Olympics-Speed skating-Soft-ice doubts melt away as Milano Cortina track produces five records

By Pearl Josephine Nazare

MILAN, Feb 15 (Reuters) - When speed skaters arrived at the Milano Cortina Games muttering about soft ice, veteran ice master Mark Messer barely blinked - and five Olympic track records later, his confidence has been thoroughly vindicated.

The first fell on the opening day of competition at the Milano Speed Skating Stadium, where an inspired Francesca Lollobrigida powered to gold in the women's 3,000 metres, capturing Italy's first title of the Games on home ice.

Since then, blistering times have continued to pour in. Norway's Sander Eitrem lowered the men's 5,000m record, Dutchwoman Jutta Leerdam set a new mark in the women's 1,000m, and American sensation Jordan Stolz produced record-breaking performances in both the men's 1,000m and 500m.

The venue itself represents an impressive transformation, converting a pre-existing trade fair centre into the temporary Milano Ice Park's speed skating stadium.

"Right from the first day that the athletes came, there were comments from people that the ice was soft - and we have that every time. But we start that way," Messer said.

"We have to start with safe ice, and then we start to tweak it. We start to change the composition of the ice, the temperature around the ice, the air temperature, and then we can start to make those adjustments until we find some limits.

"All we try to do is give a field for all the athletes to do their best. Everybody that's here has been practising for four years for this race. Hopefully, they're in the best shape. The athletes - they are the story. We're just trying to give them something that's fair."

The 21-year-old Stolz seemed satisfied with the surface after his 1,000m gold.

"I'm not sure why, but they said that the ice might not be that good, but I think it's really fast," Stolz said. "I'm pretty happy that we have this venue here and we're able to skate these speeds."

Messer, from Calgary, Canada, is the Director of the Olympic Oval - North America's first covered speed skating oval, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics.

He has been part of the Oval team since 1987 and brings Olympic experience from Calgary 1988, Salt Lake City 2002, Torino 2006, Vancouver 2010, Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing 2022.

"This is the seventh Games that I'm working at," Messer added. "So if I see something, maybe I know how to react to it sooner than somebody else.

"We tried to forecast or plan for what we expected the conditions would be, and then we start to make adjustments from there."