On the final day of competition, Sunday (16 November), the 2025 ISU Speed Staking World Cup witnessed two new world records at the Utah Olympic Oval in Salt Lake City—a venue rightly famed as “the fastest ice on Earth.”
A day after shattering the Dutch national record, Dutch sprinting star Femke Kok broke the longest standing World Record at an Olympic speed skating distance event, with a new 500m world record time of 36.09. Kok broke the previous mark of 36.36 set by double Olympic champion Lee Sang‑Hwa of the Republic of Korea. Remarkably, Lee had set her record at the Utah Olympic Oval on the same date twelve years earlier, in 2013.
Kok, a three-time consecutive World Champion, had set her sights on the World record the day prior as she recognized her qualifying time was just .12s off the record, saying, “This track [the high-altitude Utah Olympic Oval] glides more than other tracks, where you have to run more. Here, you have to start gliding sooner. That’s something I can improve.” And improve she did. Bettering the time by .27 seconds…