Speed skating at the 2014 Winter Olympics – Men's 1500 metres


The men's 1500 metres speed skating competition of the 2014 Winter Olympics was held at Adler Arena Skating Center on 15 February 2014.
The 2010 Olympic champion, Mark Tuitert of the Netherlands, sought to defend his title; he bettered the track record, but eventually finished fifth. Poland's Zbigniew Bródka won the gold medal, the Netherlands' Koen Verweij took silver, and Canada's Denny Morrison took the bronze. After Verweij's race in the last pair of the event, it took about half a minute before it was announced that Bródka had beaten Verweij's time by 3 thousandths of a second, which is 4.1 cm, given the finishing speed of Verweij being 49.4 km/h. Measurements in thousandths were only introduced in speed skating after the 2010 Olympics, so this was the closest win in Olympic speed skating history. Two comparably narrow victories had previously been recorded at the Olympics overall. At the 1998 Winter Olympics, Silke Kraushaar beat her teammate Barbara Niedernhuber by 0.002 seconds in the Women's luge event, while at the 1972 Summer Olympics Karl Gunnar Larsson beat Tim McKee by 0.002 seconds in the 400 meters individual swimming medley. The latter narrow win in effect brought about a change so that no swimming competition henceforward would have to be decided by a margin less than a hundredth of a second.
The gold medal awarded in this event featured a Chelyabinsk meteor fragment to commemorate the first anniversary of this meteor strike.

Qualification

A total of forty speed skaters could qualify for this distance, with a maximum of four skaters per country. The top 20 of the men's 1500 metres World Cup standings after World Cup 4 in Berlin secured a spot for their country. Then the additional 20 spots were awarded based on a time ranking of all times skated in the World Cup. A reserve list was also made.

Competition schedule

All times are.
DateTimeEvent
15 February17:30Men's 1500m

Records

Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.
At the 2013 World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships the track record was set by Denis Yuskov at 1:46,32. At the 2013–14 Russian Single Distance Championships Yuskov improved this track record skating 1:45.85.
The following records were set during this competition.
DateRoundAthleteCountryTimeRecord
15 FebruaryPair 17Zbigniew Bródka1:45.00TR
15 FebruaryPair 15Denny Morrison1:45.22TR
15 FebruaryPair 13Mark Tuitert1:45.42TR

TR = track record

Results

The races were started at 17:30.
RankPairLaneNameCountryTimeTime BehindNotes
17OZbigniew Bródka1:45.006TR
20IKoen Verweij1:45.009+0.003
15ODenny Morrison1:45.22+0.22TR
19IDenis Yuskov1:45.37+0.37
13OMark Tuitert1:45.42+0.42TR
15IHåvard Bøkko1:45.48+0.48
16IBrian Hansen1:45.59+0.59
19OSverre Lunde Pedersen1:45.66+0.66
18ODenis Kuzin1:45.69+0.69
1014OBart Swings1:45.95+0.95
1117IShani Davis1:45.98+0.98
127OStefan Groothuis1:46.08+1.08
132IJan Blokhuijsen1:46.50+1.50
1413IHaralds Silovs1:46.79+1.79
1512IJan Szymański1:46.86+1.86
1616OHåvard Holmefjord Lorentzen1:47.27+2.27
172OMirko Giacomo Nenzi1:47.48+2.48
1814IIvan Skobrev1:47.62+2.62
1912OMathieu Giroux1:47.65+2.65
2018IKonrad Niedźwiedzki1:47.77+2.77
214OTian Guojun1:47.95+2.95
2220OJoey Mantia1:48.01+3.01
2311IPatrick Beckert1:48.08+3.08
2411OAleksey Yesin1:48.10+3.10
259IAleksey Suvorov1:48.11+3.11
268IKonrád Nagy1:48.12+3.12
278ORobert Lehmann1:48.24+3.24
283OLucas Makowsky1:48.51+3.51
294IJoo Hyong-jun1:48.59+3.59
3010ODmitry Babenko1:48.67+3.67
313ITaro Kondo1:49.31+4.31
3210IBenjamin Macé1:49.34+4.34
331OVincent De Haître1:49.42+4.42
347IAleksandr Zhigin1:49.48+4.48
355OFyodor Mezentsev1:49.70+4.70
365ISimen Spieler Nilsen1:49.88+4.88
379OJonathan Kuck1:50.19+5.19
381IDavid Andersson1:50.30+5.29
396OMatteo Anesi1:50.59+5.59
406IEwen Fernandez1:52.70+7.70

TR = track record