Bernt Evensen

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Olympic medal record
Men’s speed skating
Gold 1928 St. Moritz 500 m
Silver 1928 St. Moritz 1500 m
Bronze 1928 St. Moritz 5000 m
Silver 1932 Lake Placid 500 m

Bernt Sverre Evensen (born 8 April 1905 in Kristiania (Oslo), died 24 August 1979) was a Norwegian speed skater and cyclist.

At the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Bernt Evensen became the first Norwegian skater to win an Olympic gold medal by winning gold on the 500 m (a first place shared with Finnish skater Clas Thunberg. At those same Olympics, he also won silver on the 1,500 m and bronze on the 5,000 m. At the 10,000 m, he was in 2nd place, 0.1 seconds behind Irving Jaffee, when the race was cancelled because it had started thawing.

At the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, Evensen won a silver medal on the 500 m. Evensen and compatriot Ivar Ballangrud were the only European Olympic speed skating medallists during those games. This can mostly be attributed to the fact that the races were skated in packstyle (having all competitors skate at the same time), a format that most European skaters were not familiar with.

At the World Allround Championships, Evensen became World Champion in 1927 and 1934, winning silver in 1931, and bronze in 1926, 1928, and 1932. At the European Allround Championships, Evensen became European Champion in 1927, while winning silver in 1928 and 1935. As cyclist he won 11 norwegian championships and became awarded Egebergs ærespris in 1928. After the war he was a speed skating coach for OSK before the speed skating revolution in 1962/63

[edit] Personal records

To put these personal records in perspective, the last column (WR) lists the official world records on the dates that Evensen skated his personal records.

Distance Time Date Location WR
500 m 43.2 13 January 1934 Davos 42.5
1,000 m 1:31.9
1,500 m 2:20.6 5 February 1928 Davos 2:17.4
3,000 m 5:01.0 6 January 1934 Oslo 4:59.1
5,000 m 8:36.7 14 January 1934 Davos 8:19.2
10,000 m 17:30.2 5 February 1928 Davos 17:22.6

Evensen has an Adelskalender score of 194.246 points. His highest ranking on the Adelskalender was a 4th place.

[edit] References

Olympic champions in men's 500 m speed skating
1924: Charles Jewtraw | 1928: Bernt Evensen / Clas Thunberg | 1932: Jack Shea | 1936: Ivar Ballangrud | 1948: Finn Helgesen | 1952: Ken Henry | 1956: Yevgeny Grishin | 1960: Yevgeny Grishin  | 1964: Terry McDermott | 1968: Erhard Keller | 1972: Erhard Keller | 1976: Yevgeny Kulikov | 1980: Eric Heiden | 1984: Sergey Fokichev | 1988: Uwe-Jens Mey | 1992: Uwe-Jens Mey | 1994: Alexander Golubev | 1998: Hiroyasu Shimizu | 2002: Casey FitzRandolph | 2006: Joey Cheek 
Preceded by
Johan Støa
Egebergs Ærespris
1928
Succeeded by
Armand Carlsen