KEARNS — Seven seconds. In the landscape of long-track speedskating, it may as well be a mountain.
But this is the women's 3,000 meters — more distance to chip away at the seconds — and U.S. Speedskating's Jennifer Rodriguez is on her home ice. But does she have enough to break a world record?
Canada's Cindy Klassen predicted in a recent press conference that the 3,000 meters world record could be broken in Kearns. In fact, most skaters are saying that if anyone will grab gold medals at the Utah Olympic Oval, it'll probably have to be with world-record times.
Klassen's personal best in the 3,000 is 4 minutes, 2.41 seconds while Rodriguez has never skated faster than 4:06.59, about seven seconds slower than the world-record time.
They'll both have to skate by German powerhouse Claudia Pechstein, who holds the current world record and became the first woman to break the 4-minute barrier with 3:59.26. An equal threat to take the event is her teammate Anni Friesinger, who has clocked a 4:01.98 personal best.
Competition starts at 1 p.m.
Men's competition
Casey FitzRandolph may be America's best chance for a gold in men's long-track speedskating, and he will get his chance to take a step toward that end on Monday at the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns.
The first of two days of men's 500 meter races begins at 1 p.m. Races begin at the same time Tuesday. Winners are determined based on the best combined times of the two days.
This year's World Cup season has seen FitzRandolph and Canada's Jeremy Wotherspoon locked in a struggle for supremacy. The two rarely finish more than a few hundredths of a second apart. That may not be surprising, considering they train together in Calgary and are close enough friends that they often go fishing together. And they often are the butt of each other's good-natured kidding.
Asked if he thought training with FitzRandolph had helped him prepare for the Games, Wotherspoon acknowledged, "We push each other," but then added with a smile, "I think it might have helped him more than it helped me."
But they aren't the only ones with a good shot at the gold. Japan's Hiroyasu Shimizu remains a force to be reckoned with. A nagging back injury has slowed him a little this season, but he remains the world record holder, and he set that time, 34.32 seconds, at the Utah Olympic Oval last March.
Shimizu is a hero in Japan. He won the gold in the 500 in Nagano, setting an Olympic record in the process. Wotherspoon won the silver in Nagano. FitzRandolph is the relative upstart. He competed in Nagano, but finished only 6th in the 500 meters.