Clap skate

Last updated June 15, 2023

Hinge of a clap skate Clapskate2.png — Hinge of a clap skate

The clap skate (also called clapper skates, clapskates, slap skates, slapskates, from Dutch klapschaats ) is a type of ice skate used in speed skating. Unlike in traditional skates where the blade is rigidly fixed to the boot, clap skates have the blade attached to the boot by a hinge at the front. This allows the blade to remain in contact with the ice longer, as the ankle can now be extended toward the end of the stroke, as well as for more natural movement, thereby distributing the energy of the leg more effectively and efficiently.

Clap skates were developed at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, led by Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau, although the idea of a clap skate is much older; designs dating from around 1900 are known.

The clap skate was used first in the 1984/1985 skating season. It was, however, not until the late 1990s that the idea was taken seriously. In the 1996/1997 season, the Dutch women's team started using the skates with great success. The rest of the skating world soon followed suit, causing a torrent of world records to be broken in the following seasons, including the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

History

The idea of a hinging skate was described and patented in 1894 by Karl Hannes, from Raitenhaslach, Burghausen.^[1]^[2] It was re-invented by Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau, who started work on a hinged speed skate in 1979,^[3] created his first prototype in 1980^[2]^[3] and finished his PhD thesis on the subject in 1981^[3] on the premise that a skater would benefit from the extended movement with the skate on the ice, allowing the calf muscles to longer partake in the skate movement.^[3] The construction of the hinge was refined further in collaboration with Viking.^[1] In 1985 Ron Ket was the first to ride the clap skates in an officially timed setting, a 500-meter sprint on the Jaap Eden baan, clocking in on a promising 40.65.^[2] In February 1986 Henk Gemser who was coaching the Dutch national speedskating squad at that time expressed his intention to start training with the clap skate, though no subsequent trials were run on the new skate.^[2] In the 1986–1987 season a small number of marathon skaters intended to use the clap skate competitively, but its use was prohibited by match officials due to increased risk of physical harm to the skaters in case of a fall.^[2] The then current Dutch speed skating top professionals Ids Postma, Bart Veldkamp and Rintje Ritsma were unimpressed by the skate.^[1]

For the 1994–1995 season, 11 skaters from the South Holland 14–18 age category started using the clap skate competitively. Those 11 showed an average improvement of 6.25% on their times, compared to 2.5% of the other skaters using regular speed skates. Ten of them placed for the national championship.^[4]

In the 1996–1997 season, the use of the clap skate caught on the highest level, and in 1997 Tonny de Jong was the first European all round champion using the clap skate, leaving Gunda Niemann, the defending world champion, in second place. Niemann remarked that the skate was illegal, and should be outlawed.^[4] In the following years the clap skate started to dominate the long track speedskating landscape. The design was banned from use in short track speed skating.

Research completed in 2001 by Dutch sport scientist Han Houdijk^[5] showed that the speed gain from using the clap skate does not originate in using the calf muscle to stretch the ankle, as was assumed in the creation of the clap skate, but in the fact that the point of rotation is moved from the tip of the skate to the hinge, facilitating the transfer of power to the ice.^[6]

Related Research Articles

Ice skating is the self-propulsion and gliding of a person across an ice surface, using metal-bladed ice skates. People skate for various reasons, including recreation (fun), exercise, competitive sports, and commuting. Ice skating may be performed on naturally frozen bodies of water, such as ponds, lakes, canals, and rivers, and on human-made ice surfaces both indoors and outdoors.

Speed skating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other in travelling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marathon speed skating. In the Olympic Games, long-track speed skating is usually referred to as just "speed skating", while short-track speed skating is known as "short track". The International Skating Union (ISU), the governing body of competitive ice sports, refers to long track as "speed skating" and short track as "short track skating".

Gerard Pieter Hendrik van Velde is a Dutch retired speed skater who specialised in sprinting. He won an Olympic gold medal in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice skate</span> Boots with blades attached to the bottom for propelling the bearer across a sheet of ice

Ice skates are metal blades attached underfoot and used to propel the bearer across a sheet of ice while ice skating.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inline speed skating</span> Sport discipline

Inline speed skating is the roller sport of racing on inline skates. The sport may also be called inline racing by participants. Although it primarily evolved from racing on traditional roller skates, the sport is similar enough to ice speed skating that many competitors are known to switch between inline and ice speed skating according to the season.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Figure skate</span>

Figure skates are a type of ice skate used by figure skaters. The skates consist of a boot and a blade that is attached with screws to the sole of the boot. Inexpensive sets for recreational skaters are available, but most figure skaters purchase boots and blades separately and have the blades mounted by a professional skate technician.

Long-track speed skating, usually simply referred to as speed skating, is the Olympic discipline of speed skating where competitors are timed while crossing a set distance. It is also a sport for leisure. Sports such as ice skating marathon, short track speedskating, inline speedskating, and quad speed skating are also called speed skating.

Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau was a Dutch biomechanist. He made large contributions to the field of biomechanics, particularly muscle coordination, energetics of movement, and the functions of biarticular muscles. He focused on speed skating in particular, and played a significant part in the invention of the clap skate.

Adrianus "Ard" Schenk is a former speed skater from the Netherlands, who is considered to be one of the best in history. His first Olympic success came in 1968, when he won a silver medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics. Between 1970 and 1972 Winter Olympics, Schenk won three consecutive World Allround Speed Skating Championships. He won three gold medals at the 1972 Winter Olympics, becoming, along with Galina Kulakova of Soviet Union, the most successful athlete there.

Cornelis Arie "Kees" Verkerk is a former speed skater from the Netherlands.

The Adelskalender in skating is a ranking for long track speed skating based on skaters' all-time personal records for certain distances. As in samalog competitions, the skater's time for each distance is divided in 500 metre averages, truncated to 3 decimal places, and the results are then added up – the lower the sum, the better. The samalog system was introduced in 1928 in Norway, replacing ranking points in the traditional 4 distance championships, and can also be used to reconstruct scores based on personal records that were set before the samalog system was invented.

Tonny de Jong is a former Dutch speed skater, who was raised in Heerenveen and now lives in Calgary with Canadian speed skater Mark Knoll, whom she married in 2003.

Per Willy Guttormsen is a former Norwegian speed skater and cyclist. He was among the world's best long distance skaters in the 1960s.

Jan Maarten Heideman is a Dutch speed skater who specialises in marathon speed skating.

In ice hockey, players use specialized equipment both to facilitate the play of the game and for protection as this is a sport where injuries are common, therefore, all players are encouraged to protect their bodies from bruises and severe fractures.

Diederik Hol is a Dutch Design Engineer, designer of the Dual Box inline skate frame and the Narrow Shape Cross-Section (NSX) ice blade, and founder/director of skate company CadoMotus Skating BV.

The upright spin is one of the three basic figure skating spin positions. The International Skating Union (ISU), the governing body of figure skating, defines an upright spin as a spin with "any position with the skating leg extended or slightly bent which is not a camel position". It was invented by British figure skater Cecilia Colledge. Variations of the upright spin include the layback spin, the Biellmann spin, the full layback, the split, the back upright spin, the forward upright spin, the scratchspin, and the sideways leaning spin.

Emery Chance Lehman is an American speed skater who represented the United States at the 2014 Winter Olympics, the 2018 Winter Olympics, and the 2022 Winter Olympics. Lehman started playing ice hockey at age six, taking up speed skating in an attempt to improve his hockey at age nine.

Van Ingen is a Dutch toponymic surname meaning "from/of Ingen", a town in Gelderland. An archaic spelling is Van Inghen. People with the surname include:

Kimi Goetz is an American speed skater who represented the United States at the 2022 Winter Olympics.

References

1 2 3 "'Het moet mogelijk zijn om harder te rijden op die schaatsen!'" (PDF) (in Dutch). STW. Archived from the original (pdf) on 2013-04-30. Retrieved 2012-12-10.
1 2 3 4 5 Marnix Koolhaas (4 February 2010). "De klapschaats: voorgeschiedenis van een schaatsrevolutie" (in Dutch). Nederlandse Omroep Stichting. Archived from the original on 30 April 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2012.
1 2 3 4 Jos de Koning (1997). "Background to the slapskate: Fifteen years of slapskate history, biomechanical backgrounds, first results and recent developments". sportscience.
1 2 Stephen Seiler (1997). "The new Dutch "Slapskates": Will They Revolutionize Speed Skating Technique?". sportscience.
↑ https://www.cadomotus.com/en/blogs/cadowiki/why-clap-skates-are-faster-than-classic-skates-and/
↑ "Succes klapschaats wetenschappelijk verklaard" (in Dutch). Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. 2001. Archived from the original on 2013-02-22. Retrieved 2022-01-04.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[stwpdf-1] 1 2 3 "'Het moet mogelijk zijn om harder te rijden op die schaatsen!'" (PDF) (in Dutch). STW. Archived from the original (pdf) on 2013-04-30. Retrieved 2012-12-10.

[anderetijden-2] 1 2 3 4 5 Marnix Koolhaas (4 February 2010). "De klapschaats: voorgeschiedenis van een schaatsrevolutie" (in Dutch). Nederlandse Omroep Stichting. Archived from the original on 30 April 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2012.

[slapxtra-3] 1 2 3 4 Jos de Koning (1997). "Background to the slapskate: Fifteen years of slapskate history, biomechanical backgrounds, first results and recent developments". sportscience.

[slapskat-4] 1 2 Stephen Seiler (1997). "The new Dutch "Slapskates": Will They Revolutionize Speed Skating Technique?". sportscience.

[5] ttps://www.cadomotus.com/en/blogs/cadowiki/why-clap-skates-are-faster-than-classic-skates-and/

[nwo-6] "Succes klapschaats wetenschappelijk verklaard" (in Dutch). Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. 2001. Archived from the original on 2013-02-22. Retrieved 2022-01-04.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]