Kersten's journey from speed skating fanatic to Winter Olympic history-maker

Cornelius Kersten hasn't taken the most glamorous road towards fulfilling his childhood dream. Kids don't drift off with thoughts of broken collarbones, 6am sessions, cold shoulders, coffee start-ups and intricate qualification calculations. Ad/> But that's the life that Kersten chose and it's that path that will lead to him becoming the first speed skater to represent Team GB in 30 years in Beijing.

Beijing 2022Beijing spotlight: Four Games, four individual golds – can Wust make history at fifth?12/01/2022 AT 12:02 «I knew what my mission was and where I wanted to go to and I've always just been quietly working towards that,» said Kersten, whose journey to the Games has been fuelled by a £20,000 injection of funding to speed skating via UK Sport's Beijing Support Fund. «Step by step, I got a lot closer. Last year, I finished 11th at the World Championships and that established me in the game.

I got a bit more respect and people actually looked at me. »It's been quite a long and lonely journey — the team isn't that big. We've had COVID in the last two years, too, so competition was limited and so was training.

«I'm very happy that we are where we are now and everything fell into place. To be part of Team GB and going to the Olympics is a dream come true.» The globetrotter was born in Haarlem, Netherlands to a speed skating-obsessed father and a British mother, who left home in Islington for an internship in the country and never left. Kersten was reared in a nation obsessed by the oval and competed in the Dutch ranks as a junior before taking his chance to race in red, white and blue.