Speed Skating 2018/Women's 1500 metre

Women's 1500 metre
General information
Sport	Speed Skating 2018
Date	12 February 2018
Competitors	27 athletes
Venue	Gangneung Oval
Previous medalists
Gold	Jorien ter Mors
Silver	Ireen Wust
Bronze	Lotte van Beek
Conditions
Temperature	15°C / 59°F
Length	1500 metres
Medalists
	Ireen Wust
	Miho Takagi
	Marrit Leenstra

The women's 1500 metre of Speed Skating 2018 during the 2018 Winter Olympics was held on 12 February 2018 in the Gangneung Oval. With 27 athletes competing, the event was won by Ireen Wust from Netherlands, with Miho Takagi from Japan taking the silver medal and Marrit Leenstra from Netherlands taking bronze.

Format

The competition exists out of fourteen head-to-head races of 1500 metres. The competitor with the fastest time is the winner.

Preview

Twenty-seven athletes qualified for the event, with Miho Takagi as the absolute favorite for the title. She had won every single World Cup event of the season so far, and was already ensured to win the entire World Cup of the distance over the season with one race to go. However, Heather Bergsma was the current world champion, after a close battle with Ireen Wust. Marrit Leenstra was second in the World Cup standings, and she had also won the bronze medal at the world championships, making her a dangerous competitor for the medals, while Brittany Bowe showed excellent results in the 1000 metres over the previous season. The remaining athletes of Japan and the Netherlands were also very strong, with Ayaka Kikuchi, Nao Kodaira, and Lotte van Beek being possible medal contenders. Other outsiders included veteran Ida Njatun and Katarzyna Bachleda-Curus.

Tian Ruining was the youngest competitor in the field after becoming 21 years old only a month prior, and she was almost a year younger than Nikola Zdrahalova, and three years yougner than top favorite Miho Takagi and Josie Morrison. Katarzyna Bachleda-Curus was the veteran of the field, making her fifth Olympic appearance at the age of 38, and was four years older than Gabriele Hirschbichler, who made her second Olympic Games, and followed by Ireen Wust and Nao Kodaira. The Dutch Wust would be making her fourth Olympic appearance, just like Noh Seon-yeong, and was followed by five other athletes who had competed at every edition since 2010. 2014 Olympic champion Jorien ter Mors wasn't competing after she failed to qualify for the distance, even though she would compete in the shorter 1000 metres, with Ireen Wust and Lotte van Beek as big medal contenders in the field. Nine out of twenty-seven athletes made their Olympic debuts in Pyeongchang.

Current Records

Record	Date	Nat.	Name	Time
WR	21 November 2015		Heather Bergsma	1:50.85
OR	16 February 2014		Jorien ter Mors	1:53.51
TR	12 February 2017		Heather Bergsma	1:54.08

Results

After Josie Morrison stayed below two minutes in her solo heat, outsider Nao Kodaira went a few second below that, and only a few seconds from the Olympic record set four years prior. In the first half of the competition, Francesca Lollobrigida came closest, but she also lost almost 2 seconds over the Japanese. The excitement started in the seventh heat, with Natalia Czerwonka against Brittany Bowe. Despite being slower than Kodaira during almost the entirety of the race, Bowe was able to win over half a second on the leader in the last lap. Czerwonka lost valuable time in just the first lap and skated to a provisional third place. With the two pairs after them not really leaving an impression, the last five promised plenty of action. The tenth pair with Ida Njatun and Hao Jiachen barely scratched the time set by Bowe, with Njatun losing out on Kodaira by a few tenths of a second, but defending silver medalist Ireen Wust left her mark in the next pair against Brianne Tutt. She was over a second faster than the world record holder of the 1000 metres, but as the first of the real pre-event favorites, it remained to be seen what her time would bring. Her countrywoman Marrit Leenstra came close in already the next pair against Katarzyna Bachleda-Curus, and was almost half a second faster with a single lap to go. However, she lost over a second in the last lap and finished behind Wust. Lotte van Beek in the penultimate pair started a bit slower in the hope to compensate it in the final stretch, but she wasn't able to reach the time of Wust either, and also finished a hundredth of a second behind Leenstra. With a single very strong pair to go, with the world champion Heather Bergsma and the winner of the World Cup Miho Takagi, Wust was already ensured of a medal, just like in the previous three editions of this event. The three Dutch women now possessed the three places on the podium, but Takagi ruined a Dutch party in an ultimate attempt, finishing two-tenths of a second behind Wust on second place. Bergsma remained with the Japanese until the last lap, in which she lost over two seconds and finished eighth.

Ireen Wust won her tenth Olympic medal and her fourth medal in the 1500 metres, after winning bronze in 2006, gold in 2010, and silver in 2014. She also won her second medal in two events in Pyeongchang, after winning the silver medal in the 3000 metres. Miho Takagi won her first medal at the Olympic Games in two appearances. Marrit Leenstra went one step higher than her fourth place at her debut appearance in 2014, winning her second Olympic medal, after a gold medal in the team pursuit in 2014. Lotte van Beek, who won the bronze medal in this event in 2014, now finished only a hundredth of a second behind the podium, while Brittany Bowe achieved her best result ever in four years.

Result	Athlete	Nationality	Time
	Ireen Wust	Netherlands	1:54.35
	Miho Takagi	Japan	1:54.55
	Marrit Leenstra	Netherlands	1:55.26
4	Lotte van Beek	Netherlands	1:55.27
5	Brittany Bowe	United States	1:55.54
6	Nao Kodaira	Japan	1:56.11
7	Ida Njatun	Norway	1:56.46
8	Heather Bergsma	United States	1:56.74
9	Natalia Czerwonka	Poland	1:57.85
10	Francesca Lollobrigida	Italy	1:57.94
11	Nikola Zdrahalova	Czech Republic	1:58.03
12	Gabriele Hirschbichler	Germany	1:58.24
13	Katarzyna Bachleda-Curus	Poland	1:58.51
14	Noh Seon-Yeong	South Korea	1:58.75
15	Brianne Tutt	Canada	1:58.77
16	Ayaka Kikuchi	Japan	1:58.92
17	Luiza Zlotkowska	Poland	1:58.99
18	Yekaterina Aydova	Kazakhstan	1:59.05
19	Kali Christ	Canada	1:59.42
20	Hao Jiachen	China	1:59.58
21	Josie Morrison	Canada	1:59.77
22	Mia Manganello	United States	1:59.93
23	Tian Ruining	China	2:00.29
24	Roxanne Dufter	Germany	2:00.33
25	Francesca Bettrone	Italy	2:00.43
26	Huang Yu-ting	Chinese Taipei	2:18.84
27	Maryna Zuyeva	Belarus	DQ