Dutch Twin Brothers Battle For Gold In Speed Skating

The Dutch own speed skating. Over the weekend, Ireen Wust won gold in the women's 3,000, they swept the podium in the men's 5,000 and today they swept the 500. This was a particularly tense set of races because identical twin brothers were jockeying for position. This is a split-screen video of the two Mulder brothers, Michel and Ronald, on their final runs of the event. Audio is from Michel's winning race, which is on the right.

Older (by 10 minutes) brother Ronald looked to be in position to win gold with a final time of 1:09:46 but Michel edged him out on his final run to finish with a time of 1:09:312. Michel was just barely able to hang on thanks to countryman Jan Smeekens's final run. His time was so close, he thought he won the event and Michel Mulder thought he had been edged out.

Smeekens's time was eventually adjusted up to 1:09:324, a common practice in the sport, and he lost out on the top spot by little over a hundredth of a second. Ronald was left with the bronze.