2009 World Speed Skating Championships - Day 1

I spent the afternoon up in Richmond, BC just outside of Vancouver for the first of four days of competition at the ISU World Single Distance Speed Skating Champtionships, being held at the beautiful new Richmond Olympic Oval.



This will be the site of the long track speed skating at next year's 2010 Winter Olympics. This year, it's getting a tryout as the site for the world championships. It's an absolutely gorgeous facility and the event has been incredibly well organized so far.



American Shani Davis (shown here) won the Men's 1500m this afternoon with a time of 1:46.17. American Trevor Marsicano was second (1:46.30), and Canadian Denny Morrison was third (1:47.05).



The second event of the day was the women's 3000m, which was 7.5 laps of the 400m track. There was lots of action in this race, including this passing action in heat 5 between Catherine Raney Norman (USA) and Lucille Opitz (GER).



The 3000m was won by Dutch veteran Renate Groenewold, who will retire after next year's Winter Games. She finished in a time of 4:05.43 Martina Sablikova of (CZE) was second.



Kristina Groves (shown here) of Canada was third (4:06.45).

I'll be back for day two tomorrow.

You can find more photos from today's action on my Flickr site.