The science behind some of the world’s fastest ice
Olympic ice is engineered to balance grip and glide. Here’s how physics, chemistry, and meticulous ice making shape the fastest sport on ice.
Elite long-track speed skaters train for years to thrust, glide, and stay upright at an average pace of 35 miles per hour, but in the world’s fastest human-powered sport, peak performance isn’t the only variable. Two rinks may also deserve medals: the ovals in Calgary, Alberta, and Salt Lake City, Utah, both widely considered the world’s fastest ice.
As of November 2025, speed skaters have set 15 and seven current world records in Salt Lake City and Calgary, respectively—the most of any tracks, anywhere. Scientists and ice makers attribute these ovals’ success to their high-elevation locations and meticulous methods to reduce air and ice friction.
“In speed skating, there's two things that slow you down. It's the ice and the air—that's it,” says Sean Maw, a Saskatchewan professor specializing in winter sports engineering.
Air drag stalls skaters on ice just as it does cyclists and skiers on land, and explains, in part, why Calgary and Salt Lake City’s ovals have picked up the pace.
“The higher you go, the thinner the air is,” says Mark Messer, ice maker for the Calgary Oval and seven winter Olympics, including Milano-Cortina. Calgary sits at 3,428 feet above sea level, while Salt Lake City towers at about 4,675 feet. At around 2,264 feet of elevation, Inzell, Germany’s Max Aicher Arena, takes the bronze medal for current world speed skating records, claiming one title as of November (and another in January, overriding a previous Salt Lake City win).
Yet while altitude works against air drag, ice friction plays a similarly significant role in speed skating, no matter an oval’s location. Generally, low ice friction enables faster skating, says Alberta ice friction scientist Edward Lozowski. But, “if there were no friction at all, then the speed skater couldn't get going,” he says.
Ice makers therefore control ice and building temperatures, water purity, and additional physical factors to find the sweet, scientifically sound spot for skaters to generate maximum speed without losing their grip on the ice.
Speed’s slippery slope
Finding this middle ground is no easy feat. Simultaneous but opposing frictional needs challenge ice makers to work with ice’s inherent properties, which expose a strange, seemingly contradictory truth about ice skating: “When you're skating on ice, you're not really skating on ice,” says Lozowski. “You're skating on a layer of liquid.”
A combination of chemistry and physics explains why ice skaters are, technically, water skaters. Chemically, ice’s surface doesn’t behave like the molecules deep within the frozen solid, as there’s nothing beyond air to hold the surface-level molecules in place. Free to move, those molecules behave like water, lubricating the ice, says Lozowski.
Physics, meanwhile, attributes this water to both frictional and pressure heating. As a skater contacts the ice, the pressure of the blade and body melts the surface and produces more liquid. It’s frictional heating, says Lozowski, that usually makes the most significant contribution; friction between a skate and ice produces warmth that melts the surface.
Regardless of this liquid’s scientific origin, skating’s inherent, surface-level water is minimal but consequential. At one-to-three micrometers in thickness, the liquid compares to one hundredth of a strand of human hair, says Lozowski. That’s enough to create the slippery surface that makes skating possible.
Without a slippery coating, it feels like skating on concrete, says Maw, who’s experienced this phenomenon while skating outside in -35 °C (-31 °F) weather. Yet, with too much water, friction increases, slowing skaters down. “It's a very delicate balancing act,” says Maw.
The problem ice makers are trying to solve
To hone this balance, Messer fine-tunes the Calgary oval to suit the needs for speed. Figure skaters tend to use softer, warmer ice—necessary for jumping. In contrast, Messer says speed skaters aim for a harder, colder surface of roughly -8 to -9 °C (15 to 17 °F) and an air temperature between 15 and 16 °C (59 and 61 °F). “We’re trying to get a balance between grip and glide, so the colder you make it, the less grip you might have, but the warmer you make it, the less glide you have,” says Messer.
Speed skating ovals also benefit from relatively clean—but not entirely pure—water, says Messer. Surface-level dirt may slow the skater down, though a small amount of water impurities holds the ice together.
Humidity, likewise, increases ice friction, but for the worse; an excess of moisture may create frost, ruining ice with speed-inhibiting crystals. This environmental conundrum especially challenges ice makers, who, in a rink that holds thousands, can’t necessarily predict how much moisture may enter a building. “It's a very tricky thing to get the values to the right place and to actually learn with each rink what those values should be,” says Messer.
Air conditioning and refrigeration systems may mitigate the pitfalls of humidity. Still, even these solutions elucidate ice making’s recurring Goldilocks conundrum: You want air that’s cold enough to prevent humidity-induced frost, but not too cold that it becomes dense and esults in higher air drag, says Lozowski. “It’s as much an art as a science to create the conditions—the optimum conditions—for speed skating in an Olympic oval,” says Lozowski.
Blades of glory
Not only is ice a give and take, but so are skates—and that’s by design. Speed skates come thinner, longer, and flatter than hockey and figure versions, prioritizing speed over maneuverability. They sink less into the ice and therefore glide with reduced friction—“but don't ask speed skaters to turn on a dime,” says Maw.
Future innovations to speed skates—whether by optimizing the blades for the individual skater’s proportions or inventing some blade coating, like those prohibited on bobsled or skeleton runners—could potentially minimize ice friction, though speed, ultimately, depends on the sport’s most critical component: It’s the skaters who generate the thrust and set their own pace, regardless of an oval’s frictional baseline.
“As ice makers, we don't want to be a factor,” says Messer. “There's still world records being broken, but it's not the ice that's doing it. It's the athletes.”
