Short Track Speed Skating
For more details on this topic, see Short track speed skating at the 1994 Winter Olympics.- Men
- 500m: Steven Bradbury (8th/31), Richard Nizielski (10th), Kieran Hansen (23rd)
- 1000m: Richard Nizielski, Kieran Hansen, Steven Bradbury (24th)
- 5000m relay: Australia (Steven Bradbury, Kieran Hansen, Andrew Murtha, Richard Nizielski, John Kah (reserve)) (3rd - bronze)
- Women
- 500m: Karen Kah (12th/30)
- 1000m: Karen Kah (11th/30)
The relay result was Australia's first Winter Olympics medal. In the semi-final, they beat Japan and New Zealand to qualify behind Canada. They went into the final with three objectives: to stay on their feet (to avoid a repeat of what happened in Albertville), to remain undisqualified, and to beat at least one of the other three finalists. With 21 of 45 laps to go, a Canadian crashed into the side, and was out of contention. With 12 laps to go, Italian Mirko Vuillermin accelerated away, creating a gap such that Australia was unlikely to win gold. Until the last change, it seemed that Australia might win silver. Nizielski was the final skater, and said later that "At the last change Eric Flaim got a good push-away and he stepped underneath my feet and stopped me. I thought, well I'm not going to fight him for this. I didn't want to let the team down. And I was very aware that I had taken a fall in Albertville. I just wanted to get through and get the medal." Team member Steven Bradbury went on to win Australia's first winter gold in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Australia At The 1994 Winter Olympics
Famous quotes containing the words short, track, speed and/or skating:
“You’ve got many refinements. I don’t think you need to worry about your failure at long division. I mean, after all, you got through short division, and short division is all that a lady ought to be called on to cope with.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man’s adjustment to it—the speed of his acceptance.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)