Tomas Gustafson

Tomas Gustafson

Gustafson in 2010
Personal information
Birth name	Sven Tomas Gustafson
Nationality	Swedish
Born	28 December 1959 (1959-12-28) (age 57) Katrineholm, Sweden
Height	1.75 m (5 ft 9 in)
Weight	70 kg (154 lb)
Spouse(s)	Elisabet Gustafson
Sport
Country	Sweden
Sport	Speed skating
Turned pro	1979
Retired	1992
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)	500 m: 38.10 (1990) 1000 m: 1:18.48 (1981) 1500 m: 1:53.22 (1990) 3000 m: 4:03.17 (1987) 5000 m: 6:44.51 (1987) 10 000 m: 13:48.20 (1988)
Medal record Men’s speed skating Olympic Games 1984 Sarajevo 5000 m 1988 Calgary 5000 m 1988 Calgary 10,000 m 1984 Sarajevo 10,000 m World Championships 1983 Oslo Allround European Championships 1982 Oslo Allround 1988 The Hague Allround 1990 Heerenveen Allround 1986 Oslo Allround

Sven Tomas Gustafson (born 28 December 1959) is a retired Swedish speed skater, and one of the most successful distance skaters of the 1980s.

Born in Katrineholm, he won the World Junior Championships title, in Grenoble, France, in 1979. One year later, at the European Championships of seniors, he finished 4th. One month after that, he participated in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, with a 7th place on the 1500 m as his best performance. In that same month, he defended his Junior World title.

In 1982, he became allround European Champion in Oslo, where he set the 10,000 m world record. As of 2017^[update] this is the last outdoor World record for men on a lowland track. Because of this performance, he was awarded the Oscar Mathisen Award, an award for the best skating performance of the season. One year later, on the same track, he won silver at the World Allround Championships, finishing second behind Rolf Falk-Larssen. Gustafson had the best allround point-sum (samalog), but Falk-Larssen won by the rule that a skater winning three distances, and merely having finished the fourth, is automatically pronounced the champion. This caused a renewed debate about the three-distance-wins rule which was subsequently abolished. From 1984 onwards, the champion was to be the skater with the best allround point-sum.

One year later, his focus was not on the world allround championships, but on the 1984 Winter Olympics at Sarajevo. He won Olympic gold in the 5,000 m, ahead of Soviet skater Igor Malkov by a mere two hundredths of a second. In the 10,000 m, he once more found himself again in a close finish with Malkov, this time losing by five hundredths of a second. After these Olympics, Gustafson struggled through a knee surgery, meningitis, and the death of his father.