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Regions in Italy  Region Piemonte > Torino 2006 Olympic Games > Speed Skating | |||||||||
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Speed SkatingXX Winter Olympic Games Torino 2006
Speed skating involves skating on 1.2mm wide blades on ice oval track, over distances from 500 up to 10,000 meters, and is the fastest human-powered sport, with skaters reaching speeds up to 60 km/h.
EVENTS:
Speed Skating at the 2006 Winter Olympics will be held in the town of Torino, at the newly built ice palace called Oval, inside the Lingotto Olympic District, from February 11 to February 25. The Oval is connected to the city center and the railway station by public transport.
CALENDAR:
HISTORY
Archeological findings show that skates were already in use 3000 years ago in Scandinavia. In more recent centuries, skating became widespread in the Netherlands, as a useful way to travel over the canals, and as a matter of fact the Netherlands is the birthplace of speed skating, since the first known competition was recorded in 1676.
The Frieslanders of North Holland introduced the sport to England, in an area from Cambridge to the Wash known as the Fens, where competitions have been held since 1814. Skating competitions spread across northern Europe, and the first official events were held in 1863 in Oslo, Norway. In 1889 the first speed skating World Championships were held in the Netherlands hosted, with athletes from Holland, Russia, North America and Britain. The sport spread to North America in the mid-1800s, and the first great American racer was Tim Donoghue, who competed from 1863-1875. Also his son Joseph Donoghue was a great skater, winning the 2nd (1890) and 3rd (1891) unofficial World championships. Speed Skating has been an Olympic event ever since the 1st Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix Mont Blanc in 1924, only with male events, and since the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympic Games also women's specialities have been included. RULES OF SPEED SKATING:
Speed skating at the Olympic Games consists of ten events: 500m, 1000m, 1500m and 5000m for both women and men, 3000m only for women, 10,000m only for men, and Team pursuit for both women and men. All events consist of just one race, with the exception of the men's and women's 500 metres, which are skated twice and the final result is based on the total time of both races.
In each event, skaters race in pairs on the two lanes, counter-clockwise on a 400m oval track and are timed to a hundredth of a second.
EQUIPMENT
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