Speed Skating 2022/Men's 500 metre

Men's 500 metre
General information
Sport	Speed Skating 2022
Date	12 February 2022
Competitors	30 athletes
Venue	Beijing National Speed Skating Oval
Previous medalists
Gold	Havard Lorentzen
Silver	Cha Min-kyu
Bronze	Gao Tingyu
Conditions
Length	500 metres
Medalists
	Gao Tingyu
	Cha Min-kyu
	Wataru Morishige

The men's 500 metre of Speed Skating 2022 during the 2022 Winter Olympics was held on 12 February 2022 in the Beijing National Speed Skating Oval. With 30 athletes competing, the event was won by Gao Tingyu from China, with Cha Min-kyu from South Korea taking the silver medal and Wataru Morishige from Japan taking bronze.

Format

The competition exists out of fifteen head-to-head races of 500 metres. The competitor with the fastest time is the winner.

Preview

Thirty athletes qualified for the event with Laurent Dubreuil as the leader of the World Cup and the most consistent speed skater throughout the season, though with Gao Tingyu as the overwhelming home favorite. The Japanese and Russian skaters were also very strong with Tatsuya Shinhama, Wataru Morishige, and Yuma Murakami within the top 5 of the World Cup rankings for Japan, and Artem Arefyev, Viktor Mushtakov, and Ruslan Murashov another strong team representing ROC. Other potential medal contenders and outsiders also included 2017 world champion sprint Kai Verbij, defending silver medalist Cha Min-kyu, Piotr Michalski, and Yang Tao.

Jordan Stolz was the youngest athlete in the field at the age of 17 and the only competitor born after 1 January 2001. The American speed skater was over three years younger than Artem Arefyev and Wataru Morishige, with Merijn Scheperkamp even reaching the four years. Gilmore Junio was the veteran of the field, competing in his third edition of the Olympic Games at the age of only 31, with no fewer than seven other competitors having been born in 1992. Except for Junio, Kim Jun-ho and Haavard Holmefjord Lorentzen were also due to make their third Olympic appearances, with nineteen athletes making or having made their Olympic debuts in Beijing. All three 2018 medalists, Lorentzen, Cha Min-kyu, and Gao Tingyu, took part in the competition in 2022.

Current Records

Record	Date	Nat.	Name	Time
WR	9 March 2019		Pavel Kulizhnikov	33.61
OR	19 February 2018		Havard Lorentzen	34.41
TR	8 October 2021		Kim Jun-ho	35.17

Results

Home favorite Gao Tingyu won the event in record time, setting a new Olympic record while becoming the first male speed skater to win an Olympic title for China, after he already became the first male medalist for China in speed skating in 2018. Cha Min-kyu finished seven-hundredth of a second behind him to win his second Olympic medal, after he also won silver in 2018, and was the first male Korean speed skater to win multiple medals in the event. Wataru Morishige won a bronze medal at his debut appearance, and with the Japanese on the podium, it was the first time ever that the Olympic podium involved three different Asian nations in the men's 500 metres. Laurent Dubreuil just missed the podium on three-hundredths of a second, but finished just ahead of Piotr Michalski by even a smaller margin. Three-time Olympian Kim Jun-ho completed the top 6, with the margins behind him kept very small.

Result	Athlete	Nationality	Time
	Gao Tingyu	China	34.32	OR
	Cha Min-kyu	South Korea	34.39
	Wataru Morishige	Japan	34.49
4	Laurent Dubreuil	Canada	34.522
5	Piotr Michalski	Poland	34.524
6	Kim Jun-ho	South Korea	34.54
7	Artem Arefyev	ROC	34.56
8	Yuma Murakami	Japan	34.57
9	Viktor Mushtakov	ROC	34.60
10	Ruslan Murashov	ROC	34.63
11	Damian Zurek	Poland	34.734
12	Merijn Scheperkamp	Netherlands	34.736
13	Jordan Stolz	United States	34.85
14	Kai Verbij	Netherlands	34.87
15	Haavard Holmefjord Lorentzen	Norway	34.921
16	Marek Kania	Poland	34.928
17	Bjoern Magnussen	Norway	34.96
18	Thomas Krol	Netherlands	35.06
19	Jeffrey Rosanelli	Italy	35.08
20	Tatsuya Shinihama	Japan	35.12
21	Gilmore Junio	Canada	35.162
21	Yang Tao	China	35.162
23	David Bosa	Italy	35.168
24	Marten Liiv	Estonia	35.26
25	Cornelius Kersten	Great Britain	35.36
26	Joel Dufter	Germany	35.37
27	Austin Kleba	United States	35.40
28	Ivan Arzhanikov	Kazakhstan	35.82
29	Antoine Gelinas-Beaulieu	Canada	35.84
30	Ignat Golovatsiuk	Belarus	37.05