Peters Township skater speeds to silver
Courtesy USSpeedskating
John-Henry Krueger demonstrates that winning form during the U.S. Olympic Trials. The McMurray native earned a silver medal in the 1,000-meter short track speed skating event on Feb. 17 during the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea.
Eleanor Bailey/The Almanac
John-Henry Krueger
After a sour start to his medal quest, John-Henry Krueger tasted sweet success on Feb. 17 at the 2018 Winter Olympics being held in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The Peters Township native savored silver in the 1,000-meter short-track speed skating event.
“Besides getting the Olympic medal, I think the second-greatest thing is knowing that all the decisions I made leading up to these Games were right,” Krueger wrote in a tweet after winning the silver medal.
The best decision the 22-year-old son of Heidi and Bryan Krueger made was to stay the course and keep the faith after he was disqualified in his first event of the Games.
In the 1,500, which he dominated at the U.S. Olympic Trials in December, he saw his bid for a medal disintegrate on an impeding call. He had won his first-round heat but made the infraction during the semifinals.
“Good call, bad call whatever it may be,” Krueger said in a tweet to his followers. “I will not let (the 1,500) disappointment define the rest of my Olympic experience.”
“Part of the sport is to take the bad calls and the good calls, he said then declared, “My Olympics aren’t over.”
They certainly were not.
Krueger bounced back to medal in the 1,000 meters.
“The most important thing in short track is keeping your composure and calm,” Krueger said.
Krueger had to adhere to that philosophy just to reach the finals because he encountered the same obstacles he did in his opening event.
In the quarterfinals, he was advanced after officials ruled that the Netherlands’ Sjinkie Knegt impeded him on the eighth lap. In the semifinals, he led the race from the third lap on and was able to hold off tight pressure from his opponents around the last turn. He won the semifinal in 1:24.187.
Of his preliminary races, Krueger said that his quarterfinal “definitely” was not his best but he regrouped.
“I decided with my coach and with myself mentally that I needed to stay up front and be confident in what I’ve been training for and it ended up paying off.”
In the final, he again adopted that strategy. He held a top-two sport nearly the entire race but was edged out of the gold by Canada’s Samuel Girard by 0.214 seconds. Krueger finished the A final with a 1:24.864 time.
“It’s definitely harder physically to be up front,” Krueger said, “but it’s what needed to be done.”
Krueger is also in the record books. His silver medal was Team USA’s first individual speed skating medal in eight years. It’s also the first silver in an individual men’s event since Apolo Anton Ohno placed second in the 1500m at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.
Krueger becomes just the second U.S. male to ever medal in the men’s 1000m at the Olympic Games, joining Ohno who won three 1000m medals over his career (silver, 2 bronze). It ties him with Ohno and Katherine Reutter-Adamek for the best 1000m finish by any U.S. skater at a Winter Games.
After posing on the awards podium for photos with the other winners, including bronze winner Lim Hyojun of Korea, Krueger proudly displayed his silver medal on Instagram for his followers, summed up his emotions.
“Some might see this as just a round circular cut of metal,” he said. “To me, it’s the most beautiful representation of personal sacrifice that one can imagine.”
From an early age, Krueger had done what he needed to do to get to the podium. In fact, he took his first steps at the Mt. Lebanon Ice Rink, where his mother has been a professional figure skating coach for 16 years.
The Kruegers discovered quickly axels were not their forte.
“We weren’t good at figure skating or hockey at that point,” Krueger said with a laugh.
But the family knew about long track so John-Henry joined the Pittsburgh Speedskating Club with his brother, Cole, who had a chance to compete in the Olympics for Hungary but did not make the team this winter. Within five years, Krueger had improved so much that he was traveling to Washington ,D.C., with his mother to train with world-renowned coaches. By age 16, he moved to Salt Lake City and prepared for his first Olympic run.
Because of the swine flu, he was unable to compete in the U.S. Trials. Although he had some of the country’s best times, U.S. Speedskating rules do not allow for any exceptions. Thus, a disappointed Krueger sat out the 2014 Sochi Games.
For the past two years, Krueger lived in Korea. In his run-up to the Olympics, he also trained in the Netherlands.
“Living in an adult world, on your own (at 16), you’ve got to make adjustments,” Krueger said. “But it prepared me for future competitions and other countries. It prepared me for this.
“There were a lot of moves and a lot of hard decisions to make. But’ I’m on the podium.”
Krueger would not return to podium as he failed to qualify for the finals in the 500-meter race held Feb. 20.
“Extremely disappointed with my performance,” Krueger said. “I will be using my success in the 1,000 and my shortcomings in the 500 to push myself every single day for the next four years. This entire Olympic experience has only intensified my hunger for perfection.”
The 2022 Winter Olympics will be held Feb. 4-20 in Beijing.