Ireen Wüst of the Netherlands threw her hands above her head after finishing her 1,500-meter speedskating race on Monday. It was a great time, and she knew it: 1 minute 53.28 seconds, a new Olympic record.
The hard part was still to come.
Her race run, Wüst sat, hunched over, hands folded in front of her as Miho Takagi of Japan, the best 1,500 skater in the world this season, took the ice for the final pair of the night. As Wüst stared at the ground, unable to watch, Takagi circled the track again and again until she finished. Her time, 0.44 of a second slower, gave Wüst the gold medal. It also rewrote her mind-boggling list of accomplishments.
With the victory, Wüst became the first person to win an individual gold medal at five Olympics — she first won the 3,000 meters in Turin in 2006 — and, at age 35, the oldest speedskating gold medalist ever. The medal, her sixth gold, was her 12th medal overall, more than any speedskater and third most among all Winter Olympians.