Ireen Wüst of the Netherlands threw her hands above her head after finishing her 1,500-meter speedskating race on Monday. It was a great time, and she knew it: 1 minute 53.28 seconds, a new Olympic record.
The hard part was still to come.
Her race run, Wüst sat, hunched over, hands folded in front of her as Miho Takagi of Japan, the best 1,500 skater in the world this season, took the ice for the final pair of the night. As Wüst stared at the ground, unable to watch, Takagi circled the track again and again until she finished. Her time, 0.44 of a second slower, gave Wüst the gold medal. It also rewrote her mind-boggling list of accomplishments.
With the victory, Wüst became the first person to win an individual gold medal at five Olympics — she first won the 3,000 meters in Turin in 2006 — and, at age 35, the oldest speedskating gold medalist ever. The medal, her sixth gold, was her 12th medal overall, more than any speedskater and third most among all Winter Olympians.
“The first time is the easiest one to win,” Wüst said of collecting gold medals. “Winning for the fifth time is the hardest.”
Wüst’s fellow Dutchwoman Antoinette de Jong finished third. The American Brittany Bowe, who was hoping to win her first individual Olympic medal, was a disappointing 10th.
Wüst had a solid but not superlative season heading into the Olympics. But she said on Monday that she had felt a sense of calm and confidence after making it through the crucible of qualifying out of the Netherlands, the world’s top speedskating nation, and carried that feeling through this week.
“When it’s really important, I can show something extra,” she said. “And that’s the feeling I had when I woke up.”
Wüst confirmed after the race that she would retire after this season. She plans to marry her girlfriend, Letitia de Jong, this summer — their wedding has been postponed several times because of the pandemic — and said she was looking forward to exploring life outside the all-encompassing world of elite competition.
“I always say age is just a number,” she said. “But I’m 35, and I really want to have children, so at some point you have to quit.”