The Hungarian team won its first medals of the current season in the World Cup series for short track speed skaters: at the fourth stage in Almaty, the women’s 3000-meter relay and Petra Gaspaty in the 500-meter race took third place on Sunday.
After the constant change of the country of the Olympic champions Sandor Liu Shaolin and Liu Shao’an, the members of the Hungarian team did not have such bloody hopes as in recent years, but the Szeged rival successfully won the quarter-finals after Friday’s qualifiers, and then the bronze medalist of the world championships from semi-finals, and reached the final in second place, behind Dutchwoman Yara van Kerkhove.
Because of the lead, the final field of six was only released by the umpires for the third time after a fall, thanks to the 23-year-old Hungarian competitor’s time, he was able to start from second place. Starting from the better position, Van Kerkhof took victory at the start, but Jászapáti was overtaken by another Dutchwoman, Michelle Villzebuer.
Other Hungarians interested in the individual events, Luka Sara Bacsky and Maja Somodi, as well as Peter Nogrady, made their way to the quarter-finals of the Races of Hope, but were all but eliminated in the 1000 metres.
The women’s relay of Bácskai, Somodi, Jászapáti and Zsófia Kónya fell short of the four most likely from South Korea and Canada in the five-team final, but they easily pushed the Kazakh and Polish quartet behind and thus also won the bronze medal – and through Zsófia Kónya and Petra Jászapáti Two athletes from Szeged have won medals in this way.
The men’s relay consisting of Nógrádi, Attila Talabos, Dániel Tiborcz, and Alex Varnyú advanced to the finals, which also featured five relay heats, where they beat the losing South Korean team and finished fourth behind Canada, the Netherlands and Japan.
The championship series for this sport continues in February in Dresden and then ends in Dordrecht. Before that, the European Championship will be held in Gdansk in January.
