Skating: Femke Kok breaks women’s record in the 500 meters, Team USA sets new world record for team pursuit

On the last day of competition, Sunday (November 16), the 2025 ISU World Cup Speed ​​Stake witnessed two new world records at the Utah Olympic Oval in Salt Lake City – a venue rightly known as ‘the fastest ice on earth’.

A day after breaking the Dutch national record, the Dutch sprinter Femke Kok broke the longest standing world record in an Olympic speed skating distance event, with a new one World record at 500 meters time of 36.09. Kok broke through the previous set of 36.36 two-time Olympic champion Lee Sang-Hwa of the Republic of Korea. Remarkably, Lee had set her record at the Utah Olympic Oval twelve years earlier in 2013 on the same date.

Cook, one three-time world champion in a row, had set her sights on the world record the day before, when she realized her qualifying time was only 0.12 seconds off the record, and said, “This track [the high-altitude Utah Olympic Oval] slides more than other tracks, where you have to run more. Here you have to start gliding earlier. That is something I can improve.” And she improved. Time improvement by 0.27 seconds.

In the men’s team pursuit, Team USA captured gold and set a new world record. Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman and Ethan Cepuran shaved over a second off their previous score to post an impressive 3:32.49improvement of the 3:33.66 record they achieved in January 2024.