The Hungarian team won its first medals of the current season in the short track speed skaters’ World Cup series: at the fourth leg 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 Shaoan, 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 the semi-finals , and reached the final in second place behind the Dutch 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 behind the odds-on South Korean and Canadian quartet in the five-team final, but easily pushed the Kazakh and Polish quartet behind them, thus also winning the bronze medal.
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.
Cover Photo:
BEIJING, February 11, 2022. Petra Yasabati in the quarterfinals of the women’s 1000m short track speed skaters competition at the Beijing Winter Olympics at the Capital Indoor Stadium on February 11, 2022. The Hungarian athlete reached the semifinals in third place. MTI/Tamas Kovacs
