Dutchman breaks 5,000 mark

KEARNS — Chad Hedrick predicted his world record set just six days earlier wasn't going to last a week. In fact, Hedrick — after snapping the world record in the 1,500 Friday — boasted he would reset his 5,000-meter record.

He was right and he was wrong. The record he set in Calgary last week did, indeed, fall. It just wasn't Hedrick doing the record breaking.

Instead, the Netherlands' Sven Kramer is the new world record holder as he completed a furious second half of his pairing with fellow Dutchman Carl Verheijen to record a time of 6:08.78 and trim nearly a second off Hedrick's old record. Verheijen also broke Hedrick's record with his 6:08.98.

The two are the first skaters to ever complete the 5,000 race in less than 6:09. Hedrick, who skated in the pairing before them, finished with a time of 6:10.52 to place third.

"I gave the record away today," Hedrick said. "I beat everybody by a second in the first lap and then never relaxed — I just didn't skate smart."

After that blistering pace over the first lap, Hedrick struggled at times to settle into a rhythm more appropriate for the long-distance race he was in.

The result was a handful of slow times over the final few laps and then watching as the Dutchmen skated world-record races.

"I can't take anything away from them because they skated great. I know I'm capable of doing 6:07," he said. "I just didn't do it today."

Hedrick and Shani Davis have traded world and national records as both aim to stake their claim as the best speedskater in the country.

Saturday at the World Cup, the duo went at it for another round as Davis set a national record in the 1,000.

That time didn't break his own world record — as he predicted he would do just 24 hours earlier — but was good enough to hold off Norway's Eskil Ervik, who made a late charge over the final two laps.

Kramer's record was the second world mark set during Saturday's action. In the first event of the day, Japan's Joji Kato powered through the last half of his 500-meter race and sliced a narrow two one-hundredths of a second off the record of his countryman, Hiroyashi Shimizu, to get the second day of the Essent World Cup speedskating under way.

Kato, paired with American Joey Cheek for his race, turned a narrow lead out of the opening sprint into a comfortable victory and surprised Cheek with a blistering time of 34.30 seconds.