An American speedskater bolsters medal hopes in the short-track events.

It has been a rough decade for American short-track speedskating, but Kristen Santos could erase some of those bad memories Friday when she competes in her favorite race, the 1,000 meters.

Santos, a 27-year-old from Fairfield, Conn., has been one of the best short-trackers in the world this year, taking medals in three of the four 1,000-meter World Cup races and winning one. She is an exciting racer who tends to hang out in the middle or the back of the pack on the early laps before sliding to the outside and charging powerfully past the pack at an opportune moment.

The United States did not win any medals in short track in 2014, and the only American medalist from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, John-Henry Krueger, now competes for Hungary. It is difficult to have a long career in short track, where the sport’s lack of popularity leaves most skaters needing second jobs or family support. Many promising American skaters retire in their early 20s.

It has also been a tumultuous decade off the ice, with two head coaches having left the program after skaters complained of bullying and abuse.

Wilma Boomstra was fired as head coach of the short-track program in March, less than a year before the Olympics, eight months after U.S. Speedskating found that Boomstra had engaged in verbal threats, bullying behavior and name-calling. It was an uncomfortable echo of what happened nine years earlier when Jae Su Chun, who had coached the team to a number of medals at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, resigned in 2012 after a number of skaters accused Chun and his assistants of verbal abuse, throwing things at skaters and discriminating against women.

The new head coach is Stephen Gough, a Canadian who coached the team at the Sochi Games, and by all accounts the team seems close, especially on the women’s side.

Through three days of competition, the best American performance has been from Andrew Heo, who narrowly missed advancing to the 1,000-meter men’s finals and finished seventh. The American mixed-gender relay team also seemed to have booked a place in the finals but was disqualified for blocking a Chinese skater.

Santos is not the only American skater competing Friday. Maame Biney and Corinne Stoddard advanced through the heats to join Santos in the 1,000-meter quarterfinals. Ryan Pivirotto will also compete in the men’s 500-meter heats. The men’s relay semifinals will be contested as well, but the United States did not qualify a team.