Men's 5000 metres at the XXII Olympic Winter Games
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The podium
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Venue | Adler Arena Skating Center | ||||||||||||
Date | 8 February 2014 | ||||||||||||
Competitors | 26 from 14 nations | ||||||||||||
Winning time | 6:10.76 | ||||||||||||
Medalists | |||||||||||||
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Sven Kramer | Netherlands | ||
Jan Blokhuijsen | Netherlands | ||
Jorrit Bergsma | Netherlands |
The men's 5000 metres speed skating competition of the 2014 Sochi Olympics was held at 15:30 MSK on 8 February 2013 at the Adler Arena Skating Center. All the medals were won by Dutch athletes — Sven Kramer, who set a new Olympic record, Jan Blokhuijsen (silver), and Jorrit Bergsma (bronze).
Jan Szymański in the second pair set the time of 6:26.35, which was only beaten by both athletes in the 6th pair, and Håvard Bøkko set the new leading time. Already in the next, 7th pair Denis Yuskov beat Bøkko' s time by more than three seconds, and in the middle of the distance developed even a bigger lead. In the next pair, Ivan Skobrev, the bronze medalist of the 2010 Olympics, failed to improve Yuskov's result and was provisionally left second. In the 10th pair, Sven Kramer, widely regarded as the main gold medal contender, initially was losing to the Yuskov's pace, but then accelerated and set the new Olympic record. The athletes in the 11th and 12th pairs all lost to Kramer but beat Yuskov, finally taking places from the second to the fifth, with all three Dutch athletes in medal positions. Only one pair remained, featuring Lee Seung-hoon, the 2010 silver medalist and the 2010 champion at 10000 m. However, he started to lose to Kramer's pace early in the race, and ended up twelfth, losing also to Patrick Beckert from his pair.
A total of twenty-eight speed skaters could qualify for this distance, with a maximum of three skaters per country. The top 16 of the 2013–14 ISU Speed Skating World Cup – Men's 5000 and 10000 metres standings after the fourth World Cup race in Berlin secured a spot for their country. Then the additional 12 spots were awarded based on a time ranking of all times skated in the World Cup 5000 metres. A reserve list was also made. Each athlete qualifying must have also hit a maximum time standard of 6:33.00 over the distance.