Van der Poel gave Sweden its first Olympic medal in speedskating since 1988, completing a spectacular comeback to capture gold at the Beijing Games on Sunday.
Nils van der Poel has completed over 20 ultramarathons. He’s jumped out of a plane hundreds of times. He’s ridden his bike from one end to the other in Sweden. He completed his ranger training after a year in the army. It was no big issue when he required a tremendous charge in the final three laps of the Olympic 5,000-meter speedskating race.
As the defending world champion, he was a heavy favourite before the competition, having gone undefeated in the distance events on the World Cup circuit this season.
Then he lived up to the hype — albeit with some reservations.
At the end of the 12 1/2-lap race, the 25-year-old turned up the heat to beat out Patrick Roest of the Netherlands, who set an Olympic record of 6 minutes, 8.84 seconds.
Roest had skated in the sixth of ten pairs roughly an hour before, breaking the Olympic record in 6.09.31.
Then he nervously watched as one pair after another failed to beat his time in the gym.
With three laps to go, it appeared that van der Poel in the final group would also fall short, as he went 2 seconds behind Roest’s pace.
Then the Swede kicked it into another gear.
With each step, he sliced into Roest’s time, his progress reflected in real time on the scoreboard, thrilling the small crowd.
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