If that's not speed skating, then what is it?

Factual Questions
1

This.

(Read from right to left.)

It’s from the manga Yuuto, which I read because it’s by the author of another manga I really liked. It’s about speed skating, of all things. But due to (I imagine) a lack of public interest in speed skating it was cacelled after 7 issues and the page you see before you is the last one ever published, and what was meant to be a cliffhanger has turned into more of a hanging death. And it BOTHERS me! Immensely. I need to know: what could he possibly be talking about when he says “That’s not speed skating”?

2

Short track speed skating? - OK you would have to be a bit of a pedant but it was all I could think of.

3

“that’s not speed skating – that’s just a bunch of people who are trying to escape a tentacle monster”
?

4

It could be short track, actually. He was complaining about the lack of a 400m rink in Tokyo. Thanks.

5

Given the number of people on the rink, and the fact that they are wearing helmets, it has to be short-track speed skating.

I suppose it’s possible that Japanese has rather different words for traditional (oval-track) speed skating and the short-track kind, the and the comment suffered and died in translation. It’s also quite possible that more context would make the comment seem more logical. But as it reads now it sure seems pedantic.

6

Nope… they use the English names for both.