Athlete profile: Gianni Romme

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

Speed skating to the Netherlands is like hockey in Canada -- children begin skating directly out of the cradle...but Romme unbelievably only began skating just a few months short of his 13th birthday and now, 11 years later, claims two world titles in the 10,000m and, as of December 22, a world record in the 5,000m..."I was not so interested in sports at the beginning of my youth," says Romme. "But in 1985, there was a big winter. There was ice everywhere so we had to skate"...when Romme decided to become more serious about skating, he started training on a local indoor track for two years, before moving to a full-scale outdoor track when he was 15...he trained with a regional team for a few years before joining the national team at a late age, 22...Romme never trained in the national group because, according to Dutch men's all-around coach Hank Gemser, "his exercises and coordination were not so good. He had a big problem with his concentration and he was very nervous"...the lack of junior competition does not seem to have affected Romme at all...now in the midst of his third season on the World Cup, Romme is batting 4-for-4 in earning podium finishes at the World Single Distance Championships...in his rookie season, he won the 10,000m and finished third behind teammate Ids Postma and Japan's Keiji Shirihata in the 5,000m...last year, he bettered his 10,000m time by over 13 seconds in duplicating his 10,000m win, and moved up to second in the 5,000m, behind fellow Dutchman Rintje Ritsma..."Those two years were not so different," says Romme of his first two years of international competition. "I had the same World Cup ranking (#2) and the same Worlds (result) in the 10. I was better in the 5,000"...Gemser suggests that Romme's biggest asset is his temperament..."He's super in his fighting spirit," says the Dutch head coach. "He's like a double terrier or a car with full gas and no brakes. I must use his brakes to get him to slow down in the races"...Gemser also adds that Romme's continued success is contingent on his ability to relax and thereby spread his energy over long distances..."I tell him, ‘You must make fun in the races," jokes Gemser. "After two, three laps, I cry to him ‘Make fun.' When he's stable in the head, he can be great"...Romme agrees that, in contrast to teammate Bob de Jong, he loves getting out to a blazing pace, but tries to pace himself more in the longer 10K race..."I skate in the beginning of the race very fast then I stabilize the tempo from 3,000m," he says. "In the 10,000, I finish with an equal tempo. I like to accelerate more in the 5,000m after 3,000m"...after winning the first 5,000m Events of this season, at Berlin in late November, Romme came home to shatter the world record one week later, breaking Norway's Johann Olav Koss' four year-old world record by over four seconds in Heerenveen...Romme's 6:30.63 second performance eclipsed a world-record time (6:33.58) set by de Jong in the previous pairing..."You should have seen it," says teammate Martin Hersman. "It was full of people and they were going out of their minds. It came in the front of all the newspapers in Holland the next day"...afterwards, Romme predicted even faster times in the near future..."We can still go three or four seconds faster at least on the clap skates," he said. "The skates are a revolution in skating but I skated well on both skates"...Romme has worked hard to improve the technical aspects of his skating, especially the curves..."My strongest point is the straightaways but the curves are getting better every year," explains Romme. "Before they were really bad. I have been doing technical training with high speeds in curves (to improve them)"...after his success at the last two Single Distance championships, Romme will accept nothing less than an Olympic medal or two in Nagano..."When I am going to the Olympics, it would be very disappointing for me not to be in the top three," he says. "Every skater dreams of it (a medal)"...still, barring a double gold, don't expect Romme's persona to rival that of countrymen Ritsma and Ids Postma, the winners of each of the last two world All-Around titles respectively, in the Netherlands..."Romme can win the five (km) and maybe the ten (km)," says Dutch journalist Wibiren Boer of Volkskrant newspaper, "but he is not an all-around skater like Ritsma or Postma," referring to the fact that the Dutch public has historically idolized its all-around champions the most...Gianni's father is a butcher while his mother is a homemaker...his family moved from Lagezwaluwe to Made, 10 km apart, when he was 15...Romme, whose idol is former Dutch skater Bart Veldkamp, who now skates for Belgium, enjoys cycling and playing golf in his free time...don't expect to see him on St. Andrews or Augusta National any time soon -- "I'm not a Tiger Woods, but I'm trying," he says...Gianni speaks English but can occasionally be difficult to understand...