Is Bart Swings the best Belgian man at the Olympics? † Platform

Yes, the Belgian hockey men also took the silver in Rio and the gold in Tokyo, but they did it as a team. And in the distant past, there were male athletes like cyclist Andre Noyelle who outperformed Swings, and Noyelle won the gold medal twice. We are talking about 60 years ago. another time.

Can’t we individually call Bart Swings the greatest Olympian based on his trophy cabinet?

“It’s always very hard to tell. Especially when comparing the Winter and Summer Games,” says Jonas Cretor, who is fond of sports statistics.

“What you always have to do is look at more than just the Olympics and then you see at Bart Swings that we’re drastically underestimating the outstanding athlete he’s skating in.”

“This is a small sport, but he really won everything there. At the European level and at the global level.”

Being a winner in one sport is not always an advantage in another. Mentally you have to learn to deal with the fact that you are suddenly not the best.

“In inline skating, Swings is a killer and a winner. Skating was fun at first, but when the progress slowed, it started to gnaw. Especially because he’s a thinker. Bart Swings is always positively dissatisfied,” my physiotherapist told a newspaper. I thought that was a nice quote. “.

Bart Swings’ Olympic chances got a decisive boost in 2015. That year, it was decided to make mass starting an Olympic discipline of the Pyeongchang 2018 Games. We’ve previously shown you why swinging is so good in the field (see “Also read”).

“If it wasn’t for the mass start, the medals would have been very tough. Bart Swings had his best results in the classic distance skating in 2014 with a fourth place finish in the 5000 metres,” Jonas Cretor reminds us.

“We shouldn’t underestimate how much classic distance skating has improved since 2014. Skate swings are faster than ever, but the competition is faster.”

“Given the similarity to figure skating, it makes sense that he started focusing on the mass start. I saw that in Beijing. He was just busy with the mass start, and the rest was heating up.”

And what about after Bart swings in the Belgian skateboard? “I heard there is still some talent.”

“Coincidentally or not just last weekend there were Belgian championships in Tilburg. But it is very difficult to estimate whether these talents will reach the world top. Just like what Hanne Desmet means now for the short track, we will check the impact we will only know Bart Swings’ performance on skates in five or ten years.”