Moaning Mo
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Mo Tae-bum reacts after competing in the second heat of the men’s 500-meter speed skating final at the Adler Arena Skating Center on Monday. / Yonhap
Defending 500-meter champ finishes fourth
By Jung Min-ho
Mo Tae-bum finished his 500-meter speed skating race faster than he did at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, where he won a gold medal. Yet three Dutch skaters outperformed him and kept him off the podium.
At the Adler Arena Skating Center, Tuesday, Mo finished fourth with a combined time of 69.69 seconds, which is better than his previous Olympic record of 69.82 seconds but 0.38 seconds behind the new champion, Michel Mulder of the Netherlands.
Jan Smeekens and Ronald Mulder took the silver and bronze, respectively, for a night for the Netherlands. The Dutch men had also taken a clean sweep of the medals in the 5,000-meters on Saturday with Sven Kramer taking the gold ahead of Jan Blokhuijsen and Jorrit Bergsma.
Mo finished fourth in the first race at 34.84 seconds and fifth in the second contest at 34.85 seconds. Few expected the time would not get a spot in the podium before the competition started.
“I think I did quite well,” Mo told reporters after the race. “The Dutch skaters did better.”
Unlike the Vancouver Games, where only Mo and Keiichiro Nagashima of Japan completed within 70 seconds in the event, five skaters did this time.
Three other Koreans Lee Kyou-hyuk, Kim Jun-ho and Lee Kang-seok ranked 18th with 70.65 seconds, 21st with 70.857 seconds and 22nd 70.87 seconds.
“I tried to stay calm, think of the race, not on others. I focused on little things, like two good races, how to approach the corners and so on. The nerves where there, without nerves you can’t compete, but I knew I did it before,” Mulder said.
With another medal hope dashed despite a decent performance, Team Korea has not seen a medal yet.
It bears further watching whether speed skater Lee Sang-hwa, short-track skater Shim Suk-hee and figure skater Kim Yu-na will be able to achieve Team Korea’s goal of winning four gold medals in their own rights, with others struggling.
Mo will seek to redeem himself in the 1,000-meter event at 11 p.m. on Wednesday. In Vancouver, he won a silver medal in the event behind formidable Olympic champion Shani Davis of the United States. The American is aiming for his third straight Olympic title.
Mo snatched a gold medal at the World Cup in December, clocking 1:09.5 over Davis, who won the bronze with 1:09.59, giving him hope for an Olympic medal.
In fact, Mo and his coaches said several times that he focused more on the 1,000-meter contest, probably assuming that he would have no problem winning the 500 meters.
Mo’s challenge nonetheless will likely be stiff. Davis made history as the first African-American to take home an individual gold medal in the event in Turin in 2006. If Davis again tops podium, he will become the first U.S. Olympian to win three consecutive gold medals in the same event.
Kazakh skater Denis Kuzin, who won the 2013 World Single Distance Championships, is another competitor Mo has to be wary of.