SPEED SKATING: Just a day after competition wrapped up for speed skater Daniel Greig, he was back on the ice, training with a four-year plan for Olympic medals already taking shape.

The 22-year-old skater didn’t have the perfect Games campaign, but showing maturity and wisdom beyond his years, Greig is determined to only take away the positives in order to make him a better athlete.

After being the fastest athlete in training all week, Greig was suffered an unforced error in his first race of the 500m, falling after his blade came into the ice. 

“This is possibly the hardest thing that any skater can imagine happening to them especially in the sprint distances,” Greig said. “So I know if I can get through this and out the other side with my determination in tact then I can manage to put a good race down in the 1000 and that’s going to make me a much better athlete overall.” 

Despite his devastation, Greig picked himself up and completed the race, skating a solid second 500m race and then preparing for his other event, the 1000m.
With all his training focused on the 500m, Greig knew that being competitive in the 1000m was going to be difficult, but he was determined to put down a great race.

He bolted out of the start and showed the world his talent as a sprinter, producing the fourth fastest 600m split time out of the 40-strong field of skaters.

“Even from this race I am walking away seeing the positives that I am fast over the 500m, whether I got to show it in that race or not,” Greig said.

“Even though I am not particularly high up the rankings, for my age I am doing extremely well – pretty young and pretty early in my career.

With the rate of Greig’s improvement, expect to see a lot from him over the coming four years and look forward to a great show in PyeongChang 2018.

The Sochi 2014 Speed Skating competition got underway with a Dutch clean-sweep of the medals in the men’s 5000m. What looked to be a nice statistic for the record books would soon become par for the course. In fact at times you could be excused for thinking it was the Dutch national championships you were watching, with the Speed Skating mad nation owning the podium an amazing four times – men’s 5000m, 500m and 10,000m as well as the women’s 1500m.

The Speed Skating competition ended as it started, with total Dutch domination. In the Team Pursuit, the men’s team of Jan Blokhuijsen, Sven Kramer and Koen Verweij defeated Korea in a new Olympic Record time of 3:37.71. Just minutes later, their female compatriots matched their feat. The combination of Marrit Leenstra, Jorien ter Mors and Ireen Wust took the title in a new Olympic record of 2:58.05, beating their own record set just a day earlier in the quarter-final. 

Of the 36 medals, the Dutch won a whopping 23, including eight gold. In addition, the competition saw nine new Olympic records set.