500 metres, Men

In Sochi, the 500 m gold was taken by short track legend Viktor An, with the silver earned by Wu Dajing of China. Since then, Wu had been a dominant figure in the event. He had taken gold at the 2014 and 2015 Worlds, and silvers in 2016-17. In the pre-Olympic part of the season, he had also won two of the four World Cup races in the event, lining him up as the man to beat. There were plenty of contenders, though, including Chinese-Hungarian Sándor Liu (2016 world champion, 1 World Cup win in the Olympic season), Sjinkie Knegt (2017 world champion), Samuel Girard (winner of the World Cup in Heerenveen) and the Koreans, who could only select three from the five skaters doing well in the World Cups.

From the first heat, Wu Dajing seemed determined to show the gold medal would be his. He took off at an immense pace, leaving all others behind, and immediately lowered the Olympic Record to 40.264. He repeated that pattern in the quarter-finals, where he beat the world record (39.800) and the semi-finals (40.087), where Girard managed to cling on. Two Koreans placed from the other semi, Hwang Dae-Heon and Lim Hyo-Jun. Wu applied the same race plan in the final. The Koreans mounted serious attempts to hunt Wu down, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. In the process, Wu again lowered the world record, to 39.584. He dragged the other finalists along to sub-40-second times, and all medalists posted a time below the pre-Olympic World Record.