Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics spotlight: Suzanne Schulting to clean up in short-track speed skating?
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Published 03/02/2022 at 08:43 GMT
Suzanne Schulting won every event she entered at the World Championships last year and few doubt she could do the same again in Beijing. Already a double Olympic medallist, having won 1000m gold in Pyeongchang and relay bronze, she could come away from the Games with more medals than any other athlete across all sports. Follow every moment on discovery+.
Suzanne Schulting is forecast to win every individual event she enters in Beijing
Image credit: Getty Images
If medal forecasts are correct, short-track speed skater Suzanne Schulting is going to be the star of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and no-one is going to come close to the number of gold medals she is going to win.
If it sounds like a bold statement, she already has the stats to prove it. At the World Championships last year, the 24-year-old from the Netherlands won every event she entered - the 500m, 1000m, 1500m, 3000m relay and therefore, the overall title. According to medal predictors Gracenote, she will be the favourite to repeat the trick again in China, and although there is no overall medal, she could still win a fifth gold in the new mixed relay.
Two months before the World Championships, Schulting had wiped the floor with the competition at the European Championships, and she continued her dominance in most events at the back end of the year, with impressive results in World Cup events, though she was edged out for the overall 500m title by Arianna Fontana and the 1500m by Lee Yu-bin, she did take the honours in her strongest event, the 1000m.
Fontana may be the biggest threat to Schulting achieving a clean sweep in Beijing. The ‘Freccia Bionda’ (Blonde Arrow), as she is known in Italy, is showing strong form over the 500m and is a contender to top the podium, 16 years after she made her Olympic debut as a 15-year-old in Turin, when she won relay bronze. No female athlete won more short track medals than the Italian in Pyeongchang.
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Suzanne Schulting prepares for her tilt at Olympic glory at Beijing 2022
Image credit: Getty Images
Schulting appears to be a rounded, down to earth athlete who does not take success for granted. She burst on to the scene four years ago but since then has shown incredible determination to go from being a medal contender to dominating her sport.
“After I became an Olympic champion, I was like ‘OK, now I have to prove to the world, and to myself, that I’m also able to win more’,” Schulting told Olympics.com.
“So, I trained that summer extremely hard, and I really wanted to show the world that it wasn’t just one time. I wanted to prove that I’m always able to challenge for gold.
“I was really motivated to show everybody that I was also able to become European champion and world champion and get those World Cup titles.
“When you get a little taste of it, or you feel how it is to win the gold, you want more and more and more, and you’re addicted to it.”
Schulting’s achievement at the World Championships was sensational in that only one woman, Canadian Sylvie Daigle, had achieved a clean sweep before. She has the raw speed to get out in front in races before the chaos hits.
The Dutch athlete has benefited from a few of her rivals retiring, including Britain’s Elise Christie. Team GB fans will know from recent Games that short track is unpredictable. This is a sport where bad luck plays more of a factor than many others, and that could be the greatest threat to Schulting.
On a track the size of an ice hockey rink, athletes race incredibly close together, one clip of the heel and the whole field can go down. Schulting will be hoping to get out in front early and avoid any hiccups - if she does, it is difficult to see her being beaten.
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