In the second semi-final of the Ladies’ 3000m team Korea soon took the lead, but the Russian, the French and the Hungarian relay squads following them kept alternating the second position. At the end the Hungarian team in the composition of Bernadett Heidum, Andrea Keszler, Sára Luca Bácskai and Petra Jászapáti took the fourth place, so on Sunday they’ll have the possibility to fight for places 5-8 in the B Final.
In the men’s 5000m semi-final the second heat saw the battle of five relay squads unfold, the one between the Hungarian, the Kazakh, the Japanese, the Canadian and the Dutch teams. We could witness a very exciting race underway. There were only some laps to go when the Hungarian squad were skating in the qualifying second position, and the relayed Canadian athlete pushed away Liu Shaoang with his hand, who fell. Team Hungary crossed the line fifth. The referees were examining the video recording for a long time just to make a sudden decision: the Dutch team was disqualified for false relay, which didn’t influence the leading positions: Canada and Japan qualified to the A final. The Kazakh team and the Hungarians with Sándor Liu Shaolin, Ádó Liu Shaoang, Viktor Knoch and Csaba Burján can continue the race in the B final, just like the Hungarian ladies.
Ádó Liu Shaoang
It was a quite weird heat in itself. Basically what happened was that our team wasn’t forwarded to the A final, only to the B. It’s fine in a way, we are in the best eight teams, but I think that a mistake like this on the referee’s part should have some consequences. We’ve got the quota on 1500m too, I can’t tell you anything more, just that for us the most important is to get into the best 32. I’m thrilled that all my family are here and the whole arena are cheering for us, it’s really cool, thanx everyone!
Sándor Liu Shaolin
500m went perfectly, I hadn’t thought it would be so good. My goal was to get into the top eight in all distances, so it was just the icing on the cake. The tactics was to grab the first position right at the beginning and gradually increase the speed so that no one could attack me. Fortunately, I managed to do it. Two laps to go I looked up and saw that it was soon over, from that point I was just driving hard. It was incredible to cross the line first and hear the crowd. I don’t know what happened in the relay event, it was an odd situation, after the exchange the Canadian kept coming inside, even though they haven’t advanced us to the A final from the second position. Unfortunately, such things happen, tomorrow we’ll try to do our best in the B final.
