By Janice Sina
(January 9, 2026) — At the last Winter Olympics in Beijing, China the stands were eerily quiet, as international fans were banned due to COVID-19. But at the upcoming Olympics in Milan, Italy, Higganum resident Donna Lula Soukup will be in the crowd cheering on her daughter, Kristen Santos Griswold, in the women’s short track speed skating events. “My heart will be racing, right along with hers,” she says.
Kristen Santos Griswold, aka KSG, is a two-time Eric Heiden Medal Award winner (Heiden shown in photo above left with Santos Griswold) and has been working at her dream of medaling at the Olympics since she was . . . well, since she first put on a pair of figure skates at age 3 to keep up with her older sister. At age 9, watching speed skating on the Disney Channel, she begged her mom to let her try and she was hooked. An all-around athlete through high school, she played soccer and ran track while still holding onto her ambition of becoming a short track speed skater.
Graduating from high school in 2012, she took that ambition to Utah to train while continuing her education. “It’s a lot of work to put all your focus on a sport like that,” Donna says. And there are so many factors involved each and every time an athlete has a chance to prove herself or himself. It took eight years of intense focus, and by the 2018 Olympics, she made the tryouts, but missed the team by one spot. A fall a few weeks prior had required surgery, which set her back. Doubling down, she trained even harder, and by 2022, she was ranked the #1 women’s short track speed skater in the U.S. and ready to take on the Olympic challenge again.
What exactly is short track speed skating? Picture a standard ice hockey rink, 60 meters by 30 meters, which is about one-fourth the size of a traditional long track speed skating oval. Each short track lap is 111.2 meters long and women’s competitions are in 500 meters, 1000 meters, and 1500 meters. There is also a women’s relay and a women’s and men’s mixed relay. Competing in short track is a different style of skating than long track. Skaters are constantly calculating the speed and distance between themselves and their competitors to optimize their trajectory around the rink at a high speed. They’re moving shoulder to shoulder, pivoting the turns, inside hand brushing the ice. There’s a much greater chance of collisions or clicking another’s blade, causing a penalty or worse, a fall.
At the 2022 Olympics, it took just one miscalculation to dash KSG’s hopes for a medal. With one lap to go and moving into third place to medal for the Bronze, another skater collided with her. The other skater drew a penalty but worse, Kristen fell and finished in fourth place. She was brokenhearted but not done.
She rose up again in 2024 as the Crystal Globe Winner (photo above), ranking #1 in the World Cup, a record held by only two other skaters, Apolo Ohno and Katherine Reutter. She is also the American Women’s record holder for the 500 meter and the 1500 meter races, and shares the record with her teammates in the women’s relay and the mixed relay. She is going in strong to the 2026 Olympics in Milan.
Donna says, “This has been her goal for the longest time . . . to medal. It’s a very unpredictable sport. There might be ten women in the world, including her, who do that same race over and over again with a different result each time. A penalty or a fall could change it all. Everything has to line up perfectly.”
Opening ceremonies for the Olympics are February 6, 2026 and short track begins on Tuesday February 10, running every other day until February 20. If you’re looking for skate times, don’t look for “speed skating,” as that is the long track competition. Look for just the words “short track.” And definitely look for Kristen Santos Griswold, a Connecticut native we can all cheer on. For a sneak peek, you can check out her website at Kristensantos.com or her Instagram, kristensantos. For more information on short track, visit usspeedskating.org.
Photos provided by Donna Lula Soukup
