About speed skating :
Like so many Winter Olympic sports, speed skating is highly technical. While the athletes are in the crouch, they need to keep track of where they are on the course. Speeding through the turns can be difficult. Now imagine that the same full-out effort results in a different speed based on the altitude of the competition venue, you should wear light clothes that offer little to no resistance and that are tight on your body to allow for freedom of movement.
Male speed skaters average more than 30 mph in all but the longest races, and top women often average 30 mph for sprints. At sea level they might travel 0.5 mph less, or even slower, than they would at a track in places such as Calgary and Salt Lake City, due primarily to the increased air resistance. That means the skater might be going more than 2 percent slower at lower elevations. This could create some difficulty for athletes who train at a higher elevation than at Sochi.
"They're going to take those turns at different speeds. One is the speed that they practice at if they've been at altitude and the other is the speed they're going to have when they're at sea level,. "Now their speed is going to be a little slower, so their timing is going to end up being just a little bit different
Air Resistance Beyond The Oval :
Effects due to air resistance can even extend to sports where speed is not the main objective. Chapman mentioned figure skating and ski jumping in particular. A figure skater encounters air resistance when trying to make a triple or quadruple jump. Chapman said that rotational speed of a figure skater might be slower at sea level, not much more than a couple of degrees, but he said that being off by that much can make a difference.
However, many of them probably trained at high altitude, as do many endurance athletes, including cross country skiers, in order to encourage their bodies to produce more red blood cells.
"That's helpful for endurance exercise because now you can deliver more oxygen to the muscles, both at altitude and at sea level,
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