Liu Shaoang Becomes Four-Time World Champion – Debrecen News, Debrecen News | News of Debrecen and Hajdú-Bihar counties
Liu Shaoang became a four-time world champion
Montreal – Liu Shaoang won a gold medal at both the 1,500-meter and 500-meter World Skating Championships in Montreal on Saturday.
The 24-year-old rider of Ferencváros became the first in his weakest run, with a silver medal at the World Cup so far, from 2016, with extremely confident performance.
Archive photo: Szabolcs Kander
Two-time Olympic champion Liu Shaoang, who has won all seven races in the Canadian city so far, has collected the third World Cup gold of his career after not finding a winner in the 500-meter and overall last year.
Liu Shaoang easily bought the semi-finals than Friday’s qualifiers. He skated in fifth place at a very comfortable pace and came up third without having to overtake because one of his rivals slipped and another stumbled. From there, he had already asserted greater speed and knowledge, so he easily took the lead with two maneuvers.
At the start of Monday’s final, he was in the middle, with Italy’s Luca Spechenhauser slipping to fourth, clinging tightly to the lead. When he changed his pace, no one had an answer:
Liu Shaoang skated everyone in one round, winning with astonishing confidence in his weakest number, which made him the European champion in 2020.
Of the two young Hungarians eliminated in the qualifiers, Péter Jászapáti was 24th and Bence Nógrádi was 28th.
Petra Jászapáti was in the final, third semi-final, in which she won with clever, tactical racing after Belgium knocked out two opponents from the lead. The Szeged racer, who was skating at the end of the field, noticed this and switched to a higher gear after the fall, so he took the lead ahead of his three opponents. South Korean Sim Suk Hit and Dutchman Xandra Velzeert will also advance to the finals, making them eight.
The Hungarian athlete, who won the Olympic bronze medal with the mixed relay, was the last to speed in the final, but he could not break ahead even when the change of pace took place in the last third of the race, as a result of which he finished in eighth place. The victory was won by the two-time five-ring champion of the distance, South Korean Joy Min Jong, with a huge advantage, as he was able to break away from everyone in the final laps. The 23-year-old Choi won his 13th World Cup gold, triumphing for the third time in a row. Another Hungarian rider, Zsófia Kónya, who bid farewell to Friday’s qualifier, was 30th.
Liu Shaoang also won 500 meters after 1,500, defending his title at the Montreal World Championships in short-distance speed skating in the shortest possible time.
This was the first time in the history of the sport that a Hungarian competitor defended his World Cup gold, and it was also the first time that a Hungarian athlete had won a gold medal at the same World Cup in two individual races.
Two-time Olympic champion Liu Shaoang, who has won all ten races in the Canadian city so far, has collected the fourth World Cup gold of his career after not finding a winner in the 500-meter and overall last year.
In the case of the women, both Hungarian competitors will be classified in the same quarter-finals. Petra Jászapáti kept up the pace with the 2019 European champion of the track, Natalia Maliszewska from Poland, and behind it, Zsófia Kónya held up the two-time Olympic and eight-time world champion Sim Szuk Hit, who has no time to overtake. leading skating duo. In the end, Jászapáti bravely overtook his more likely rival in the last lap, even though the second place would have made it.
The bravura of the 23-year-old Jászapát did not come together in the semi-finals, because he did not have a chance to reach the finals after skating in the fourth place, but he still made it to the small finals. There he started from the worst of four positions and couldn’t even improve on that spot, so he finished eighth overall, similar to 1,500 meters. Kónya finished 13th with his quarter-final farewell. In the final, Olympic champion Xandra Velzeboer of the Netherlands won the women’s relay ahead of world champion Kim Boutin, who was second in the last 1,500, so none of his eight World Cup medals was gold.
In the semi-finals of the 5,000-meter men’s relay race, the Hungarians were in the line-up of Liu Shoang, Bence Nógrádi, Péter Jászapáti and Attila Talabos, at first in third place behind the Belgian and South Korean quartets. When the Asians changed their rhythm, the Hungarians also managed to overtake the Belgians, who were finished by the end. The finals second place thus did not rotate in danger.
In the 3,000-meter women’s relay race, the Hungarian quartet of Petra Jászapáti, Zsófia Kónya, Maja Somodi and Barbara Somogyi , so it will be in the final.
And on Sunday, the 1,000-meter battles will continue, with the super finals and relay finals.
Results:
Men’s 1500m World Champion:
LIU SHOOANG 2: 15,096 min
2. Pascal Dion (Canada) 2: 15644
3. Stijn Desmet (Belgian) 2: 15,716
… 24. Péter Jászapáti
… 28. Bence Nógrádi
Ladies & # 39; 1500 m World Championships:
Choi Min Jong (Republic of Korea) 2: 23,594 minutes
2. Kim Boutin (Canada) 2: 24.201
3. Seo Vi Min (Republic of Korea) 2: 24,455
… 8. Petra Jászapáti 2: 25.742
… 30. Zsófia Kónya
Men’s 500m World Champion:
Liu Shaoang 40.57 seconds
2. Quentin Fercoq (France) 40,674
3. Stijn Desmet (Belgium) 40,710
… 13. Bence Nógrádi
… 19. Péter Jászapáti
Women’s 500m World Champion:
Xandra Velzeboer (Netherlands) 42,476 sec
2. Kim Boutin (Canada) 42,570
3. Yara van Kerkhof (Netherlands) 42,642
… 8. Petra Jászapáti
… 13. Zsófia Kónya