O’Brien Continues On Road To Beijing At Third ISU World Cup in Hungary

Liam O’Brien (22) is back competing this weekend at the ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating in Debrecen, Hungary (18-21 November), the penultimate leg of four qualifying events for the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

O’Brien will be racing from tomorrow (18 November) inside the Főnix Arena. First up will be the 1500m heats and quarterfinals which will be followed later in the day by 500m preliminaries and heats. On Friday (19 November) the 1000m preliminaries and heats will take place. Subsequent rounds and finals will be held on Saturday (20 November) and Sunday (21 November).

For O’Brien, the goal again will be to progress as far as he can in each distance to accumulate ranking points. There are 32 Olympic quota places in the 500m and 1000m distances and 36 in the 1500m on offer. Full rules of the Olympic qualifying procedures can be viewed here.

After the first two World Cup events in Asia last month, the current World Cup Classification for O’Brien in each distance is as follows:

500m (60th), 1000m (60th), 1500m (45th)

“It was good to get back to my training base in Korea between the Asian and European World Cups,” O’Brien said. “Since the last World Cup, I’ve been building on my performance and hope to improve over the coming weekend.”

The ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating will be streamed live on the ISU Skating YouTube channel. The event can also be followed on social media via the #ShortTrackSkating hashtag.

Schedule (Irish time)

18 November

09:36 1500m Heats
12:01 1500m Quarterfinals
14:34 500m Preliminaries
16:01  500m Heats

19 November

10:26 1000m Preliminaries
12:21 1000m Heats

20 November

10:01 1500m Ranking Finals
10:42 500m Ranking Finals
13:20 1500m Semifinals
14:13 1500m Finals
15:02 500m Quarterfinals
15:40 500m Semifinals
16:17 500m Finals

21 November

09:12 1000m Ranking Finals
13:19 1000m Quarterfinals
14:00 1000m Semifinals
14:40 1000m Finals