That reminds me. I still need to return a book to the library. Better get on it within the next 9 years.

But then it's the athlete's decision. Some try something new to gain an edge, whereas the ones at the top probably stick to what they know works for them. If lots of new guys with the new stuff do well, next time more people will use it. That's how it worked after the invention of the clap skate ("klapschaats"), and it's a great model for innovating in a sport without putting all your eggs in one basket.

Having no national competition will very likely hurt you at the Olympics. True, many smaller countries just don't have enough good skaters to fill a good competition, but surely the US is big enough for that.

They as good as it gets without risking your chances at a European, World or Olympic championship. Competition here is unbelievably tough. Perform badly at the national championship, and someone else will go to the Olympics in your place. And it doesn't really matter that much which skater we send to the Olympics; we tend to get lots of medals at speed skating anyway. (Except for the 500m until now.)

You can usually still send enough athletes to take all the medals if you're that good. Medals per capita is not meaningless, but you do need to make sure you've got a really good competition to select those athletes. (And it helps if they use the same tech in that selection as they'll be using in the final event; some take to it better than others.)

Tougher competition can certainly explain part of it. The Dutch have lots of innovation and competition in training techniques, and the pay off is clearly visible at the 500m, which was always the one distance we totally sucked at. But then you'd expect the American world record holder in 4th place, not 8th.

You don't tweak your form in a month. You train for it all year. Several years, maybe. If your suit ruins your form, the suit is wrong, not your form.

In an interview for Dutch TV yesterday, Shani Davis made it as clear as he was allowed to, that he wasn't allowed to say anything negative about the suit, and that's why couldn't say anything about the suit.

Shani Davis holds an impressive number of world records, regularly improving upon his previous record. Yesterday, he finished 8th. That's just not where he belongs.

It's not an unfair advantage. There's lots of innovation in speed skating. But using something untested in a major tournament like this, requiring all athletes of your country to use it, well, that's pretty stupid.

Amazingly even on the 500m, which was the only distance we always sucked at (and where Shani Davis ruled).

Big part of the difference is that while most countries have a single national team, we have a lot of competing teams with their own ideas about training, tech, etc. Through this competition, what works and doesn't work is quickly proven. Also, skating is a popular area of research here. I suspect we're the only country where skating has professionalized to this level. As a result, it's the only truly international sport that we utterly dominate.

It's like the US's situation in basketball, baseball or American Football. Having the most professional competition in the world pays off.

Problem here is it every US athlete was required to use this untested gear. Had it been optional, some would have used it hoping for an extra edge, others would have stuck to their guns, and the new tech would get to prove itself without throwing all eggs in a single untested basket.

Also, maybe start at something smaller than the Olympics. The Olympics are kind of a big deal. Not the best timing for a big screw-up.

There are smaller skating tournaments than the Olympics. Though it's possible that a factor here is that most countries, including the US, are focused entirely on the Olympics, whereas the Dutch also want to perform at small tournaments a few months after the Olympics. Or before, for that matter. If someone tries something new, the Dutch championships are a good enough place to tell whether it's positive or negative. And usually Dutch skaters have a choice whether to use something new or not. And if it's good, they will, because otherwise they fall behind. Competition is unbelievably stiff here.

All athletes try to get a technical advantage. Usually the Dutch have the advantage, because a lot of speed skating research happens here (the clap skate that everybody now uses is also a Dutch invention, for example). Now the Americans tried to get an advantage on ill-thought-out terms (little practice; there's no way back), and it blew up in their faces.

They perform far worse than expected. Shani Davis does not suck. He used to win everything, now he's 8th. Had he been 4th, you could blame it on the excellent crop of Dutch sprinters, but he's 8th. Yesterday in an interview (where he explicitly wasn't allowed to say anything bad about the suits), he hinted that getting disqualified might be better than finishing 8th again.

It's a fine example of how ambiguous the word "test" is. If my code has unit tests, it has technically been tested, but if nobody has looked at it in anything resembling a production environment, what is that test worth?

But you can already release photons with regular non-laser headlights. Nothing new about that.

Exactly. The one who carries the risk gets the extra pay.