Gaétan T. Boucher is a former Canadian speed skating Olympic champion.
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.
Uwe-Jens Mey is a German former speed skater, considered to be the fastest sprinter of his time because of his 500 metres supremacy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was born in Warsaw, Poland.
Shani Earl Davis is an American former speed skater.
Nikolay Alekseyevich Gulyayev is a former speed skater, considered among the world's best in the 1980s.
Igor Alekseyevich Malkov is a former speedskater.
Jeremy Lee Wotherspoon is a Canadian speed skater, widely recognized as one of the greatest speedskating sprinters of all time.
Michael James Grant Ireland is a Canadian long track speed skater.
Ihar Mikalaevich Zhalyazouski or Igor Nikolayevich Zhelezovski or Ihar Mikałajevič Žalazoŭski was a Soviet and Belarusian speed skater.
Tatyana Borisovna Averina was a Soviet Russian speed skater. After getting married, her name also appeared as Tatyana Barabash.
Nina Andreyevna Statkevich is a former speed skater who competed for the Soviet Union.
Boris Arsenyevich Shilkov was a speed skater.
Lee Kyou-hyuk is a South Korean retired long track speed skater who specializes in the 500 and 1,000 meters. He was the 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011 World Sprint Speed Skating Champion and the 2011 World Champion for 500 m. He is one of four men to have won the World Sprint Speed Skating Championships four times.
Pekka Koskela is a retired Finnish speed skater, specialised on the sprint distances 500 m and 1000 m. He is the former world record holder on the 1000 m with the time 1:07.00. In December 2001 he set a junior world record on the 500 m with the time 35.89. Since that time he has established himself as one of the best speed skating sprinters in the world. He won his first medal, a bronze, on the 1000 m in the 2005 World Single Distance Championships. Koskela was number 10 in the 500 m of the 2006 Winter Olympics.
Jukka Arto Olavi Salmela is a Finnish former speedskater who specialised in the 500-m and 1000-m. He took part in the 1980 Winter Olympics on these distances, with an 18th rank on the 500-m as his best result, and was ranked 12th in the 1981 World Sprint Speed Skating Championships. On 31 March 1980, Salmela was the first skater in the world to race the 500-m below 37 seconds, when he achieved the time of 36.8 on the Medeo skating rink in Alma Ata. At that time, the world record was Yevgeny Kulikov's 37.00 of March 1975. Salmela's result was however not officially ratified as a world record by the International Skating Union; also, 36.8 was clocked by manual and not electronic timing. His 36.8 was the world's best 500-m result until Aleksandr Danilin and Pavel Pegov skated respectively 36.76 and 36.68 at the Medeo rink on 25 March 1983; the next day Pegov improved the world record to 36.57.
Choi Jae-bong is a South Korean speed skater. He represented his country at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. At that time he was the holder of the junior World record at 1500 m, set in early December 1997 in Thialf, Heerenveen, where he clocked 1:52.25 to break the record. In Nagano where he finished in 12th position he broke his own world junior record to a new best time of 1:51.47, which was 0.78 of a second faster. He also finished in 29th position at the 5000 m. In November 1998 he broke the junior world record over 500 m into a new time of 36.30 in Calgary and a day later he broke his own 1500 m record again, this time 1:49.71 was his new best time. Due to these records and some other decent results in that same weekend he also broke the junior world record for the small allround classification to 153.689 points. That same season he won the bronze medal at the World Junior Allround Championships and broke another two world records. He set 1:10.87 at the 1000 m in February 1999 and a total of 143.965 points for the sprint classification again in Calgary.
Stefan Groothuis is a Dutch retired speed skater. He is the World Sprint Champion for 2012 and the gold medal winner in the 1000 metres at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
The 1000 m speed skating is skated over two and a half laps on a 400 m rink, and three on a 333.3 m rink. On a 400 m rink it is the only distance that uses another finish line than other distances, while on the 333.3 m rink the distance has a common start- and finish line.
Sergey Anatolevich Khlebnikov was a Russian speed skater who competed for the Soviet Union in the 1980 and the 1984 Winter Olympics.
Pavel Aleksandrovich Kulizhnikov is a Russian speed skater. He won the men's 500 metres event at the 2015 World Single Distance Championships as well as the 2015 World Sprint Championships, becoming the youngest winner since speed skating icon Eric Heiden of the United States. In 2015, he became the first speed skater to finish the 500-meter in under 34 seconds with a world record of 33.98. In 2020 he became the first speed skater to break 1:06 in the 1000 metres. At the 2016 World Single Distance Championships, Kulizhnikov won the men's 500 m and 1000 m, becoming the first man to win gold in both distances at the same speed skating World Single Distances Championships.
