The World Sprint Speed Skating Championships are annual speed skating championships. The championships are held over a two-day period, with the skaters racing one 500 m and one 1,000 m each day. Since the higher speeds towards the end of the race tend to favour the skater who skates the last outer lane, each skater starts both distances once in the inner lane and once in the outer lane. The times on those distances are then converted to points using the samalog system, and the skaters are then ranked according to the least amount of points. The International Skating Union has organised the World Sprint Championships for Men and the World Sprint Championships for Women since 1970 and both are held at the same time and venue. The first two years (1970-1971), they were called the ISU Sprint Championships.
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“We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“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
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)