Wide-eyed Kiwi skater poised to make an impact

NAOMI ARNOLD/Stuff.co.nz

EXCITEMENT: Kiwi skater Blake Skjellerup in Vancouver ahead of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

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Kiwi short-track speed skater Blake Skjellerup admits to being a little over-awed at his first Winter Olympics.

"I've been trying to sleep - there's a lot of excitement, it's a whole new experience,'' he says. "There's a lot to take in."

But after the initial flurry of arrival, accreditation, orientation and unpacking, Skjellerup says he's beginning to settle down and things are becoming "a little more normal and natural" despite the lack of sleep.

Skjellerup will compete in his first Olympic event on Sunday afternoon, New Zealand time, skating in the men's 1500m at the Pacific Coliseum, a venue shared also by the figure skaters.

He says the 1500m isn't his strongest event "but of course I'm still going to give it everything I've got".

The 500m and 1000m sprints, on February 17 and 20, are more his forte.
And sprints they are – the 500m is over in about 45 seconds, the 1000m in about a minute and a half, with between four and six athletes ripping around the tight corners of the course in each round.

They will reach speeds of 50kmh, and although the fastest human-powered sport in the world isn't well-known in New Zealand, it's one of the most popular at the Olympics.

It's a helter-skelter kind of race that Skjellerup says is like "human NASCAR on ice".

Short-track might best be known by New Zealanders as the sport that infamously gave the Southern Hemisphere its first-ever Winter Games gold medal at the 2002 Games.

In the men's 1000m, Australian Steven Bradbury was lagging well behind the leaders when all four favourites crashed in a heap in the last turn of the race, leaving him literally the last man standing. The media both ridiculed and lauded him as a kind of accidental hero, and Bradbury's face as he crossed the finish line was a picture of disbelief and astonishment.

It's that kind of unpredictability that Skjellerup relishes in short-track.

"Watching skaters compete for first spot, bumping and pushing their way to the front, really has you on the edge of your seat, and knowing that at any point the race can change dramatically when someone falls, or multiple people fall, and they all scramble to race to the finish," he says.

Skjellerup decamped pretty much permanently from New Zealand in mid-2008 to live and train in Calgary, and he's only been back twice since. Training under Belgian coach Jeroen Otter, he's best friends with his international teammates - close enough that several of them spent two weeks cycling 1100km from Calgary to Vancouver for a laugh.

It was a very cool experience, he says with a smile.

"We did it on mountain bikes through the mountains, not through the roads or we probably would have been murdered by a truck. Coming into Vancouver we were just buzzing that we were still alive and didn't get eaten by a bear."

But he'll be racing against those friends in the next few weeks, and despite his international ties it's all about New Zealand at the moment.

The Kiwi athlete apartment on the fourth floor of the Olympic village complex is "very sweet" with beanbags, lollies, silver ferns everywhere and a view over the harbour, mountains and city.

The next few weeks will be the culmination of 10 years of training to get to his Olympics, door-knocking for funding along the way.

"From the day I decided to give it everything to make the Olympics I've never accepted no as an answer," he says. "I know what I had to do to get here and have done everything possible to make it."

But it's only one step along the way. Training has been the number-one priority in his life for the last decade, and he hasn't had a family Christmas or summer for five years.

"After the Olympics I'd like to get back into studying for a while, keep skating and see where it all takes me. Sochi 2014 is definitely a possibility, but four years is a long time in life," he says.

His main goal while here is to improve on his 15th placing in the 1000m at the Olympic qualifiers in November.

"Making it to a semi-final is where I want to get, to be in that position to make it into the gold medal race. This is my first Olympics, and as long as I know I did my best and represented my country with pride I will be happy."

- © Fairfax NZ News