Skating Infractions

Most infractions fall under two categories: bad skating and bad sportsmanship. Almost of all the infractions result in a disqualification.

Skating that fast so tightly together, any loss of concentration and bad skating happens. Skaters get bumped or blocked usually when someone is passing and a penalty occurs. That's part of short track.

Rarely do you see intentional infractions which falls under bad sportsmanship. Depending on the severity of the incident, a skater can be yellow-carded and thrown out of competition.

Impeding and cross-tracking are the most common infractions. Kicking-out and skating too slow is called occasionally. Team skating is almost never called.

Impeding

Impeding occurs when a skater hinders another skaters progress. This can happen by bumping or pushing another skater. A tiny bump can throw off another skaters stride, making them slow down inorder to regain their balance and rhythm.

Touching another skater is not allowed during a race but it's unavoidable especially at the start of the 500m. Usually it's up to the referees discretion to decide whether a touch was accidental or it impeded another skater progress to the finish line.

Another type of impeding occurs when a skater blocks someone from passing. The impeding skater slows down or sticks an arm out in front of a passing skater. This also happens by accident during passing especially if the impeding skater just lost their balance for a split second.

For the most part, skaters don't impede on purpose, but it does happen. If the referee decides that the impeding was blatantly intentional designed to injure, the impeding skater can be thrown out of competition.

Cross-tracking

When skaters are racing, there are lanes like traffic lanes called "tracks" which the skaters must skate in. The tracks are assumed and not marked by visible lines, but they are an important part of short track. Just like traffic lanes, the rules of traffic apply. A person driving can change lanes, but they can't cut people off.

Cutting people off in short track is called cross-tracking. Two skaters are racing neck in neck. One skater gains a small lead and suddenly jumps his track and skates in front of the other skater. That is cross-tracking.

Of course, a skater is allowed to pass and skate in front of another skater. That's part of short track. It's only illegal if the other skater has to slow down abruptly in order to avoid a fall.

Kicking Out

Short track skates blades are inherently dangerous. Kicking out is when those skate blades come out from under one skater and interferes with another skater.

This usually happens when one skater slips puts out a skate inorder to regain their balance. Intentional tripping rarely occurs. If so, it's called as a kicking out infraction.

Kicking out is also common at the finish line when a skater puts out a skate in front of them as the cross the finish line. It's only called as a penalty when this action endangers another skater crossing the finish line.

Off-track

Off-track is a bad skating call. Skaters must skate on the outside of the blocks when going around the turns. If a skate passes on the inside of a block, an off-tracking call is made. The only time, we've seen this happen was when a skater lost count of laps and crossed on the inside of the blocks because the skater thought the race was over.

Assistance

Assistance is when one skater helps another skater skate better or faster then they could have on their own. Assisting is usually happens in the form of pushing where one skater gives another skater a little push for speed. The only time we've heard of team skating being called for this reason was when two skaters were goofing around during internal club competitions.

Team skating

Team skating is when two or more skaters of the same team collaborate inorder to have one of them win.

This is a very controversial call because it's very hard to call and to prove. Since the introduction of team skating as a penalty, it's only been called once at a World Cup.

There are two types of team skating violations: intentional infractions, assisting and point manipulation.

• Intentional infractions are when one skater, kicks out, impedes, cross-tracks another skater in order to help his teammate win.
  
  
• Point manipulation is when one teammate lets another win or place ahead of him inorder to manipulate the Final points that are awarded. Such manipulation can result in a team member currently in 4th overall to jump to 3rd overall thereby letting a team sweep the overall standings.

It must be re-iterated that team skating is very controversial because there's no guidelines on how to call it. What may look like team skating to one person could seem like the normal course of skating to another.

Skating too slow

Skating too slow is called in two instances. The first instance usually occurs in the 3000m. The skaters are tired from 3 days of racing so they set a slow place for the first few laps before picking up speed as the race goes on. If that slow place they set is too slow, the referee restarts the race.

The other instance that skating too slow is called is when a skater gets lapped too many times. Though every country is allowed to compete, not all teams are at the same ability. When a skater is lapped several times, the referree will call the slow skater into the middle of the rink to wait out the remainder of the race.