Kristen Santos-Griswold earns 2 short track wins in 2 hours, No. 1 world ranking

Kristen Santos-Griswold won two short track speed skating World Tour races in a two-hour span and seized the No. 1 world ranking on Sunday.

Santos-Griswold, 30, took the 1500m and the 500m to close the fourth stop of the six-stop World Tour in Seoul. They were her first victories of the season.

Santos-Griswold overtook Dutchwoman Xandra Velzeboer for the No. 1 world ranking combining results from all of the World Tour stops.

If she can stay there through the sixth and final stop in Milan in February, Santos-Griswold will become the third American to finish the season No. 1. The others were Apolo Ohno (2000-01, 2002-03, 2004-05) and Katherine Reutter (2010-11).

Last season, Santos-Griswold finished second in the overall standings behind South Korean Kim Gil-Li. She became the second American to win individual races at all three distances — 500m, 1000m and 1500m — after Ohno.

At last season’s World Championships, she won a medal in all five events, including two relays. Before that, no U.S. skater had won a world medal since 2014.

“Last year was obviously a really amazing year for me, and it was a little bit like I could get out in front and leave some space and take advantage of that, but this year, everyone has been right there,” Santos-Griswold said, according to the International Skating Union. “That’s something that I have had to try wrap my head around quite a bit.”

This season’s worlds are in Beijing in March.

Santos-Griswold said before this season that the 2025-26 campaign will likely be her last. She hopes to get to the 2026 Milan Cortina Games, four years after missing an Olympic medal by one spot after a last-lap crash that wasn’t her fault.

“If the same thing happens (in 2026), I had to determine if it was all going to be worth it still to me,” she said in October. “I just decided that, for me, it was more about the journey of getting there and not the actual outcome. I’m going to enjoy every practice, every struggle, every win, every loss, all of it.”