The men's 10,000 m competition in speed skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics was held on 11 February, at the National Speed Skating Oval ("Ice Ribbon") in Beijing. Nils van der Poel of Sweden won the event, a few days after winning the 5000 m distance, and set a new world record. Patrick Roest of the Netherlands won the silver medal, and Davide Ghiotto of Italy the bronze, his first individual Olympic medal.
The defending champion and the Olympic record holder was Ted-Jan Bloemen. The silver medalist, Jorrit Bergsma, qualified for the Olympics as well. The bronze medalist, Nicola Tumolero, did not start. Nils van der Poel was the 2021 World Single Distances champion at the 10,000 m distance, with Bergsma and Alexander Rumyantsev being the silver and bronze medalist, respectively. Van der Poel was also the world record holder at the start of the Olympics. He was leading the 2021–22 ISU Speed Skating World Cup at long distances with four races completed before the Olympics, followed by Bloemen and Davide Ghiotto. Van der Poel's skated season best, 12:38.92 in Stavanger on 20 November 2021. No skater has ever won the 10,000 m distance twice.
Graeme Fish won the first pair, to be overtaken by Patrick Roest in pair 2. In pair 4, Bergsma skated the provisionally second time, with Roest still in the lead and two pairs to go. However, in pair 5 van der Poel set the world record, and Giotto, who until the last kilometer was faster than Roest, finally lost to Roest and became provisionally third. The last pair did not change the medal allocation.
Qualification
A total of 12 entry quotas were available for the event, with a maximum of two athletes per NOC. The first eight athletes qualified through their performance at the 2021–22 ISU Speed Skating World Cup, while the last four earned quotas by having the best times among athletes not already qualified. A country could only earn the maximum two spots through the World Cup rankings.
The qualification time for the event (13:30.00 or 6:25.00 (5000 m)) was released on July 1, 2021, and was unchanged from 2018. Skaters had the time period of July 1, 2021 – January 16, 2022 to achieve qualification times at valid International Skating Union (ISU) events.
Records Prior to this competition, the existing world, Olympic and track records were as follows.
A new world and Olympic record was set during the competition.
Date Round Athlete Country Time Record 11 February Pair 5 Nils van der Poel 12:30.74 WR, OR, TR
Results The races were started at 16:00.Final results
Rank Pair Lane Name Country Time Time behind Notes 5 I Nils van der Poel 12:30.74 WR, OR 2 O Patrick Roest 12:44.59 +13.85 5 O Davide Ghiotto 12:45.98 +15.24 NR 4 4 O Jorrit Bergsma 12:48.94 +18.20 5 4 I Aleksandr Rumyantsev 12:51.33 +20.59 NR 6 1 O Graeme Fish 12:58.80 +28.06 7 3 O Patrick Beckert 13:01.23 +30.49 8 6 I Ted-Jan Bloemen 13:01.39 +30.65 9 2 I Michele Malfatti 13:01.42 +30.68 10 6 O Bart Swings 13:02.43 +31.69 11 3 I Ryosuke Tsuchiya 13:02.49 +31.75 12 1 I Peter Michael 13:33.53
References