LILLEHAMMER 1994 Eisschnelllauf 1500m Männer Olympische Winterspiele 94

After his dominant win in the 5000 m, Johann Olav Koss was heavily favored to win the 1,500 m as well. Koss was the defending champion, and he had won the pre-Olympic World Cup on the Hamar rink back in December. But he faced stiff competition from both his own country and the Netherlands. Koss’ team mate Ådne Søndrål, had won two World Cup races earlier in the season, and had finished second behind Koss in the Albertville Games. Of the Dutch skaters, Falko Zandstra and Rintje Ritsma had the best chances. Zandstra had won the Davos World Cup, while Ritsma had won the distance at the European Championships in January in Hamar. Ritsma had then bettered the world record - which still dated from the 1988 Olympics - to 1:51.60.

Koss was the first of these favorites to race. Skating a final lap that was unheard of (29.38), he managed to beat Ritsma’s world best mark by 0.31 seconds, setting it at 1:51.29. Next up was Søndrål. While a sprinter, he couldn’t match Koss’s splits early on, and never came close to his compatriot’s time, despite setting a personal best of 1:53.13. In the next pair, it was Zandstra. At the bell, the Dutch World Allround Champion was about equal with Koss, but his final lap was over a second slower than the Norwegian’s. Ritsma, going in pair six, met with the same fate. Leading by two tenths at 1,100 m, he lost a lot in the last 400 m, ending up with 1:51.99, slightly outside his own former world record. At the victory press conference, Johann Olav Koss announced he would donate his victory reward to the victims of the war in Bosnia, and especially Sarajevo, the host of the 1984 Winter Olympics that had been ravaged by war.