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Speed skater Femke Kok had admitted that anything but gold in her signature 500m race would be a disappointment after opening her Olympic account last Monday with silver in a Dutch one-two alongside Jutta Leerdam in the 1000m. 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.
Leerdam took the silver in 37.15sec, inverting the order from their 1000m finish six days earlier, while Japan’s Miko Tahagi repeated her bronze from the 500m with a time of 37.27sec, once again from the early pairs. Erin Jackson, the defending champion, came in fifth and only five hundredths out of the medals.
“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.
Kok arrived in Milan having shattered Sang-Hwa Lee’s longstanding world record by 0.27sec last November and having not lost a 500m race since 2 February 2024. She hasn’t simply been winning lately so much as obliterating her rivals, taking all six of her World Cup races this season by margins of 0.39, 0.48, 0.49, 0.36, 0.60 and 0.35 seconds. On Sunday, Kok pushed that separation to 0.66 on the biggest stage of all, igniting delirium throughout another Dutch-heavy crowd.
Takagi was the first to post a time that affected the medal picture, skating 37.27 from the fourth pair to seize an early lead with a controlled 10.40 opening split. The times tightened steadily from there, with Italy’s Serena Pergher briefly moving into contention at 37.30, while Canada’s Béatrice Lamarche and Poland’s Kaja Ziomek-Nogal both threatened the podium with sub-37.60 laps.
The contest truly caught fire in the 12th pair when Leerdam took over the lead with a time of 37.15, built not on an explosive start but on her devastating closing speed, her 26.57 final lap the fastest of the session to that point. Her time survived the next two heats, ensuring her a medal by the time Kok and Jackson stepped to the line for the night’s marquee pairing.
Jackson produced the kind of start that has defined her career, exploding from the line in 10.25 – the second-fastest opener of the field – and carrying that speed cleanly through the opening corner. But her overall time of 37.32 as Kok pulled away left her in fifth and off the podium by the narrowest of margins.
“Femke has been the person to chase,” Jackson said. “She’s been amazing throughout the season. I was like, ‘OK, there’s still a chance. If I have the perfect race I can probably give her a run for her money.’ I was expecting to land somewhere on the podium today, so to be just off, that’s a little tough, but it is what it is.”
Kok’s 10.18 opening split was the fastest of the night and immediately put the Olympic record within reach. Where others faded fractionally through the closing 400m, Kok accelerated, driving through the final corner and stopping the clock at 36.49 – marking the sixth Olympic speed skating record of these Games.
Kok’s trip perfectly embodied the technical advantage she has built over her competition: fastest start, fastest overall time and the only skater able to sustain sub-26.5 pace over the final lap of the race. She adds Olympic gold to a trophy case that includes the past three 500m world titles.
“The start was pretty good, I think,” Kok said. “I was a little bit shaky, because I had so much pressure and nerves. But when I skated I felt like, ‘OK, it’s going fast’. I just wanted to get to that finish line as fast as I could.”
Jackson, who became the first Black woman to win individual Winter Olympic gold four years ago in Beijing, entered the Milano Cortina Games fighting through a season dogged by back and hamstring issues, skating cautiously through parts of the World Cup campaign simply to preserve her body for this moment. Even so, she arrived ranked No 3 in the world and still carrying the aura of the sport’s most explosive starter.
“Before the race I was feeling confident, ready to go,” Jackson said. “I got off the line probably the best I have ever. That was my fastest 100m opener, so I was really happy with that.
“First corner felt great, in the backstretch, my feet got away from me a little bit. I had a little stumble going into the second corner. I finished as strong as I could. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the race. It sucks to miss out on the podium by so little, especially with a stumble midway through, but that’s racing.”
