German Women Show They’re Still the Best

They wear different uniforms, march behind a different flag and hum to a different anthem, but the women who competed for reunified Germany in the opening day of the Winter Olympics speedskating competition looked a lot like the East Germans who have dominated the sport for a decade.

East German women speedskaters won 19 of the 27 medals available in the last two Olympics, and, in the 3,000 meters Sunday, women who would have competed for East Germany if there were still such a country won the gold and the silver.

The favorite, Gunda Niemann, won by almost three seconds over teammate Heike Warnicke, and, despite Niemann’s insistence that she is here only to have a good time now that she has this race behind her, she also is expected to win the 1,500 and the 5,000.

The Netherlands’ Yvonne van Gennip won those three events four years ago at Calgary, then retired to work for an insurance company and as a volunteer for the Red Cross. She came out of retirement last year, but has not regained her form and finished sixth.

The best the United States could do was 15th by Mary Docter. In a 26-woman field, Angela Zuckerman finished 22nd and Michelle Kline 25th.

“We don’t have a good chance because we don’t have good skaters,” said the U.S. distance coach, Stanislaw Klotkowski.

There was speculation that the East Germans, for a variety of reasons related to reunification, would not be as dominant as they were in the past. But Niemann, 25, appears to have made the transition as an athlete without much difficulty.

It has, however, been harder for her personally. Her husband, a speedskating coach, was one of many East Germans working in sports who lost his job when the countries merged.