"On Sunday evening, she performed like an athlete insistent on leaving no room for doubt. Kok leveraged two years of total sprint dominance into the first Olympic gold medal of her career. She blew away the field in the women's 500m in an Olympic-record time of 36.49sec with the kind of controlled, furious circuit that has made her a three-time world champion at the distance at 25 years old."
"There was so much pressure and I really wanted to prove to everyone that I could do it, Kok said. I was at the starting line in the last pair, so when you finish you know [straight away] if it's enough or not. I was like: I need to go as fast as I can to that finish line.' The race was so good. I dreamed of it, but I didn't know it was that fast."
"If the result looked inevitable on paper for Kok, it still required near-perfection on the day. The shortest race in Olympic speed skating offers no space to recover from hesitation: the start must be explosive, the corners exact and the straightaways relentless. Kok thrived in all three phases to cross first by nearly seven-tenths of a second, the widest margin of victory in an Olympic 500m in 54 years."
Femke Kok won the women's 500m in an Olympic-record 36.49 seconds, claiming her first Olympic gold and reinforcing two years of sprint dominance. Jutta Leerdam took silver in 37.15 seconds and Miko Tahagi earned bronze in 37.27 seconds; defending champion Erin Jackson finished fifth, just five hundredths shy of the medals. Kok executed an explosive start, precise corners and relentless straightaways to win by nearly seven-tenths of a second, the largest margin in an Olympic 500m in 54 years. Kok entered Milan having shattered the world record last November and remained unbeaten in the 500m since February 2024.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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