Photo illustrations by IDRIS KHAN

A skater can become world champion without winning a single discipline, since the final result is calculated on the basis of the times added up for all four distances. All these aspects — there being little room for individual technique, the limits within in which to demonstrate personal characteristics, each race run in total solitude, the champion being the one with the best average rather than the best single times — make speedskating a truly Puritan sport. For it is also about abstinence, a silent, dogged and yet elegant suffering, ever on the verge of collapse, simultaneously collective and individual.

• KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD

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