Nils van der Poel broke his own world record Friday night en route to winning the men’s 10,000-meter speedskating race and picking up his second gold medal of the Beijing Olympics.
Van der Poel’s time of 12:30.74 was over two seconds faster than the previous world record, which he set at the world championships in the Netherlands last year. It was also almost 14 seconds — about half a lap — faster than any other skater, cementing van der Poel as the world’s undisputed top distance skater.
The world record by Van der Poel, a Swede, came five days after he won the 5,000-meter race in an Olympic record time, and two days after he rocked the speedskating world with an accusation that the Dutch team was pressuring the ice technician at the National Speed Skating Oval to make the Olympic ice conditions more favorable to the Dutch.