THE TOUGHNESS OF SPEEDSKATERS
The long track speedskating National Championships wrapped up the selection of the athletes on the World Cup teams.
Last week's short track champions were Apolo Ohno and Katherine Reutter. The long track nationals were held at Salt Lake's Olympic Oval during the last weekend of 2007. Shani Davis was the top man skater, and comback-kid Catherine Raney took the top spot for the women.
The long track team for the upcoming World Championships in Berlin will be Davis, Chad Hedrick, and new kid on the team, Justin Stelly. The women's team will be decided after a qualifying race in Calgary, Jan. 12-13, though Raney certainly made the team already.
But the most interesting news of the entire Nationals got very little press. Kip Carpenter, a two-time Olympian who won a bronze medal in the 2002 Olympic 500 meter sprint race, fell hard, crashing into the boards. One of his knife-sharp skate blades sliced open his ankle so badly, it needed stitches.
Carpenter left the ice, and a team physician immediately stitched up the wound. A tight bandage compress was wrapped around it, and Carpenter went right back on the ice to re-skate his 500 meter race. Alone, without a dual competitor to goad him, and with the pain of drug-free stitches banging on his ankle with every skate stroke, Carpenter still managed a time that placed him second in the ultra-competitive 500 meter sprint.
Another sprinter, Michael Stein, also heeded the speedskater's motto, "suck it up." He suffered through the pain of a bad kidney infection because the drugs needed to clear the infection up are on the doping banned list.
"I blacked out a little in the 1500 meter race, but there's nothing I can do except drink some cranberry juice. As soon as this competition is over, I'm going to take the medicine I need to get rid of it," Stein said.
Don't mess with speedskaters; they are obviously tough cookies.