Over 300 skaters from more than 10 nations took part in the Oval Finale in Calgary during March 21 to 25. Mickey Kupchyk of the Regina Speed Skating Club in Saskatchewan was among the many masters competitors and sent the following amazing report.
Congratulations to Mickey who set a new Canadian 1500m olympic style indoor record for Masters Men 3 (50 -59 years) with a time of 2:12.86.
Complete event results can be seen at http://www.oval.ucalgary.ca/Long_Track.asp
Day 1 – Practice
On Monday, March 20 I arrive in Calgary for the 2006 ING Olympic Oval Finale. Over 300 skaters from ten different countries will be competing in this weeklong event. A short drive from the airport ends at the University of Calgary campus and the Olympic Oval. After having skated at the Milwaukee Oval four weeks earlier, I’m not as intimidated when I enter this building. That would change quickly.
Members of the Canadian, U.S.A., Chinese, and Japanese Olympic teams are on the ice training. Dankers, Klassen, Wotherspoon, Morrison, Groves, and Remple zip around the ice in a train. I sit in the stands for an hour mesmerized watching these elite athletes skate. Until you actually see it live, you cannot believe the speed they are going. What the heck am I doing here?
At 6:00 P.M. I’m back for the Group C practice time. Group A consists of national team skaters, Group B includes national team developmental skaters, and Group C is left for the dregs of the world. I find a place to sit by a couple of other Masters skaters; safety in numbers is my motto. The ice is a milky white and looks almost like plastic. Later I’m told this is because they add something to the water, which forces the oxygen to the top, which in turn makes the ice faster. Whatever they do, it definitely works the ice is very fast.
Two hours later I return to the bench where I meet Cor Zwaal, a sixty-year-old gentleman from The Netherlands. He will be skating Friday and Saturday in the sprints (500m and 1000m), meanwhile he’ll spend the rest of the week coaching. He asks where I’m from and whom I’m with. When I explain that I was from Regina and here by myself, he offers to coach me for the week. Great, someone to give me lap times!
Little did I know that as a coach for the Dutch National team his idea of coaching was going to be a lot more then just calling lap times.
Day 2 – The Coach
7:00 A.M. I get to the rink for the practice session. At any time there’s at least 75 skaters on the ice. Team Canada and Team U.S.A. skin suits flash by. Okay, now I’m really starting to get nervous and this is just practice. Well just like swimming, at some point you have to get in the water.
I step on to the ice in my black and green Regina skin and start to pick up speed in the warm up lane. I slide in behind a lady from China who is moving at a comfortable pace. Look mom I’m skating. All of a sudden she breaks, gone like a shot from 20 to 45 km/hr in 10 strides. It’s a good thing there’s no flies in the Oval because I’m sure they would have all landed in my open mouth.
Time for me to try a couple of accelerations. Just as I hit top speed Arne Dankers blows around the outside of me like I’m standing still. What little confidence I may have had gets quickly sucked into the vortex left behind him.
As I’m sitting on the bench wondering if I can still make the 10:00 A.M. WestJet flight back to Regina, Cor shows up. “So you’re all warmed up and ready to go?” Oh I’m ready to go all right, home. “You will be fine”, he assures me, “just do your best and have fun”. How many times have I told my kids the same thing?
During the week I will be competing in the Men’s ARS (500m, 1500m, 3000m and 5000m). Today starts with the 500m.
Thankfully they’ve paired me with another Masters skater Roy Gaston from Quebec. When the gun goes off I get my customary mediocre start and accelerate down the front straight. As I come out of the first corner onto the back straight to my surprise I see Cor standing on the ice in the middle of my lane just like you see in the Olympics. He’s pumping his arms frantically from side to side yelling “swing your arms, push, push, PUSH!” Dumbfounded, I comply as best I can.
During the cool down lap Cor skates up beside me and says, “You had a poor start and a sloppy first corner but you picked it up nicely after that and finished strong. A good time, that was a second and a half personal best.” I didn’t know how to explain that he’d scared the heck out of me, so I didn’t say anything. “I see you’ve played a lot of hockey, we need to work on those starts. You’re wasting too much energy and losing speed.” How many times have Doug and Dave said the same thing to me at practice, old habits are hard to break.
Cor calls over one of the Dutch national team skaters and says something in Dutch. “Dennie will show you how to do it. You see, six to eight quick steps then switch to longer powerful strides to the side. Easy.” I guess if I’d started speed skating when I was in diapers like Dennie than it would be easy.
The next race isn’t for another 3 hours, time for a bathroom break. When I reach the nearest washroom I find that its been magically transformed into a Doping Control center. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.
All of the athletes stay in continuous motion: stretching, running, biking, and jumping. I watch as two Romanian skaters do standing jumps from the bottom of the stands to the top one step at a time. Then they do it again two steps at a time. You can’t be serious, now they’re doing it again three steps at a time! Looks like I’ll be the only one sipping Pepsi around here.
Cor finds me and tells me its time to get ready for the 3000m. He asks me how I normally skate it. I explain that since it’s a longer race I like to start slowly, skate the corners clean and push hard on the straights. “No, no, no, that’s all wrong. I want you to start fast, push hard, and accelerate in the first corner. Continue to build speed on the front straight and push hard in the next corner. Then I want you to relax and glide the back straight. Skate all of the corners hard and don’t lose any speed then relax and glide the straights. What sort of time do you skate?” I explained that I did a 4:51 in Milwaukee in a mass start race. “That means you need 37.5 to 38 second laps”. He knew the numbers right off the top of his head.
For the 3000m we’re doing a quad start. In a quad, two skaters start on the line and once they are half way around the track a second pair of skaters are then started. This helps to save time and keep things moving along.
I’m paired with Coen VanBeek from the Netherlands. He’s in his late thirties and there’s not an ounce of fat on him. Send him to Saskatchewan, we’ll put some meat on those bones. The start goes much better then the 500m. As I enter the back straight to get my first full lap time, Cor holds up the board showing 3.3 and yells, “good keep it up”. As I pass him I realize that I just did a 33.3 second lap, I’ve never done a 33 second lap before. Next time around 34.2. “Good, relax on the straights”. Three laps later the times have dropped off a bit but I’m still doing low 38’s.
Then with a lap and a half to go disaster strikes! My contacts have dried out. Coming down the back straight both lens blow out of my eyes. Stopping to pick them up didn’t seem like a good option so I carried on blind as a bat. Halfway through the corner I step on a puck and start the big slide. Its amazing how many things run through your mind as you slide backwards on your butt across two lanes of ice towards the inevitable crash into the mats, like why is it so hard to get the silver cap off the top of a new ketchup bottle and why didn’t they pick some younger guys for the Olympic hockey team this year?
After the race Coen VanBeek comes up to me and asked if I was okay then said, “I really want to thank you.” I asked for what, not taking him into the mats with me? “You took off so fast, so I just tried to stay with you as long as I could. I ended up doing a 20 second personal best,” he beamed.
Cor laughed when I explained what happened, “that was a great race until you crashed, you were on pace to do a 4:28.” Holy crap, I would have beat the Canadian Masters 3 record by over 30 seconds!
I couldn’t wait until the next day.
Day 3 – The Record
Practice seems a little bit different today. Why are all the other skaters going a bit slower then yesterday? Strange.
While sitting on the bench drying my skates after practice a distinguished looking gentleman of about 65 walks up to me. He said, “I was skating in the 3000m quad behind you yesterday, you must have really gotten up fast after your fall?” I told him it was too bad I didn’t get up one second sooner, because I would have broken the Masters 3 record. “I noticed that when I saw your time,” he said with a rather serious look on his face.
“Looks like we’ll be skating the 1500m together,” he said. I told him I was looking forward to the race because I might have an outside shot at breaking the record. I reached into my bag and pulled out Canadian Records sheet to show him. Pointing to the sheet I said look at this Ronald Johnston’s times, isn’t he amazing he’s had most of these records for over ten years. First he sets all four of the Masters 3 records and then when he turns 60 he goes on to set all of the Masters 4 records with even faster times. He gives me a fatherly smile and says, “I’m Ron Johnston.”
At that very moment it seemed like everyone stopped. Everything went absolutely quiet. Everyone in the whole rink turned towards me. They all wanted to see if a person could actually fit both feet into their mouth at the same time.
This time I recovered even faster then my pratfall yesterday. I explained to Ron that there were a couple of things that I had really wanted to accomplish this week and one of them was to meet Ronald Johnston. Ron just patiently smiled as I went on and on about how great his accomplishments were and how much it motivated me. We spent the next half hour getting to know each other. It turns out that Ron is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Calgary and plans to retire within a few months.
As Cor comes up to me during warm up I ask him if I should skate the 1500m the same as I skated the 3000m. “No, no, no, the 1500m is totally different from the 3000m. I want you to go out much harder then yesterday. It’s only a sprint.” A sprint? Not where I come from, but he’s the coach so I‘ll do what he says. “I want a fast opener and I want back-to-back thirties.” Something must be wrong with my hearing. Did he just say back-to-back thirties, I just did my first 33-second lap yesterday and now he wants thirties!
The race was a blur. I only remember seeing my first lap time, 32.3. After that it was total tunnel vision. My head was spinning from lack of oxygen as I crossed the line. Sweeping onto the back straight, there was Cor standing in the middle of the track with a huge smile on his face. He lifted his hand to give me a high five as I went by and only said, “very good”. It was a ten second personal best. He knew we had the record.
Later as we stood by the stands Cor called over one of his good friends, “Catriona, come over here I want you to meet my friend Mickey Kupchyk. He just broke the Canadian Masters 3 1500m record.” I turned to see Catriona Le May Doan walking towards us with a huge smile. She shook my hand firmly as only a prairie girl could and congratulated me. At this point I had to correct Cor and explain to Catriona that I hadn’t broken the record, we had.
I told her it was about time that I saw someone else from Saskatchewan. She flashed a big smile and said, “Didn’t you know, everyone here is from Saskatchewan and for those that aren’t, they wish they were.” As we posed for a picture, she threw her arm around my shoulder like a big sister.
As I turned and started to walk away feeling like I’d just won a gold medal in the Olympics Cor stopped me dead in my tracks, “I want 3 more seconds in tomorrow’s 1500m”. I guess it was time to stop reveling in glory and to start preparing again for what needed to be done next.
Day 4 – Meet The Star
7:00 a.m. practice time again. Just then the sun came through the windows on the east side to light up the track. And then I see her coming around the track, Canada’s current queen of speed skating, Cindy Klassen. I sit and watch in amazement as she effortlessly laps the oval while her coach calls out “32.0, 32.1, 32.0”. This is shear poetry in motion, absolutely no wasted effort.
As she slowly approaches on a cool down lap I just have to ask her for a picture. She flashes me a big smile, “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble can we do it after my training?” Yes, I think I could probably fit her in.
Out on the ice I start to pick up speed. Then I see Cindy coming around the track on another hot lap. What the heck lets see if I can keep up with her. So I light up the afterburners and take off after her. As I approach Mach 1, I start seeing stars from lack of oxygen to the brain. Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea after all. Well I almost kept up to her for one lap as she roared off into the distance.
An hour later down on my knees sharpening my skates a sweet voice says, “Well how about we do that picture now.” I look up to see the cherub face of Cindy smiling down at me. How appropriate that I’m down on my knees, I definitely was not worthy. After the picture she stayed and chatted for a bit. I congratulated her on her Olympic results, but she would have none of it as she humbly said, “the whole team did fantastic I’m so proud of all of them.” The men’s Olympic hockey team could learn a lot from this lady. I told her I had raced at Winnipeg in January and wondered if she missed skating in minus 28 degrees there. She laughed, “Winnipeg yes, the cold no.” Two days later she will set a new 1000m World Record and claim the $25,000 prize.
Time to talk over race strategy with Cor. I ask him if we should do it the same as yesterday. “No, no, no. Today I want you to go out much harder. I want you to push, push, push until you feel like you will die. Then I want you to get it across the finish.” What was that part about dieing?
A faster opener, faster first lap, faster second and then the legs give out. The last lap feels like I’m skating through two-foot Saskatchewan snowdrifts. Somehow I manage to slog across the finish two one hundredths faster then yesterday. During the cool down Cor says, “See, you can go faster. Now you need to build more stamina”. No, now I need to go lay down and die somewhere.
Finally, it’s the dreaded 5000m. Apparently some people in the Netherlands consider this to be a sprint. They are definitely crazy I’m thinking to myself as I walk around the oval making mental notes of where all the oxygen tanks are located. I’ve only skated a fun 5000m mass start race once before. Not knowing the strategy for a real race, I solicit tips from anyone who will talk to me. The consensus seems to be that the race doesn’t even start until lap eight, so you need to conserve enough energy to be able to finish.
It will require a heroic effort to break eight minutes. As I watch skaters in the three races before me struggling to complete the distance the wisdom that comes with age kicks in. Forties for a fifty year old will do just fine today. After stringing off eleven forty second laps in a row I hear my coach back home Dave Beitel’s voice in my head “there’s no use taking it home, leave it on the ice”, so I dig down for the last remains of energy and put it into the last lap. It’s done!
“Well done Mickey, you skated very consistent lap times” Cor smiled. “You skated a technically perfect race for the skill level that you are at now.” High praise in deed from the Master coach, but I knew what was coming. “If you would have started with a 39 then it’s just as easy to maintain a 39 as a 40.” Next time my friend.
Sitting on the bench putting away my skates for the last time this year I look up to see Ron Johnston approach. Ron extends his hand for a warm handshake and smiles, “Well it looks like the records are going to be yours for a while now.” How true, they’ll only be mine for a short while, records are meant to be broken.
Epilogue
As WestJet wings me back home to my wife and two kids in Regina I try to sleep. Although totally exhausted sleep won’t come. The whole fantastic week keeps running through my head: the Oval, the racing, the atmosphere, and new friends. It was only fourteen month ago that I first put on speed skates and stepped on to the windswept outdoor oval in Regina. What a storybook ending to my first year of speed skating.
The people around me on the plane must be wondering what this guy with the silly grin is thinking. They will never know until they lace up speed skates.
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