should track have irrelevant sprint laps like mass start speed skating?

why oh why wrote:

points earned from sprint laps have nothing to do with who medals

why do they have them

It matters in heats to get to the final...I’m not sure why it’s relavent in the final though..and I speedkate

Tron wrote:

why oh why wrote:

points earned from sprint laps have nothing to do with who medals

why do they have them

It matters in heats to get to the final...I’m not sure why it’s relavent in the final though..and I speedkate

The rules are the same in all mass start speed skating races, but as you noted, the intermedaite sprint points are irrelevant in finals.

There are three intermediate sprints during a race, and the top three skaters to cross the line at those sprints earn 5, 3, and 1 points respectively.

But at the finish of the race the top three finishers earn 60, 40, and 20 points respectively. So no matter how many intermediate sprint points a skater earns en route, those points alone cannot earn him or her a win. (Unlike in track cycling, which does have mass start point races where a rider can earn enough points en route to win without crossing the line first).

Sprint points are used to determine the minor placings, from 4 on down, which in heats can determine who advances, but in finals the medals are simply determined by placing.

While I understand the rules, I don't understand the logic of them; as the OP noted, the intermediate sprints are irrelevant to final placings, so in a final it seems a pointless waste of energy for a skater to even contest them (and nonsensical for the intermediate sprints to even exist).

The intermediate points will matter if one of the medalists is busted for doping.

Cynic wrote:

The intermediate points will matter WHEN one of the medalists is busted for doping.

To address the OP, that could be really fun on an indoor 200m track.

I think it would be more interesting in general if the final lap points were, say, triple the intermediate points, and not 10x+. (Enough so that someone could win gold by winning all three intermediate sprints, but that someone who gets at least one point in an intersprint can win gold by winning the race.)

Intermediate sprint laps make sense and make racing more exciting in sports like longtrack speedskating and cycling (specifically track racing and criterium cycling), because they shake up the racers' strategy and incentivize people to go hard and try to start breakaways rather than just sitting in and drafting the whole time and waiting for the finishing sprint. Basically, in game theory terms, the intermediate sprint lap establishes a "Schelling point" for a number of racers to make hard mid-race efforts that establish gaps, which thereby forces the entire field to accelerate and expend energy fatigue, which thereby makes it more rational and feasible for breakaways to get off the front and have a chance of beating lazy sprinters who would otherwise just sit in the slipstream until the last lap.

In running, given the high-impact physiology (we jump from foot to foot instead of rolling/sliding) and the much slower speeds (drafting provides a trivial force advantage to runners below 17mph), intermediate sprints laps aren't required to get the runners to go hard.

If you aren't a cyclist, you might not fully understand just how vital this is in a sport like cycling (where typical racing speeds on a flat are around 30mph) and how very different that is from running. For example, in cycling, if Chris Froome were to go head-to-head in a flat cycling criterium with a bunch of typical flabby twice-a-week group riders, he might try to go off the front at 30mph, but on typical roads on a non-TT bike, this would require him to put out more than 400 watts. Meanwhile, the flabby group riders sitting in the middle of the pack could maintain the same average speed at an average power below 200 watts. And, given that, why would they do anything else? Cycling is a dramatically, dramatically different strategic dynamic than running.

When I see runners advocating that running races take a page from track- and criterium cycling and speedskating in this respect, it shows me they just don't understand the physiological and strategic differences between the sports.

Google is great. Found this thread. As I just watched a replay of final. 

so there is no point to get the points in the final yet athletes wasted their energy getting them? What am I missing?   or does it help them get like 8th place instead of 5th ?

Kind of reminds of:

Speed skating has way too many events or track has way too few events.

One year when I was at the DN Galan meet in Stockholm they had bonuses for leading at 4 to go 0 3 to - 2 to go - 1 to go. All that happened was a guy would surge for about 50m get the bonus then slow down again.

The thought was that the bonus structure would lead to the race getting faster and faster over the last laps. Really didn't work.

In the end the guy who keep grabbing the lap bonuses won more money then the race winner

olympic-dependent sports shamelessly pad their schedule with extra events so they can get more medals. At least with XC skiing I think it adds some variety to their season otherwise.

Does speed skating have a season? There's not even anyone in there watching them, hardly.

Hockey, a real sport that makes money, gets only one medal. Lots of games, one medal. Nothing extra for the best goalie, best forward, best +/- line.

Since adding the "skater" events to the olympics, the US team has become utterly dependent on them. 5 of its 8 golds are in snowboarding and freestyle.