Speed skating at the 2018 Winter Olympics – Women's 5000 metres


The women's 5000 metres speed skating competition of the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at Gangneung Oval in Gangneung on 16 February 2018. The event was won by Esmee Visser, skating her first Olympic race. The defending champion Martina Sáblíková finished second. Natalya Voronina was third, also earning her first Olympic medal.

Summary

Skating in the first pair, Annouk van der Weijden raced to a time of 6:54.17, shaving two seconds off her personal best and taking the lead. She retained it until the fourth pair, where Esmee Visser, in a consistent race lapping in the low 32 seconds, posted a time of 6:50.23. This, too, was a personal best - over 6 seconds faster than her second-place time at the 2018 Dutch Olympic qualifying tournament, and a marked improvement over her season-start PB of 7:14.xx. In the last pair, Martina Sáblíková, recently recovered from a protracted back injury that hamstrung her preparations for the Olympics, skated to a silver medal time of 6:51.85; direct competitor Natalya Voronina took the bronze medal position, surpassing van der Weijden's time by 0.19s and nudging her off the podium into fourth place. Five-time Olympic gold medalist and the Olympic record holder at this distance Claudia Pechstein — now 45 years of age — came home in eighth place.
In the victory ceremony, the medals were presented by Sam Ramsamy, member of the International Olympic Committee, accompanied by Choi Jae-seok, ISU Speed Skating Technical Committee member.

Records

Prior to this competition, the existing world, Olympic and track records were as follows.
The following record was set during this competition.
DateRoundAthleteCountryTimeRecord
16 FebruaryPair 4Esmee Visser6:50.23TR

TR = track record

Results

The races were started at 20:00.
RankPairLaneNameCountryTimeTime behindNotes
4OEsmee Visser6:50.23TR
6OMartina Sáblíková6:51.85
6INatalya Voronina6:53.98
1IAnnouk van der Weijden6:54.17
5IIvanie Blondin6:59.38
3OIsabelle Weidemann6:59.88
1OMaryna Zuyeva7:04.41+14.18
5OClaudia Pechstein7:05.43+15.20
4IMisaki Oshigiri7:07.71+17.48
102IJelena Peeters7:10.26+20.03
112OCarlijn Schoutens7:13.28+23.05
123INana Takagi7:17.45+27.22