Speed Skating 2018/Women's 3000 metre

Women's 3000 metre
General information
Sport	Speed Skating 2018
Date	10 February 2018
Competitors	24 athletes
Venue	Gangneung Oval
Previous medalists
Gold	Ireen Wust
Silver	Martina Sablikova
Bronze	Olga Graf
Conditions
Temperature	16°C / 60.8°F
Length	3000 metres
Medalists
	Carlijn Achtereekte
	Ireen Wust
	Antoinette de Jong

The women's 3000 metre of Speed Skating 2018 during the 2018 Winter Olympics was held on 10 February 2018 in the Gangneung Oval. With 24 athletes competing, the event was won by Carlijn Achtereekte from Netherlands, with Ireen Wust from Netherlands taking the silver medal and Antoinette de Jong from Netherlands taking bronze.

Format

The competition exists out of twelve head-to-head races of 3000 metres. The competitor with the fastest time is the winner.

Preview

Twenty-four athletes qualified for the event with plenty of experienced skaters at the helm of medal contention. The defending Olympic champion was Ireen Wust, who won the gold medal in 2006 and 2014, but Martina Sablikova was able to prevent her from winning three consecutive titles when she won in Vancouver, and both were preceded by Claudia Pechstein, who won the gold medal in 2002. The five races in the current World Cup season had five different winners, with Ivanie Blondin having the lead in the total rankings. With Antoinette de Jong, Natalia Voronina, and Miho Takagi also having won an event in the previous few months, there were quite a few medal contenders. Other medal contenders included Maryna Zuyeva, Isabelle Weidemann, Ayaka Kikuchi, with Carlijn Achtereekte and Francesca Lollobrigida looking for an upset.

Karolina Bosiek was the youngest athlete to compete in the women's 3000 metres as the only athlete born in the 21st century, and was over three years younger than Ayano Sato and Nikola Zdrahalova. When Bosiek was born, Claudia Pechstein was already a three-time Olympian, being 28 years older than the Polish youngster, and eight years older than Katarzyna Bachleda-Curus, and another six years older than Ireen Wust and Luiza Zlotkowska. Thirteen out of twenty-four competitors had previous Olympic experience, with Pechstein making her seventh Olympic appearance, Bachleda-Curus making her fifth, and top favorites Wust and Martina Sablikova making their fourth. The two were also the two defending medalists, as Olga Graf decided not to compete as a protest to the ban of Russian athletes in Pyeongchang.

Current Records

Record	Date	Nat.	Name	Time
WR	18 March 2006		Cindy Klassen	3:53.34
OR	10 February 2002		Claudia Pechstein	3:57.70
TR	9 February 2017		Ireen Wust	3:59.05

Results

The competition existed out of twelve pairings in the competition, with almost every pairing having a big name in the sport or a potential outsider for the medals. After Ida Njatun finished in a respectable time against her direct opponent Kim Bo-reum, and Nikola Zdrahalova and Liu Jing failed to reach her time, Ayano Sato was the first to set a serious time to consider for the medals, just five seconds slower than the track record. However, her time was already broken in the fifth pairing, with Carlijn Achtereekte approaching the track record by only 0.16 seconds, also being thirteen seconds faster than her opponent Karolina Bosiek. Halfway throughout the competition, after six pairings, the differences between the top times were big, with Achtereekte having five seconds over Sato, and over seven seconds over Njatun. Francesca Lollobrigida was the only other speed skater within ten seconds, but there were a lot of medal contenders still to go.

The second half of the competition started with Brianne Tutt, Carlijn Schoutens, Maryna Zuyeva, and Ayaka Kikuchi, who couldn't make any positive impact, with Zuyeva being the fastest of the four, just edging out on the time of Njatun. However, the fireworks were present in the last four pairs. Ireen Wust was the first to go against Isabelle Weidemann, and in a very close sprint finish against the clock, Wust approached the sharp time of her countrywoman by eight hundredths of a second, with Weidemann taking third place behind them on a deficit of five seconds. However, her third place was set in jeopardy by her compatriot Ivanie Blondin, who was a tenth of a second faster and took the medal position, and with Claudia Pechstein not being able to repeat her fourth place finish from 2014, with a provisional sixth place. The penultimate pairing had Antoinette de Jong, the third Dutch speed skater, set against Miho Takagi, which turned in the closest race of the competition. De Jong finished at a comfortable distance behind her two countrywomen, taking third place with eight-tenths of a second, while Takagi was not far behind, only 1.3 seconds, but the last pairing had the Olympic champion of 2010 Martina Sablikova against the bronze medalist of the European championships Natalia Voronina. Sablikova was quickly a second behind the schedule of De Jong and was not able to win enough time on the second half of her race, leaving her with fourth place, with Voronina finishing tenth.

Carlijn Achtereekte won a gold medal at her very first Olympic appearance, taking the crown from her compatriot Ireen Wust, who had won the event in 2006 and 2014. Antoinette de Jong completed a clean podium sweep for the Netherlands, taking her first individual Olympic medal after finishing seventh in 2014. The podium sweep was one of only three during Pyeongchang 2018 and happened during the second day of the event, followed by Norway and Germany a few days later. Martina Sablikova was not able to continue her streak of five consecutive events on the podium, spanning since 2010, ending on fourth place, while Miho Takagi almost rewarded her comeback after missing out on Sochi 2014 with a medal. Eventually, it would be the only event where Takagi would not have won a medal in Pyeongchang, and one of only two events in women's speed skating with no Japanese speed skater on the podium.

Result	Athlete	Nationality	Time
	Carlijn Achtereekte	Netherlands	3:59.21
	Ireen Wust	Netherlands	3:59.29
	Antoinette de Jong	Netherlands	4:00.02
4	Martina Sablikova	Czech Republic	4:00.54
5	Miho Takagi	Japan	4:01.35
6	Ivanie Blondin	Canada	4:04.14
7	Isabelle Weidemann	Canada	4:04.26
8	Ayano Sato	Japan	4:04.35	PR
9	Claudia Pechstein	Germany	4:04.49
10	Natalia Voronina	Olympic Athletes from Russia	4:05.85
11	Maryna Zuyeva	Belarus	4:05.96
12	Ida Njatun	Norway	4:06.67
13	Francesca Lollobrigida	Italy	4:08.58
14	Luiza Zlotkowska	Poland	4:09.69
15	Nikola Zdrahalova	Czech Republic	4:11.36
16	Karolina Bosiek	Poland	4:12.44
17	Katarzyna Bachleda-Curus	Poland	4:12.57
18	Kim Bo-reum	South Korea	4:12.79
19	Ayaka Kikuchi	Japan	4:13.25
20	Brianne Tutt	Canada	4:13.70
21	Hao Jiachen	China	4:15.56
22	Carlijn Schoutens	United States	4:15.60
23	Roxanne Dufter	Germany	4:16.87
24	Liu Jing	China	4:20.95