Pacing and Success for the Sprint in Ice Speed Skating

For sprint events in ice speed skating it is frequently recommended to perform maximal velocities early in the race. Observations have been made to find Out whether or not top-level speed skaters use this pacing strategy during official competition, and how it can be observed comparing successful to less successful athletes. Split times and final times of 45 female and 53 male ice speed skaters in the 1,000-m sprint event were analysed. Skaters were devided into successful and less successful athletes based on their achieved rank using the median split technique. Sign test was used to determine differences in the frequency of adherence/non-adherence of the proposed strategy Contrary to the strategy, male and female athletes, regardless of their calibre were significantly more likely to perform the first 600 in slower than the final 400 in (females: 76.3% vs. 23.7%, p=0.002; males: 90.2% vs. 9.8%, p<0.001). This finding calls into question the validity of the proposed pacing strategy for the investigated competition and suggests a regulatory distribution of skating velocities throughout sprint events. Additionally, using the pacing strategy adopted by successful skaters, it does not necessarily result in a good ranking during competition. Therefore, the additional effect of both physiological and technical aspects on speed skating performance should be addressed in further studies.