Talk:Jay Ramirez

Deletion Proposal

This athlete definately lacks notability

• Not professional on a high sports level: His results are on amateur level in amateur local/regional races.
• Lack of trustworthy sources other than the athlete. The hunt for an Olympic ticket is only a dream.

I found a few more links, but none from a trustworthy independent source:

• His website is gone
• New link: advertisement to hire him as a motivational speaker. Again a direct story.
• New link, an old team's website: details of moving base (Berlin, Inzell, Heerenveen, Utrecht), confirms local/regional club level.

This rider might have trained like a professional, might have inspired junior riders, but his speed skating results show an amateur level. Pedro Causil, the actual first South-American to enter the Winter Olympic skate event, has times that are close to those of Germán Tirado, a current Colombian 5000 meter World Cup Group B rider. Ramirez is half a minute slower on the 1500 meter (1.48,82 / 2.18,49), 2 minutes on the 5000 meter (6.30,70 / 8.29,59), almost 4 minutes on the 10,000 meter (13.35,29 / 17.26,73). Those are the same gaps Ramirez would be behind all the other real competitors at the Olympics.

That's why Ramirez races on club level, like the traditional yearly races of the "Schaatstrainingsgroep Wageningen" (STW) in Heerenveen, where he finished a allround race as 19th of 21, and set a big combination score. Or what looks like team exchange races in Germany. Jay ends up as the first Senior, but also 21st of 29 in a field of mostly juniors and a few old men. On the 1500 meter he's 5th of 5.

His only by Speed Skating News reported "win in an international race", turns out to be a training race with a few kids and his 60+ old trainer. He's the only senior in the group, and he beats a (almost or just) 14 year old by only 5 hundreds of a second, what a champion! The race is 700 meter long, a very unusual distance. He's the only non-Dutch, but is a regular member of the group: that's a local club's training session.

Every registered skater from Colombia before him, Leonardo and Camilo Echeverri, and Sebastian Cano, was distinctly faster on the distances they did ride. In case of Leonardo, that was only one 500 and one 1500 meter race registered on one day ever. Jay won his inofficial records, only because he was the first Colombian to cross that distance's finish line.

Now we know how poor the results are, after 2.5 season of training, it's obvious that this man competing at the Olympic Games is an absurd idea. When you read the bottom part of the Colombia Reports article, it looks more like a money raising advertisement. This guy needed $39,000 per year to start a professional skating carreer, even before he knew how "good" he was at speed skating.

Emmarade (talk) 10:53, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Emmarade: I know nothing about speed skating, but having lived in Colombia for more than a decade, I do know that Colombia Reports is little more than a one-man blog run by an ex-pat Dutchman, with a heavy and unashamed left-wing bias, and I would not consider it a reliable source. Richard3120 (talk) 21:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

First of all here's a link to the english wp-article about the newssite Colombia Reports and the other thing is: if you are the first to set a new record among the most regular long track speed skating distances you are a pioneer for your country and deserves a recognition for that itselves and of course mentioned in the development of records. Colombia alongside, Argentina, Brazil and Chile are the long track speed skating pioneering countries on the south-american continent, and then Colombia were the first nation from the South-America to qualify for Speed skating at the Winter Olympics. Which they did in 2018. Best regards Migrant (talk – contribs) 00:59, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what any of that has to do with this person. The fact that Colombia Reports has a Wikipedia page doesn't necessarily mean it's a reliable source - in fact, I have my suspicions that the page was created by the person who runs Colombia Reports anyway, as promotion for his website. Colombia being a South American pioneer of speed skating and qualifying for the Winter Olympics is absolutely irrelevant here, because it wasn't this person who qualified. And he hasn't set any national record for speed skating - where did.you get that information from? Richard3120 (talk) 20:47, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Have you seen the external links from the Norwegian wikipedia-biography of this person, and I can include two other web-pages like this National records men, all distances. Countries July 1, 2016 at the Skate.RenevanKleef.eu-site and this Distance Rankings Men - 10.000m at SpeedSkatingBase.eu, but you have to single out the list for Colombia which is shortened to COL in the dropdown-menu. There you will see the time for Ramirez with the oldest dated personal best.

And by the way that wiki-page for Colombia reports was refunded back in 2018 where you where mentioned. The wikipedia-page for this newssite have many contributors according to the revisionhistory, Best regards Migrant (talk – contribs) 21:55, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

I still think you are entirely missing the point on both topics. Regarding Ramirez, it's clear he was the Colombian record holder simply because nobody else from the country was skating – I suppose he gets a plus point for being the first at something, but I don't think being the first at anything necessarily qualifies you for a Wikipedia article, especially as it's clear there will never be anything else to add to this article in future as Colombian skating has completely eclipsed him and his career... this will always be a permastub. Secondly, what you are saying about Colombia Reports is utterly irrelevant to its notability... the "many contributors" you mention have almost all been involved in minor copyedits rather than improving the article. The person who asked for the refund never bothered to notify me, made some libellous statements about me in their request, and promptly never bothered to edit Wikipedia again once the refund had been carried out. So forgive me if I believe that refund request was not carried out in good faith. Richard3120 (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

So in a list of Colombian speed skating recordholders thru time he will surely be mentioned and I think it is good to know from what background and what led him to speed skating when you are pioneering in a relatively new sport for a country which is placed on the equator (see Extreme points of Colombia). So exercising a wintersport from that background is to me special enough. Best regards Migrant (talk – contribs) 16:47, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

@Migrant: Yes, I accept that he is a pioneer for the country, so I'll leave it at that and won't press for deletion. And I live in Colombia, so I know its geographical location with regards to the equator. ;-) It should be pointed out, though, that Ramirez grew up in London, so he had far better access to skating facilities than anyone in Colombia would have done (in fact, I doubt that even now in 2022, there are any ice rinks in the country), which is probably why he was the first Colombian to skate. Anyway, I won't say any more about this subject, although I am inclined to put Colombia Reports up for AfD again, as I've been looking for reliable sources about it and found nothing. Richard3120 (talk) 17:28, 29 March 2022 (UTC)