert who has made some big gains this season.

As with the girls, for some positions, I can only put a country since some skaters haven’t been selected for individual races yet. Also we will firstly look at the 300m TT, 500m, and the one lap:

300m TT

1. Simon Albrecht (Germany)
2. Colombia
3. Colombia. (wild card: Ioseba Fernandez)

500m track

1. Colombia
2. Gwendal Le Pivert (France)
3. Colombia (wild card: Jhoan Guzman, VEN)

One lap road

1. Colombia
2. Colombia
3. Simon Albrecht (wild card: Ioseba Fernandez)

100m

The standing 100m is a special event in it’s own right, needing a special set of skills. Obviously you still need to very fast, but an actual race as opposed to a TT is very different. Again similar to the women’s event in 2015 most of the podium was made up of skaters that collected their only medal was in the 100m. Same as the 300m TT the time differences are insanely close. From the first round it is ranked on times and it is possible that two big favorites can meet very early in the event, and from then on, only the winner advancing to the next round there is bound to be some surprises. Also the 100m last year was the first event of it’s kind for most people so now people have more experience with such an event.

1. Colombia
2. Ioseba Fernandez (Spain)
3. Riccardo Passarotto (Italy) (Wild card: Jhoan Guzman, VEN)

1000m

I already mentioned that 1000m is a unique event because of the cross over between the sprinters and long distance skaters. Looking back at some of the winners in previous years: Andres Jimenez 2015, Alexis Contin 2014, Bart Swings 2013, Peter Michael 2012, Pedro Causil 2011, Joey Mantia 2010; you can maybe argue that it does slightly favor the long distance guys. But Bart, Peter and Alexis will all have a flying lap (top speed) that is similar to the best sprinters in the World anyway.

My prediction:

1. Peter Michael (New-Zealand)
2. Colombia
3. Colombia (wild card: Chinese Taipei)

Links

2016 World Inline Speed Skating Championships in Nanjing (China)