“I’m satisfied with fifth place. The weather isn’t ideal, but on this ice I can probably be happy with how I got to the end. It was visible to everyone, only Ragne Wiklund did an incredible lap and kept his time on lap to the end,” said Sáblíková, noting that she went into the start aiming for a top ten finish.
Coach Petr Novák’s client changed her skates in the summer and health problems also affected her preparation. She fell while she was running and had a laceration below her knee. For this, before leaving for northern Europe, she said that she would see how she would fare against competitors only in the race.
In Stavanger, Sáblíková entered the final heat with Dutch Antoinette Rijpmaová De Jong, whom she had fallen behind in the first half of the course, but then overtook the reigning world champion in third and over a according to. However, the time achieved by the three-time Olympic champion, who holds the world record on this track, was not enough for a medal.
“Certainly it would have been better to start earlier, but as I said I’m happy with the position. I didn’t expect to get that high. Antonietta was a great opponent. I knew she would start much faster than me and this helped me from the start But the ice was so hard that we were all happy that we reached the finish line,” said Sáblíková.
22-year-old Wiklundová won her first home win at the World Cup. She was accompanied on the podium by the 3000m Beijing Olympic champion Irene Schouten from the Netherlands and Isabelle Weidemann from Canada.
“Ragne rode her race, nobody was against her. And hats off to everyone who beat me today and rode like they did on such heavy ice. But Ragne rode well already in training and it was clear that he can move on this ice,” said Sáblíková, who will line up at the start of the 1,500m race on Saturday.
Two other Czech teams showed up in Division B. 19-year-old Zuzana Kuršová took thirteenth place with a time of 4:24.245, Veronika Antošová, two years her senior, was more than three seconds slower and finished nineteenth.
