ISU Speed Skating World Cup
The Speed Skating World Cup is a series of international speed skating competitions, organised yearly by the International Skating Union since the winter of 1985–86. Every year during the winter, a number of competitions on a number of different distances are held. Skaters can earn points at each competition and the skater who has the most points on a given distance at the end of the series is the winner. Initially not very popular by skaters nor spectators, the World Cup gradually became more and more popular, and this was of the reasons of the creation of the World Single Distance Championships. The results on the separate distances in the World Cup ranking are the main qualifying method for the World Single Distance Championships.
The number of races per season per distance varies, but it is usually between five and ten. Ten World Cup titles are awarded every season, five for men (the 500 m, the 1,000 m, the 1,500 m, the combined 5,000 m / 10,000 m, and the team pursuit), and five for women (the 500 m, the 1,000 m, the 1,500 m, the combined 3,000 m / 5,000 m, and the team pursuit).
The team pursuit was added to the World Cup in the 2005–06 season. Between the seasons 2003–04 and 2008–09, the 100 m was also contested for men and women, but this category is now defunct.
The Mass start was re-introduced for both women and men in the World Cup in Astana in 2011.
Read more about ISU Speed Skating World Cup: Most World Cup Victories
Famous quotes containing the words speed, skating, world and/or cup:
“If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye, and death i’th’ other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.”
—W.E. (William Ewart)
“The cup of Morgan Fay is shattered.
Life is a bitter sage,
And we are weary infants
In a palsied age.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)