Having looked at the sport in general, US dominance (more or less) and a host of other stuff yesterday in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 21, let’s look at the sport in this country to see why we have produced so consistently.   This is actually where the true mindfreak is going to come in because the entire setup of the sport would seem to be all wrong.  And yet we somehow produce.  I also want to look at how the US appears to slipping and their current desperation move to try to fix it as this will also be illustrative for when I turn my eye to OL’ing on Monday.

So after you read this, on with the show.

US Speedskating (USS): Part 1

Unlike the other US sports I’ve discussed so far where there are usually pretty large numbers of folks involved, long-track speed skating is a stunningly niche sport.  At any given time there are about 2000 members of USS and that includes juniors and masters; that I can tell it’s been like this for decades (my coach has been in the sport for 30 years and it’s been like that as long as he’s been involved).  I also believe this includes both long- and short-track skaters but I wouldn’t swear to it.  I honestly don’t know that much about the short-track end of the sport and won’t mention it much further.

I already mentioned how hard it is to pursue the sport, if you didn’t live in one of about 2 places back in the day or one of about 3 now, you can’t do metric long-track.  Finding competent coaching is nearly impossible, the sport is technically absurd and few seem to understand it much less know how to teach it.  My coach was a technical master, but he spent 30+ years dissecting every millimeter of the sport.  Even at the top levels, coaches either don’t know or don’t care to correct technique.  Some teach outright wrong things.  Some skaters make it work anyhow.

It’s not cheap to do either although it’s not cycling level stupid in terms of the money you can drop.  Equipment isn’t too bad (a good pair of skates, blades and a skinsuit will run you about $1000 although the super nifty Swiftskins can be 800-1000$ themselves) but ice time and coaching adds up quickly.

Continue reading Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 22