Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics spotlight: Suzanne Schulting to clean up in short-track speed skating?

If medal forecasts are correct, short-track speed skater Suzanne Schulting is going to be the star of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and no-one is going to come close to the number of gold medals she is going to win. If it sounds like a bold statement, she already has the stats to prove it.

At the World Championships last year, the 24-year-old from the Netherlands won every event she entered — the 500m, 1000m, 1500m, 3000m relay and therefore, the overall title. According to medal predictors Gracenote, she will be the favourite to repeat the trick again in China, and although there is no overall medal, she could still win a fifth gold in the new mixed relay.

Ad/> Two months before the World Championships, Schulting had wiped the floor with the competition at the European Championships, and she continued her dominance in most events at the back end of the year, with impressive results in World Cup events, though she was edged out for the overall 500m title by Arianna Fontana and the 1500m by Lee Yu-bin, she did take the honours in her strongest event, the 1000m. Beijing 2022Beijing-bound skater Thomson vindicated after gamble on year out22/12/2021 AT 12:53 Fontana may be the biggest threat to Schulting achieving a clean sweep in Beijing.

The ‘Freccia Bionda’ (Blonde Arrow), as she is known in Italy, is showing strong form over the 500m and is a contender to top the podium, 16 years after she made her Olympic debut as a 15-year-old in Turin, when she won relay bronze. No female athlete won more short track medals than the Italian in Pyeongchang.

Schulting appears to be a rounded, down to earth athlete who does not take success for granted. She burst on to the scene four years ago but since then has shown incredible