Where those seasons' fastest
times were actually skated. The five busiest venues and everything else — the full list is the table
above. A rink filed under two names ("Salt Lake City" and "Salt Lake City, Utah Olympic Oval") is counted
once, by the city.And
where the records were set: every season in the table that beat the mark standing before it,
added up across the whole span. These are records in this archive — the fastest it had ever seen at
the time — and not the official world record list, for the reason in the note at the foot of the page. The
first season on file beat nothing and is not counted.
The three distances, men and women
One shared season axis, but a scale of its own for each distance:
forty seconds and two minutes cannot share an axis without flattening the 500 m into a straight line.
The relays
Three different races rather than one distance raced by two fields — the men skate 5000 m, the women
3000 m, and the mixed relay 2000 m.
Against the mark of the day
The same seasons as a percentage off the fastest this archive had seen by
then, which is the one way all six events fit honestly on a single axis. A line touching the top set the
mark that season.
A database best, not an official record. The mark on these charts is the fastest
time in this archive up to that season. The ISU's own results database keeps only one heat per round
before about 2022 and holds no Olympic results before 2026, so a world record set outside what is here is
simply not here either. 33 times in the archive carry
the source's own WR flag, and those are the ringed points. Times are as published, record flags and all; penalised and unfinished races carry no
time and cannot be fastest. Super finals are left out — a super final is a bonus race, and its 3000 m
"record" is really a 1000 m split. And until 1999 the men's relay qualified over 3000 m, with only
the final skated over the full 5000 m: those heats and semifinals are real races at a different distance,
not 5000 m times, so they are not counted as one. 1998 is the changeover season and carries both.
every timed race built into the archive · super finals excluded · junior and senior competitions are separate events, because the junior relay is 3000 m for both men and women and the 2000 m was the junior relay distance until 2007/08, long before it became the mixed relay
Junior and senior are separate events here, and so is every relay. A junior
time is not a senior time, and at 3000 m they are not even the same race: the junior relay is 3000 m for
both men and women, alongside the senior women's 3000 m. The 2000 m is three races rather than one — it
was the junior men's and the junior women's relay from 2001 to 2007/08, and it is the mixed relay from
2018. Drawn on one line those two eras would read as a single event improving across a seven-season gap
it never raced.