Sven Kramer of the Netherlands winning the 5,000-meter gold. ITAR-TASS/Zuma Press

Sochi, Russia

As a professional cyclist, Sven Kramer is no great success. He's won a few regional races in the Netherlands, but never any international competitions. Yet his career on the bike does offer some insights into how to win Olympic medals.

It's just that the medals cycling has helped him win have come in another sport: long-track speedskating.

For the barrel-thighed Kramer, who set an Olympic record on his way to gold in the 5,000 meters on Saturday, cycling is just cross-training. And he's not alone. As the Dutch dominate the long track in Sochi, the secret of their training has nothing to do with ice and blades. The secret is in cycling.

"We grow up with it," Kramer said. "And it's one of the keys for the longer distances for sure."

Before races, after races and all over the Olympic Village, Dutch skaters are on their bikes. Gazelle supplied them more than 60 bright orange bicycles just for the purposes of getting around here, in addition to the race rigs they all use for training. (Skating-mad King Willem-Alexander and his wife and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands borrowed a couple on Saturday to go watch the Dutch take all three medals in the men's 5,000 meters.)

"It's part of our culture," Dutch distance specialist Yvonne Nauta said. "Where other people take the car or the bus to school, we always cycled."

Dutch speedskater Bob de Jong warming down on a bike. Reuters

It must be working. Through three long-track events this weekend, the Dutch have won seven out of nine possible medals, including three gold.

What makes cycling such a fixture of a speedskater's workout is the punishing nature of on-ice practice. The crouched position-flexed at the knees and almost doubled over at the hips-is so physically taxing, particularly on the human back, that on-ice workouts rarely exceed one or two hours.

"It's always heavy. There's always pressure on your legs," Dutch national coach Gerard Kemkers said.

Working their way around a 400-meter oval, skaters pump their legs, digging their blades into the ice and pushing outward, in a motion that is similar enough to pedaling that the bike is the next best thing.

"The bike is a year-round element of the training," Kemkers said. Most of the year, it serves as endurance training and, once the winter rolls around, it becomes a recovery element. "Forty-five minutes of easy cycling on a roller, for example, really flushes your legs out and gives you a chance to recover from what you've done in the morning."

As a result, being an international speedskater from the Netherlands practically guarantees that you are also an exceptional cyclist. Kemkers is confident that he could easily drop any of his athletes into a road race tomorrow.

Kramer often wonders what might have happened if he'd chosen the cycling road instead of skating. And he said the career shift could still be in his future. But since winning one gold and missing out on another due to a coaching blunder in Vancouver four years ago, his focus has been solely on skating.

Should he change his mind, however, he wouldn't be the first speedskater to dabble in that world. Eric Heiden, the American who swept five distances at the 1980 Games, was a founder of the 7-Eleven Cycling Team after he quit skating. He was also a national road racing champion and once completed the Giro d'Italia. Chris Witty, an American Olympic speedskater on the women's side, also crossed over and competed as a cyclist in the 2000 Summer Games.

Still, if you look at international-caliber speedskaters from the Netherlands, skater Koen Verweij said, "everybody can cycle." That includes Verweij, by the way, who was a junior track cycling champion.

Originally, skaters cycled out of necessity because ice wasn't available year-round. Now, even with rinks that make it possible and the federation's annual $4 million budget, the Dutch team stays away from the ice for part of the summer. But the team never stays away from the bike, which makes speedskaters some of the most complete athletes at the Games.

Over the summer, the team gets together for a pair of two-week training camps, mostly in southern Germany. The camps include around five rides that last up to six hours, right on par with a Tour de France stage. The Dutch skaters cycle more than any other country and tend not to incorporate another popular training pursuit, in-line skating, although a handful of Dutch skaters also compete internationally in that sport.

By September, the Dutch are back on the ice nearly every morning. Those sessions also include a series of off-ice technical exercises in various skating positions, Kemkers said. That may mean working on a slideboard, lifting weights, or a series of core stability exercises. Afternoons are spent on the bike, sometimes for over three hours.

"We are not your typical endurance sport. I don't believe we have to train in these extended blocks of time," Kemkers said. "We're not triathletes, we're not marathon runners. The longest event is a 10k, which is 13 minutes. That's not long if you look at the science. That's more of a power event than it is an endurance event."

All that training on the bike hasn't been enough to tempt any of the current Dutch skaters to make a permanent switch into a true endurance event. But Verweij wouldn't rule it out.

"First I need my Olympic gold," he said. "Then we'll see."

Write to Joshua Robinson at