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Observers say pushing is a major innovation that rivals the sport’s move to indoor competition, the introduction of the hinged “clap skate,” and the invention of the high-tech skin suit in its potential to greatly improve times.

However, in a clap skate, the front of the boot is hinged, allowing the back of the boot to rise off the skate.

Long-Track Speedskating Long-track racers use a “clap skate.”

He trains some of the year with the U.S. national short-track team, a highly unorthodox practice that puts him on a 111-meter oval in skates with a fixed blade rather than the long-track “clap” skate in which the heel comes off the blade.

The sport of speed skating is at one of those pivotal junctures, with good old tradition being upended by a Dutch contraption called the clap skate.