Newly crowned men’s 10,000m Olympic champion Lee Seung-hoon of South Korea said on Tuesday he did not skate that well and counted his lucky stars that heavily favoured Dutchman Sven Kramer was disqualified.
The unlikely winner, whose finishing time was more than four seconds slower than Kramer, admitted he did not think his time would hold up against Kramer.
“I was very lucky to get the gold medal and if Kramer had not made the mistake he would have the gold medal and so I am very lucky,” said Lee.
The Korean, who only switched from short track to long track seven months ago, broke the Olympic record despite the track’s sea level altitude and sliced an astonishing 22 seconds off his personal best to clock 12 minutes 58.55 seconds.
Kramer, skating in the last pair, looked on track to add the 10,000m title to his 5,000m gold in Vancouver, but a costly lane infringement with eight laps to go saw him disqualified.
“I had prepared a lot for this race and I thought my performance was good enough for a spot on the podium but not the gold medal,” a smiling Lee told reporters.
“I did not think it would give me a gold medal. Sven is definitely one of the greatest skaters.”
Ivan Skobrev of Russia took the silver medal in 13:02.07, while Bob de Jong of the Netherlands, the 2006 champion, claimed bronze in 13:06.73.
South Korea have been hugely successful in long track speed skating at these Games with three gold medals two silvers. That is one less medal than traditional powerhouse Netherlands.
source: sports.yahoo.com
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