Kearns • Joey Mantia sat on the pads inside the Utah Olympic Oval, trying to catch his breath as he stared forward in frustration. His partner in the final heat of the men’s 1,500-meter World Cup race Saturday afternoon took a few more celebratory laps in Kearns, because that’s what you do when you break a world record.
Russia’s Denis Yuskov kept on skating as the scoreboard inside the Oval blinked the phrase “world record” repeatedly. All Mantia could do was watch. The highlight of the 2017 ISU long track World Cup stop in Utah so far belongs to Yuskov.