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Some Olympians won't give up — and they have medals to prove it
By Brad Rock
Deseret News sports columnist
Do you get the impression a lot of athletes in town for the Olympics are hard to discourage? That they really want to be here? That they would rather be here than anywhere else, including the Caribbean, Maui, the French Riviera or even Baskin-Robbins? That not even endless security checks and bus exhaust can deter them?
Do you get the sense they flat-out insisted on attending?
I do. I figure there are hundreds, or even thousands, of athletes in Salt Lake who have a hard time taking "no" for an answer. In fact, they probably didn't even wait around for an answer. They just charged ahead.
They're the sort of people who, when their mothers told them they couldn't climb trees, went looking for a Sitka Spruce. When critics said they would never succeed, they didn't get discouraged, they got inspired.
They came to these Olympics, scores of them with amazing stories, leaving their critics behind. Now they're standard-bearers for causes ranging from organ transplants to equal opportunity.
Take, for instance, American speedskater Chris Witty, a gold-medal winner. She came into the Olympics on the fade. She had only recently learned the cause of her fatigue: mononucleosis. Just what a world-class speedskater needs — not knowing what time she'll be getting out of bed.
Instead of bailing out, she became only the second American ever to win gold medals in both Summer and Winter Olympics.
Imagine what she's like when she's healthy.
Speedskater Derek Parra won two medals, despite entering the Olympics with bronchitis. Skeleton silver medalist Lea Ann Parsley competed with an ongoing disc problem, due to a neck injury. Because of that, she raced with her helmet face-down, rather than chin-up.
Sometimes not knowing where you're going is a good thing.
Physical challenges aren't the only obstacles that beset athletes, though Vonetta Flowers has had plenty of that, too. She has had surgery on one ankle and two hip and two knee surgeries. But she has also had to deal with friends wanting to know what an African-American woman from Birmingham, Ala., and former track star was doing in a winter-white, high-altitude sport like bobsled. Though she didn't know it at the time, she was making history. Her gold medal was the first ever in the Winter Games for an African-American.
Imagine the first time she approached the USOC about competing: "Sorry, ma'am, track and field is down the hall."
Skeleton winner Jim Shea's mother once warned him not to participate in that sport — too dangerous. She should know. She's an emergency medical technician. But Shea's body wasn't the only thing in danger. So was his wallet. He spent two years hitchhiking across Europe with a broken sled and virtually no money, living off credit cards.
His grandfather, the first of three Shea Olympians, was killed in a car accident only days before the Olympics began. Jim raced anyway, the memory of his grandfather guiding him down the track.
No adversity story is more inspiring than that of snowboarder Chris Klug — and he has the scar to prove it. All he did was overcome the effects of a liver transplant to win bronze in the parallel giant slalom. His was a disease that affects only one in 10,000 people.
As it turned out, he was one in a million.
Americans, of course, don't have a corner on adversity. Australian Steven Bradbury won gold in short-track speedskating several years after being impaled on another racer's skates. The damages on that spill: four liters of blood and 111 stitches. Let's not even get into the six weeks he spent in a brace after breaking his neck.
Russian pairs skater Elena Berezhnaya won gold several years after having her skull pierced by a skate. The injury required emergency brain surgery, after which her speech was impaired and the right side of her body paralyzed. She couldn't speak or write for weeks. Last week, she let her routine do the speaking for her.
Croatian skier Janica Kostelic won three medals, overcoming a near career-ending knee injury. But that was the easy part. As a youth she lived with her family in tents and a car, due to lack of funds. Her main sustenance: pickle and salami sandwiches.
Bespectacled Simon Ammann of Switzerland suffered a head injury just last month and had to take a break from World Cup competition. He came back to perform a trick even the resourceful Harry Potter couldn't have managed: double gold in ski jumping. Before that, he had never won a medal of any kind.
Suffice it to say, the Winter Games are full of these types of stories. People who by all rights should have given up. But you know what they say: Anything worth having never comes easy.
And in some cases, it doesn't come without a donation of blood.
E-MAIL: rock@desnews.com
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February 23, 2002
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