Martina Sáblíková
Encyclopedia
Martina Sáblíková (ˈmarcɪna ˈsaːbliːkovaː) (born 27 May 1987 in Nové Město na Moravě
Nové Mesto na Morave
Nové Město na Moravě is a town in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has 10,464 inhabitants.-Business in town:Despite its location surrounded by great outdoors, the town has a long tradition of manufacturing...

, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

) is a Czech
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

 speedskater, specializing in long distance races. She is an Olympic gold medal winner and a multiple World champion. She is the elder sister of fellow speedskater Milan Sáblík
Milan Sáblík
Milan Sáblík is a Czech speedskater and the younger brother of Martina Sáblíková, the 2007 European Champion and double World Single Distances Champion...

.

Career

As a junior, Sáblíková already achieved some notable results during international tournaments. In 2005, she came seventh in the 5,000 m during the World Single Distance Championships
World Single Distance Championships
The World Single Distance Championships are a series of speed skating competitions organised by the International Skating Union.-History:Since the late 19th century, speed skating championships were always decided by racing multiple distances – four different distances for the allround...

. On 18 November 2005, she skated the 3,000 m junior world record 4:00.69 in Salt Lake City. She became Czech youth champion in 1999, 2001, and 2004.

In the 2006 European allround championships in Hamar
Hamar
is a town and municipality in Hedmark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Hedmarken. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Hamar. The municipality of Hamar was separated from Vang as a town and municipality of its own in 1849...

, she finished fourth overall, by placing third at the 3,000 m and winning the 5,000 m. At the 5,000 meter she surprisingly beat favorite Claudia Pechstein
Claudia Pechstein
Claudia Pechstein is a German speed skater. With a total of five Olympic gold medals, two silver, and two bronze medals, she is the most successful German Winter Olympian of all time...

.

At the 2006 Winter Olympics
2006 Winter Olympics
The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XX Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Turin, Italy from February 10, 2006, through February 26, 2006. This marked the second time Italy hosted the Olympic Winter Games, the first being the VII Olympic Winter...

 in Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

, she finished fourth in the 5,000 m, behind Clara Hughes
Clara Hughes
Clara Hughes, OC, OM is a Canadian cyclist and speed skater, and has won multiple Olympic medals in both sports. Hughes won two bronze in the Summer Olympics in 1996 and four medals over the course of three Winter Olympics...

, Claudia Pechstein
Claudia Pechstein
Claudia Pechstein is a German speed skater. With a total of five Olympic gold medals, two silver, and two bronze medals, she is the most successful German Winter Olympian of all time...

, and Cindy Klassen
Cindy Klassen
Cindy Klassen, OM is a Canadian long track speed skater. Klassen is a six-time medalist at the Winter Olympics. She is tied with Clara Hughes for Canada's all-time most decorated Olympian with 6 medals each...

. During her race against Cindy Klassen she was more than 3 seconds faster in the last round, but eventually missed the bronze medal by a second.

Because of Sáblíková's results, her position on the all time world ranking, the Adelskalender, increased from the 94th to the 15th place within a year. In March 2006, she skated a world record at the 10,000 m, beating Clara Hughes's former best time by more than 11 seconds.

The next year she won her first major tournament, the 2007 European Allround Speed Skating Championships in Collalbo, with an outdoor world record samalog
Samalog
Samalog is a scoring system in speed skating. It is used in allround tournaments to convert results at various distances into points in order to determine an overall champion...

 score 162.954 points. She won both the 3,000 m and the 5,000 m in an outdoor world record time. She did not perform so well at the World alround championships
World Allround Speed Skating Championships
The World Allround Speed Skating Championships are a series of speed skating events held annually to determine the best allround speed skater of the world...

 in Heerenveen
Heerenveen
Heerenveen is a town in the Heerenveen municipality of the province of Friesland , in the north of the Netherlands.- History :The town was established in 1551 by three lords as a location for the purpose of digging peat which was used for fuel, hence the name...

, where she finished fifth, but she managed to win the 2006–07 Speed Skating World Cup
2006–07 Speed Skating World Cup
The 2006–2007 Speed Skating World Cup was a multi race tournament over a season of speed skating. The season began on 10 November 2006 and lasted until 4 March 2007. The World Cup was organised by the ISU, who also run world cups and championships in short track speed skating and figure skating.-...

 on the 3,000 and 5,000 m track. At the end of the season she won two gold medals at the 2007 World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships
2007 World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships
The 2007 World Single Distance Speed Skating Championships were held between 8 March and 11 March 2007 in the Utah Olympic Oval, Salt Lake City. Twelve events were held, and world records were broken in five events.-Medal table:-Men's events:...

 in Salt Lake City on 3,000 m and 5,000 m tracks. She also beat here the 5,000 m track world record and set it for 6:45.61, 1.3 seconds faster than the previous record of Claudia Pechstein.

On 15 March 2007, Sáblíková became the first female speedskater to skate a 10,000 m below 14 minutes when she did 13:48.33 in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

. She improved her own one year old world record by almost 20 seconds and this unbelievable result belonged to top 100 men all time. In December 2007, she took the 18th place in the poll European Sportsperson of the Year of the Polish Press Agency
Polish Press Agency
Polish Press Agency is a Poland's news agency owned by Polska Agencja Prasowa S.A., distributing political, economic, social, and cultural press releases as well as events info and online news, in a similar way to Reuters, Agence France-Presse and AP....

.
She also won the title of the Sportsperson of the Year of the Czech Republic
Sportsperson of the Year of the Czech Republic
Sportsperson of the Year of the Czech Republic is an award given to the best Czech Sportsperson and the best Czech sport team of the given year by the Sport Journalists' Club . For the first time it was awarded after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, following the previous trophy...

 twice – in 2007 and 2009.

One week before the start of the 2007–08 World Cup season
2007–08 Speed Skating World Cup
The 2007–08 Speed Skating World Cup was a multi race tournament over a season of speed skating. The season begins on 9 November 2007 and lasted until 22 February 2008...

 Sáblíková fell during her training, and fractured her humerus
Humerus
The humerus is a long bone in the arm or forelimb that runs from the shoulder to the elbow....

 and stretched ligament
Ligament
In anatomy, the term ligament is used to denote any of three types of structures. Most commonly, it refers to fibrous tissue that connects bones to other bones and is also known as articular ligament, articular larua, fibrous ligament, or true ligament.Ligament can also refer to:* Peritoneal...

s. Although the injury limited her training in the beginning, she had an excellent season, and finally got the title with 6 out of 7 world cup wins (including the final) at the 3,000 m and 5,000 m track. She also finished 9th at the 1,500 m track.

On 13 January, she took bronze at the 2008 European allround championships in Kolomna
Kolomna
Kolomna is an ancient city and the administrative center of Kolomensky District of Moscow Oblast, Russia, situated at the confluence of the Moskva and Oka Rivers, southeast of Moscow. The area of the city is about . The city was founded in 1177...

, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. On 12 January, the first day of the event, she improved her personal best at the 500 m track, her weakest distance, skating the time of 40.58 seconds. However, it was still too slow to compete with the best skaters, and so she finally finished 3rd despite winning the 3,000 m and 5,000 m distances.
On 10 February she finished 5th at the World Allround Championships in Heerenveen
Heerenveen
Heerenveen is a town in the Heerenveen municipality of the province of Friesland , in the north of the Netherlands.- History :The town was established in 1551 by three lords as a location for the purpose of digging peat which was used for fuel, hence the name...

, again winning the 5,000 m track but with a poor 500 m track result.

On 9 March 2008 she won gold at the 5,000 m track at the World Single Distance Championships in Nagano, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. However, she was very disappointed with her 3,000 m performance two days before, when she finished 4th.

On 11 January 2009 she repeated her previous bronze performance at the European allround championships despite her traditionally weak performance at the 500 m track and surprising 4th place at the 3,000 m track. However on 8 February she took gold at the World allround championships in Hamar
2009 World Allround Speed Skating Championships
The 2009 World Allround Speed Skating Championships were held at the indoor ice rink of the Vikingskipet Olympic Arena in Hamar on 7 and 8 February 2009.The Czech Martina Sáblíková and the Dutch Sven Kramer became world champion....

 after setting new Czech national record at the 500 m track 40.28 seconds and winning the 3,000 m and 5,000 m tracks. It was the first world alround medal in her career.
On the 1 February 2009 Martina Sáblíková and her fellow Czech competitors Andrea Jirků
Andrea Jirku
Andrea Jirků is a Czech long track speed skater who participates in international competitions.-Personal records:-Career highlights:European Allround Championships-External links:**...

 and Karolína Erbanová won the team pursuit competition at the World Cup Final in Erfurt, setting new Czech national record for 3:05.32. After the leading Dutch team did not finish the race, they also won the whole 2008/2009 World Cup
2008–09 Speed Skating World Cup/Team Pursuit Women
The 2008-09 Speed Skating World Cup/Team Pursuit Women started in the first weekend of November at the Berlin World Cup event and concluded at the World Cup in Erfurt in February. Defending titlist was Canada who won the 2007-08 edition....

.

At the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver (2010), Sáblíková won three medals, two golds (3000 and 5000 metres) and one bronze (1500 metres).

Martina Sáblíková and Milan Sáblík are a rare example of sister and brother both holding world records in the same sport at the same time; Martina holds the (senior) world records in the 5,000 m and 10,000 m events (both from March 2007), while Milan shares the junior world record for the team pursuit with fellow Czech junior skaters Pavel Kulma and Zdeněk Haselberger (from November 2007). Sáblíková's successes are even more surprising given that there is no speedskating stadium in the Czech Republic. Because of this, Sáblíková's coach Petr Novák had to devise several unorthodox but successful training methods.
*=not an official distance for women, so no official World record

In-line skating and cycling

Martina Sáblíková also competed in several inline speed skating
Inline speed skating
Inline speed skating is the sport of racing on inline skates It is often called inline racing by participants. Although it primarily evolved from racing on traditional roller skates, the sport is similar enough to ice speed skating that many competitors are now known to switch between inline and...

 and cycling
Cycling
Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...

 races as a part of her summer preparation for the skating season. In 2004, she finished 16th at the Junior Inline Speed Skating World Championships on the 20 km track in Sulmona
Sulmona
thumb|150px|Celestine V's hermitage and the remains of the Shrine of Hercules Curinus.thumb|150px|Palazzo SS. Annunziata and Museo Civicothumb|150px|Church of SS...

. In 2006, she won the marathon (42.2 km) at the Czech Inline Speed Skating Championships in Plzeň and in 2007 the halfmarathon (21.6 km) in Ostrava
Ostrava
Ostrava is the third largest city in the Czech Republic and the second largest urban agglomeration after Prague. Located close to the Polish border, it is also the administrative center of the Moravian-Silesian Region and of the Municipality with Extended Competence. Ostrava was candidate for the...

.
In 2007, she also took bronze in individual time trial
Individual time trial
An individual time trial is a road bicycle race in which cyclists race alone against the clock . There are also track-based time trials where riders compete in velodromes, and team time trials...

 on the 24 km track at the European U23-Junior Road Cycling Championships in Sofia
Sofia
Sofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...

 and another bronze on the 18 km track at the Czech Road Cycling Championships in Žďár nad Sázavou
Ždár nad Sázavou
Žďár nad Sázavou is a city in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has approximately 24,000 inhabitants and is the administrative capital of the Žďár nad Sázavou District. The city is a prominent centre of tourism, as a ski resort in winter and a popular destination for cycling and...

. In 2010 she takes gold at the Czech Road and Time Trial National Championship
2010 national cycling championships
The 2010 national road cycling championships began in January in Australia and New Zealand. Most of the European national championships take place in June.-Jerseys:...

 .

External links




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