Day 2: Goal Is to Keep Control

His major competitor slipped and fell in the first half of the men’s 500-meter race Monday at the Utah Olympic Oval, so in today’s second half, American speedskater Casey FitzRandolph has to be concerned pretty much with only one man.

Casey FitzRandolph.

If he can skate as fast and as well today as he did Monday, he will win a medal. If he can skate a little faster, a little better, he can assure that its color will be gold. If he falls, as did his good friend and chief rival, Canadian Jeremy Wotherspoon, all will be lost.

So FitzRandolph’s task today, in speedskating’s only two-day race, will be to skate as fast as he can, but not so fast that he’s out of control, while being as careful as is prudent, but not so careful as to slow himself down.

In other words, he has to skate a fine line.

“I was a little bit afraid in my turns [Monday], and that’s not good,” he said after putting himself in the lead with an Olympic-record time of 34.42 seconds. “It slowed me down. I have to be more aggressive and trust the ice more.”

And there’s the rub. Wotherspoon, the World Cup leader skating in the last pair of the day and eager to beat the time FitzRandolph had posted three pairs earlier, trusted the ice and never made it to a turn. In fact, he never made it through the first 50 meters, falling before getting a chance to stretch his legs after his start.

“He did a couple of steps in the beginning, and then his skates got stuck,” Canadian Coach Shawn Ireland said. “It appeared to be a technical error.”

That error not only left FitzRandolph in the driver’s seat, but also boosted the medal chances of teammate Kip Carpenter, who, surprisingly, finished the day in third place, sandwiched between FitzRandolph and their now-most-dangerous opponent, world record holder Hiroyasu Shimuzu of Japan, the defending Olympic champion.

Shimuzu, paired with American Joey Cheek, skated a then-Olympic-record 34.61, knocking Carpenter out of the lead he had taken with a run of 34.68. Cheek skated 34.78 and starts today’s race in seventh place.

Marc Pelchat, the fourth American, is 34th after demonstrating what grace under pressure is all about. Noted for his explosive start, Pelchat, like Wotherspoon, had hardly begun his race when he went pitching to the ice. The former hockey player slid, spun around on his bottom, then scrambled to his skates and resumed racing. Veteran speedskating observers agreed there had never been a more graceful recovery.

Although he was the unwitting beneficiary of Wotherspoon’s fall, FitzRandolph viewed it with sadness. Since the Nagano Games four years ago, the veteran skater from Verona, Wis., has been training with the Canadian team at the Calgary Olympic rink. So he and Wotherspoon are more than rivals.

Shimuzu, only .19 of a second behind, still looms as a formidable rival. And FitzRandolph, even with his fast time, had to steady himself with a hand on the ice through the last turn. One bobble and

“I am not too happy,” Shimuzu said. “I came here to win the gold medal. That’s what I am going for.”