Taiwan’s Chen Ying-chu (陳映竹) broke the world record in the women’s 500m speed skating event in the semi-finals at the Roller Games World Championships in Nanjing, China, last week, although she did not go on to win a medal in the finals.
Chen clocked 43.122 seconds in the semi-final race, beating the time of 43.247 seconds that was set by Colombian Hellen Montoya in 2015 in Kaohsiung, the Chinese Taipei Roller Sports Federation said on Thursday.
However, the new record has not yet been made official by the International Roller Sports Federation, the world governing body for roller sports, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, local sports federation chairman Chiang Ping-cheng (蔣炳正) said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
On Chen’s return from the Nanjing championships, she said that although she finished fourth in the final of the 500m event, she was happy to have broken the world record.
Meanwhile, she clinched a silver medal in the 300m indoor sprint, and a bronze medal in the 100m road race at the Nanjing games, which were held from Aug. 27 to Sunday.
Chen said she would not take part in any other competitions for the rest of the year because she wanted to rest and then prepare for next year’s races.
In August, Chen won gold in the women’s 500m race at the Taipei Summer Universiade and was believed to have broken the world record in the event then, although it was not recorded due to a technical glitch.
On that occasion, the race was timed manually because of technical problems with the electronic timer.
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