Racing Behavior Among the Winners of Men's 500 m Final Races on the International Competition of Short-Track Speed Skating

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify the racing behavior of the winners of international men's 500 m final races in short-track speed skating. Data were collected from 24 final A races on international competitions held between 2002—2020. This timeframe was divided into the old rule term (T_old) and the new rule term (T_new) in 2006. Parameters included the skating time, the starting and skating order, and the rank during the race, and the lap time.

1) The timing of the winners in T_new (41.04 ± 0.31 s) were significantly lower than that in T_old (42.02 ± 0.31 s).

2) For the lap time, T_new was significantly lower than T_old in LAP2 to LAP5. For the relationship between skating and lap time, there were significant positive correlations in LAP4 of T_old and LAP2 to LAP5 of T_new. For relationship between the skating time and the intermediate rank, there was a significant positive correlation in LAP4 of T_old.

These results suggest that the factors that influenced the competition results were the tactics which skaters took to overtake the others in the second to the last lap during T_old and the ability to compete at a higher speeds in T_new.