JULIAN MACARAEG didn’t get the points needed to kickstart his qualification bid for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics when he missed advancing further from the preliminaries of the International Skating Union (ISU) World Cup Short Track Speed Skating Championships on Friday at the Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing.
Macaraeg, 18, competed in the 500-, 1000- and 1500-meter races but couldn’t make the top 2 of the heats to reach the medal races where points for qualification to the February 4 to 20 Games could be earned.
Macaraeg finished third with a time of one minute and 27.803 seconds in his men’s 1,000 meters heat ruled by France’s Sebastian Lepape (1:26.964) and Turkey’s Emir Han (1:27.710).
The veteran of the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympics ranked sixth in the 1,500 meters heat in 2:27.362 and fifth in the 500 meters with 1:6.351.
But for his Ukrainian Coach, Valentyn Danilovskye, said his Filipino-American ward from Queens in New York could still bounce back in the October 28 to 31 Nagoya edition of the four-leg World Cup.
“It wasn’t good because it was hard to adjust because of the different time zones and we committed several mistakes in the 500 meters,” the 29-year-old Danilovskye told BusinessMirror on Friday. “We will check the videos later on and see what we need to adjust.”
The four World Cup editions serve as qualifiers for the Winter Olympics with the top 32 speed skaters earning tickets to Beijing.
After Nagoya, the World Cup moves to Hungary and The Netherlands.