Danish Olympic silver medalist Viktor Thorup is speeding around the ice at a rink in Goleta.
"Oh, we go fast," he confirmed to KCLU. "In the final sprint, we hit 40 miles an hour. You don't want to think too much about the fact that you're on a millimeter-thick knife, basically, because that's terrifying."
Thorup took the silver medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics, the first Dane to earn such recognition in an individual event. He also took home Denmark's second medal ever.
"I won the silver medal at these recent Olympics in speed skating. This is the first and only individual Winter Olympic medal that any person has ever won for Denmark," he said.
Life changed overnight for Thorup.
"From finishing that race, you get a call from the king, from the president; you come back to Denmark, you step out of the airplane, and everybody knows your name!" he said.
"So, to go from overnight to becoming a sports superstar of your country..." It is never why I got into sport, but I think it's a really fun thing that I wish everybody got to experience. It was the best day of my life, the most significant day of my whole career."
The 32-year-old started inline skating at age six and acknowledges that the medal took a "lifetime of training and wanting it."
We had to ask Thorup if he'd be visiting Solvang, a Santa Barbara County town closely linked to his home country of Denmark.
"I want to go there. I just hope I'm not going to be disappointed, like, 'oh, that's not how my grandma made it'. So if I can go there and get a freshly baked rye bread, that would be gold," he said.
