Tag: Kerry Lynch

NoCo Athletes Jump on “Drive for 25”

The U.S. Nordic Combined National Training Group poses for a team photo at the top of a mountain near Strbske Pleso, CZE, in early August. At bottom, Michael Ward (L) and Adam Loomis (R). Top, left to right, Erik Lynch, Cliff Field, coach Martin Bayer, Tyler Smith, and Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club athletes Ben Berend and Aleck Gantick. Photo courtesy of National Nordic Foundation.

When Cliff Field met his parents for dinner in Steamboat Springs, Colo., last weekend, the family of three knew the discussion wouldn’t be easy.

A few days earlier, Field had stumbled on his mother’s quotes in a Steamboat Today article about his nordic-combined National Training Group. The focus was the team’s financial status following the budget cuts handed down by the United States Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) this year. The underlying reality was that Field’s future in the sport was at stake.

“I think it was when he read the article online and saw my comment about us being $60,000 in debt,” said his mother, Susana Field. “And he said, ‘Well, what am I doing in this sport? Why haven’t you told me? I can just quit the sport right now.’ ”

Susana said she broke down crying at the table. She explained to her 19-year-old son that they wanted to make it work, but could no longer afford to do so.

Nordic Combined NTG members Michael Ward (L) and Cliff Field (R) sit at the top of a ski jump. Photo courtesy Cliff Field.

Since Field started competing internationally the summer before ninth grade, Susana and her husband, John, had spent some $35,000 a year on keeping him in the sport. They not only exhausted their savings, they maxed out their credit lines.

Speaking on the phone from her new home in Rangely, Colo. — about 2 ½ hours from Steamboat Springs — Susana said she was humiliated and embarrassed, but knew the importance of her family’s story. If they were struggling, other athletes’ families must be as well.

Back in 2006, Susana and John Field left their custom-cabinet business for other careers; Susana became a real-estate agent and John went to school in Rangely. Meanwhile, Susana battled breast cancer, and as the medical bills piled up, her son went higher in the sport — winning multiple junior-national titles.

She stayed in Steamboat to keep Field in the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, but upon his graduation from high school last spring, she relocated. He stayed alone in the family’s former home — a rental unit Susana described as a trailer — and his parents visited when they could.

Looking ahead, Susana said they might have to sell that property.

“I know there’s some locals that think, ‘Oh, these are just rich kids that are flying over to Europe,’ ” she said. “But we haven’t put our hands out before. We did take the financial burden, and we just can’t anymore.”

Without money left for college tuition, Field was considering the military.

“It definitely ups the ante as far as what I’m going to do with my life if this doesn’t work out,” he said. “If we can’t find money, I’m probably not going to be able to go on with this sport.”

But for Field, who took some college classes with teammates while in Steamboat Springs this summer, the military may not be an option because he had asthma.

“I’m kind of just taking it as this season right now,” he said. “But it’s also like this is the last time I might be able to do something cool.”

Field said he used that as motivation to keep improving and hopefully make the U.S. Ski Team (USST), with just seven men between the A- and B-teams this season.

Their Own “Drive for 25”

Without any financial support from the USSA, some of the four other members of the National Training Group (NTG) — which was essentially a development or D-team — struggled to hang on as well, Field said.

Like the B-team athletes they trained with, some found accommodating jobs in Steamboat Springs. Others, like Field, found it difficult to work regularly between year-round trips to Europe.

For most of the athletes, their parents picked up the tab.

U.S. Nordic Combined NTG and Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club athletes training on rollerskis. Photo courtesy of Cliff Field.

A former national team member with a 17-year-old son on the NTG, Kerry Lynch took it upon himself to lead the fundraising efforts. In an email, Lynch wrote that given the relatively small size of nordic combined, the sport faced inherent challenges. Especially at the development level, volunteer help was critical.

“Parents, families and private funding sources cannot be the sole funding mechanism for the developing athletes,” Lynch wrote. “That is not a long term model for success.”

He explained that while those at the top of the sport received adequate funding to compete in the World Cup, those below them had to figure out how to pay for travel, equipment and club costs. Although the financial challenge of nordic combined in the U.S. was nothing new, Lynch wrote that the struggling economy made things worse.

In an effort to offset about $250,000 in annual NTG costs, especially with travel, Lynch recently met with fellow National Nordic Foundation (NNF) board members to piggyback off a fundraising idea. Not long after the USST cross-country coaches Matt Whitcomb and Pete Vordenberg innovated the “Drive for 25,” urging skiers to donate $25 to the sport on Nov. 15, the NNF was happy to create a similar donation link online for nordic combined.

A few weeks after U.S. Nordic Combined launched its own “Drive for 25,” the website showed it had raised more than $20,000 for development athletes. And that wasn’t including checks that had been mailed in, said NNF director Dave Knoop.

“This has just been the most gratifying thing,” Knoop said of both the cross-country and nordic-combined fundraisers, which were ongoing and would accept donations well after Nov. 15. “It’s not the amount. … Getting the participation or the awareness out there is equally as important as getting the donation.”

If not for outside assistance, athletes like Erik Lynch, who was still in high school, said they wouldn’t be able to afford competing with the best skiers in Europe.

“There are supportive people in the skiing community who are donating now more than ever,” Erik wrote in an email. “Because of the recent financial support, I’m years ahead of where I would have been without outside funds. I have been able to achieve my yearly goals some said were unrealistic.”

In August, Erik made his World-Cup debut at the Summer Grand Prix in Germany, where he finished 52^nd.

The U.S. Nordic Combined NTG with members of the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club in Ramsau, Austria, in August. Photo courtesy of Martin Bayer.

It’s Not All Gravy

While the ultimate goal for NTG skiers was to make the national team and receive more support, the road ahead wasn’t much easier, according to NTG head coach Martin Bayer.

USST members not yet on the World-Cup level had to pay their own way in the Continental Cup, he said. That could include three B-team members this year.

“It has changed,” Bayer said. “In the past, (the nordic-combined USST) had 10 guys that were fully supported everywhere they went. Every year it’s worse.

“Even with the results, you saw what happened in Vancouver,” he added, referencing the gold and silver medals the U.S. nordic-combined team won at the 2010 Olympics. “And the budget got cut.”

Understanding the situation and working within it has been the solution, according to U.S. Nordic Combined Head Coach Dave Jarrett.

“We don’t have an alternative, good or bad,” Jarrett said. “We just ski.”

Without the option to pursue nordic combined in college, junior athletes have to hold off on education while chasing the elite ranks of their sport. Some, like Field, wait several years to be named to the national team. Because U.S. Nordic Combined tends to move athletes up in groups, the development team remains in limbo.

“Kind of our M.O. is to get the group together, put them in residency from an early age, high-school age, and move them forward,” Jarrett said. “This NNF support is what’s going to enable them to continue skiing and be a full-time athlete.”

As for the sport’s expenses, Bayer pointed out that it’s no more than some other sports at that level, such as alpine. As for its finances, Jarrett said it was no worse than it had been. Fundraising wasn’t needed to sustain the sport in the U.S., it was meant to invest in the younger generations, he said.

“There was a time when you were on the ski team and you were getting some kind of stipend to be in residency,” Jarrett said. “That went away years ago. It’s not any more dire than it has been, it’s just that in some parents’ cases, maybe it’s more dire.”

He referred to the specific case of U.S. men’s ski jumping, which operated without USSA funding, and said that was what nordic combined wanted to avoid.

“Our funding goal is to endow our sport so that if that, in fact, ever happened to nordic combined, we would be in front of it,” he said. “You never know what’s around the corner. The pie hasn’t gotten any bigger, and there’s more pieces to be divided.”

While the U.S. Nordic Combined athletes and its NTG continue to work for national recognition — most easily won by Olympic and world championship medals — they continue to support themselves. In Steamboat Springs, several future Olympians can be found bussing tables or working in warehouses. According to Bayer, Adam Loomis squeezed in shifts at an Italian restaurant, serving food from 10 a.m.- 3 p.m. between morning and evening practices.

“By the end of the day, they’re tired kids,” Bayer said.

While Field worked part time at the town’s alpine slide last summer, he also rehabbed a badly sprained ankle on his own. Ever since a $2,000-medical bill forced him to stop physical therapy this fall, Field had been self-treating with ibuprofen and resistance bands.

“It’s kind of beyond icing,” he said. “You need flexibility in your ankle to ski jump, and it doesn’t have the flexibility that I would like. Hopefully it will come back before we get into the world junior competitions.”

For now, that was his focus: one step and one season at a time.

***

To support nordic combined and cross-country athletes in the “Drive for 25,” visit the NNF website and click “get involved” under each fundraiser.

November 15, 2011
Lynch Contemporary: “I Don’t Know What I Would Have Done”

As Kerry Lynch’s career was ascending, Walter Malmquist’s career was peaking. Graduating from New Hampshire’s Holderness School, he joined the U.S. nordic combined team in 1974, retiring at the end of the 1980-1981 season. Competing in the 1976 and 1980 Winter Olympics, his best finish was 12^th the 15 k nordic combined event in the 1980 Games, in Lake Placid. Today, Malmquist is a volunteer coach at the Holderness School, Proctor Academy, and Andover Outing Club. He spoke with FasterSkier about Lynch, and the nordic combined culture of the late 70’s and early 80’s.

FasterSkier: You were Kerry Lynch’s teammate for a couple of years, and at least one Olympics? 1980?

Walter Malmquist: I knew Kerry; I met him in 1978. He was coming on to the scene when I was having the best part of my career.

When I was a competitor, not many people skied past their college careers. Kerry’s ambition…Kerry was different. He was a person who wanted to be among the best in the world. That was his goal; that was his focus.

A lot of us only thought about skiing while we could afford to do so, while we were in college, or living at home with our parents, younger than 18, maybe going until 22 to 24 years old. But Kerry knew he was going to [compete] past college age. That made him unique in that time. Maybe [Bill] Koch is an example of another who pursued his career after college.

Kerry was the first American to pursue the sport as the Europeans did. And the results showed…it was clear to me that Kerry was setting goals to pursue international results until he was in his mid-20s. That enabled him to set up a training program and a competitive program that was a much longer time horizon, and that enabled him to do things that other people didn’t pursue, because they weren’t committed as Kerry was from an early point in their career.

FS: What was the culture of the U.S. nordic combined program like back then?

WM: Survival by tooth and nail. Every year, in the mid 70’s, there might be two or three competitors named to the elite team that traveled in Europe for a month or two, came back for national championships, and went back to Europe for a month or two.

Back then, it was a four- or five-month competitive season, and now it’s year-round…because of summer jumping facilities and summer cross-country training equipment. In those days, throughout the mid 70’s to 1980, there wasn’t very much funding for coaches’ expenses, competitors’ travel expenses, things that were quite expensive as they are…even today. It was a group of individuals that were committed to taking their ability to an international level from a national level. The bottom line is, if you were training on an international level, [you] didn’t know from year to year if there was going to be a nordic combined team.

We never knew if there would be a one-person or a three-person team named to the Olympics, which was really—and still is—the opportunity for Americans to show their ability at international competitions.

In the early 80’s, Gary Crawford, Kerry Lynch, and a group of people in Steamboat Springs and Winter Park [CO] got together with coach Steve Gaskill, and they put together a funded team. Those guys had the support of their communities. They were so committed. People believed in not only their talent, but they believed in their commitment.

They had a real team that had a jumping coach, Jeff Hastings, and a cross-country coach, Doug Peterson. Both [were] former international-caliber competitors who looked at every aspect of the competition, to provide those competitors their…advantages, and to improve on their weaknesses to do the best that they could.

Where Kerry had the right personality and the right commitment to improve his ability, his talent….His performances improved year after year after year. He kept taking it to the next level. Because he believed in the program, and the people who were helping him out.

FS: When you were a teammate with Kerry, was he driven, or was he laid back? Was he a team leader?

WM: He was extremely driven. He wanted to be the best, from day one. Number two: he was a leader, but he respected people who were older than him, and they respected him, and that was a smart way to be integrated into [the team].

Everybody liked Kerry. So while he was driven, he was respectful, therefore, he was relaxed and at ease, and therefore he appeared laid-back, even though he was intense.

Kerry was the kind of guy who loved skiing so much, he never had a bad day. Even when he had a poorer performance than he and other people expected, he would smile, give an explanation for what happened, smile, shake your hand, and say, “Let’s go ski. Let’s go have some fun. Let’s move on. I’m done with that.”

FS: Was there ever any sense of ambivalence about doping in the [ski] community back then?

WM: Great question. It was something that we never thought about. It wasn’t a tool that we considered, because it was on nobody’s radar in the early- to mid-70’s. The late 70’s, or early 80’s, when I was competing. I know there was the blood doping thing with Kerry. In cross-country skiing, there was a lady from Finland named Marja-Liisa Hämäläinen [She later married Harri Kirvesniemi, who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs at the 2001 World Championships in Lahti, Finland.], and her nickname became Marja-Liisa Hemoglobin. She was a multi-time world champion and Olympic champion. And in the 80’s, people were starting to talk about different feeds—actually, as early as 1976 [Olympics] in Innsbruck, at the cross-country events. People were thinking about putting coke syrup in their feeds that would increase their sugar content, that would increase your body’s access to material that you could burn for energy very quickly.

You know, that kind of stuff in nordic combined, because it was a 15-kilometer event, it really didn’t work its way down. That was because I, as a U.S. athlete, was totally naïve. Our coaches didn’t think about it; we as athletes didn’t think about it. But in the early 80’s, people started opening their eyes. In biking, in foot running…it really became apparent that people were blood doping. And that was part of the sport.

And my feeling, friendship with Kerry aside…I respect Kerry, and I think that he must have gleaned that it was part of the sport, that everybody else was doing, and that…physically, it wasn’t like steroids, that it altered your body. It was just your blood being added to your blood—so what’s wrong with that?

I kind of look at that, and…it’s like lifting weights. You’ve got to do what you have to do to be competitive. And if everyone else is going to do it, and no one is testing for it, then it’s part of the game. And I can totally understand that.

It was not something that I had to consider, so I didn’t. And it was because I was naïve. If I had been competing in the 80’s, it would have been a very big decision that I would have had to consider, but I didn’t.

FS: If you look at the 1984 U.S. Olympic cycling team, about a third of those men—and women—blood doped. [Sports Illustrated, 21 January 1985, “Triumphs Tainted with Blood; ” authors Bjarne Rostaing; Robert Sullivan]

WM: That shows that there are two sides to that story. While I respect Kerry, he and whoever else was involved with it made a bad decision. And here’s the reason why.

Because when it comes out and you’re exposed, then it does some very bad things for the public image of the sport. Is that all that goes into the decision? Hell, no. You have to think about what’s fair. And therefore, it becomes a very personal decision. I kind of have to be totally honest with you. I don’t know what I would have done. I would have liked to have thought that I could have been a world-class competitor without doing things that were forbidden by the rules. But I can’t tell you that that’s the decision that I would have made.

What I will say is that if I could be honest with you, and say that I could make that decision, it’s probably because I wasn’t committed as much as other athletes to being the best in the world. Another caveat: because [nordic combined] was not something that I was basing my life upon—it was something I did while I went to school; it was something that I did while I was becoming an adult—it wasn’t something that defined me. It wasn’t something that I did with professional consideration. It wasn’t something that I was trying to make my mark, for the rest of my life, doing. If I had been more dedicated to making a mark for myself with my skiing career, it would have changed the way that I looked at that decision.

FS: How do you feel about somebody with this background or history coaching kids that are coming up?

WM: I’ve thought about that for a long time. If I didn’t know the person, it would take me longer to figure out my answer to that. But because I know Kerry Lynch, I’m totally [comfortable with him] coaching kids. And I would say the same thing about any other athlete that you ask me that question about. If I know a guy or a gal, I’ll tell you, ‘yes, I feel comfortable, because that person has the morals, and the ethics and the principles to be a good junior coach.’

Kerry Lynch is not celebrating performance; he’s celebrating participation, and moving [athletes] from one level to the next, to best of their abilities. And that’s the kind of coach I want my kids to have.

But if you ask me about another athlete that took steroids—Kerry’s experience has taught me that it’s the person’s morals, the person’s principles, rather than a one-time event, that help me make an opinion about somebody. So if you ask me, would I want Barry Bonds [coaching]–it’s a different scenario, right? That’s how I’d make the decision.

Is it clear that I think that Kerry Lynch is someone who should be working with development level skiers? I don’t think you’re going to find someone better than Kerry Lynch. I don’t know how I can be any more clear than that.

May 10, 2011
FS Interviews Kerry Lynch, Who Lost WCH Medal in Doping Scandal

As the ski season for Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club (SSWSC) wound down, juniors coach and former World Cup nordic combined skier Kerry Lynch answered questions via phone and e-mail with FasterSkier correspondent Peter Minde.

A three-time nordic combined national champion, Lynch raced from 1979 until 1987, and his international success presaged the later successes of Ryan Heckman and the current crop of U.S. nordic combined skiers. A participant in the 1980 and 1984 Winter Olympics, Lynch finishing 18^th and 13^th, respectively, in the 15 k event. Other highlights include a win at Holmenkollen in 1983.

In 1987, Lynch won a silver medal in the 15 k nordic combined event at the World Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany. However, following a U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA) internal investigation in December of that year, Lynch admitted to blood doping at the Championships, and returned his medal. The International Ski Federation (FIS) imposed a two-year competition ban on Lynch, and he did not compete after that.

After his career ended, Lynch worked at an insurance brokerage that focused on the ski industry. He moved to Steamboat Springs in 1998, securing a job as an assistant coach with USSA. Lynch left the program after the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, to build his own insurance business.

Currently, Lynch volunteers as a coach with SSWSC, assisting Head Coach Martin Bayer. When he injured his ACL during in fall 2010, Bayer said, “It was easy for [Lynch] to step right in. He knew what we were working on with every athlete. The kids respect him; they know where he’s coming from.”

Lynch was one of the coaches on a training trip to Europe last summer, accompanying juniors who got a taste of travel and jumping at different venues in Poland, Austria, Slovakia and Slovenia. He also traveled to Otepaa, Estonia, for the Junior World Championships in January.

In the interview, Lynch speaks about his career as an athlete, and his work with juniors in Steamboat. He would not, however, discuss his medal and the subsequent doping scandal in 1987—for more details on that, see our related interview with Walter Malmquist, one of Lynch’s contemporaries.

FS: In an interview, the current U.S. Head Coach Dave Jarrett characterized the American nordic combined team as “skiers who jump.” In 1984, Sports Illustrated wrote that you “stayed close to the top” in the jumping portion of an event, to give yourself a chance at a good result in the cross-country portion of the race.

KL: For me personally, it was the challenge to get enough [jumping] training with high-level athletes. I lived in Europe, and trained with the Germans for a year. They helped me with jumping. I helped them with cross-country.

For the training part of it, we try to be balanced. You can do a solid cross-country program with less contact [with other elite athletes] than you need for jumping. It’s always been the jumping that’s a challenge. We’ve historically been good cross-country racers, and if we can improve jumping, we’ll continue to be a force in the sport.

I hear “how come the U.S. doesn’t have good jumpers?” I hear that all the time. First, you have to be funded. It’s a very expensive sport to do properly. We’re trying to find the funds to create the program to overcome the inherent challenges of where we’re located. We can do our homework here [in the U.S.], but we need to hone our skills with contact with other athletes.

FS: You said, “First, you have to be funded. It’s a very expensive sport to do properly.” Can you provide details of some of the expenses involved with jumping?

KL: First, it is important to know that ski jumping and nordic combined are joined at the hip. Nordic combined athletes need a wide variety of quality jumps to [compete in] their sport. There are few ski jumps in North America compared to Europe. Competitions for nordic combined need jumps first.

Cross-country courses can be created just about anywhere. We in North America have few jumping facilities, yet in Europe, there are dozens of ski jumps in close proximity. So, Canada and the U.S. have the added expense of having to access Europe, and the all-important “contact” with the Europeans. It costs $25,000 to $30,000 annually, per nordic combined athlete at a minimum (at the Continental Cup and World Cup levels), to provide the funding need to excel.

FS: So, getting into your coaching—the juniors’ race season is over?

KL: We’re done with the season. It freezes at night and goes above freezing during the day—that’s not ideal conditions for jumping. It’s good to get the kids on a jump so they can work on a few things and get locked in.

FS: In one of our conversations, you’d mentioned that the jump at World Juniors in Estonia had unique characteristics—can you expand on that?

KL: The jump in Otepaa was difficult for a lot of athletes. The wind came mostly from the back at the takeoff, but swirled around, and there was actually some light headwind from the middle of the landing hill on down. So most of the guys would come off the takeoff and not feel the pressure right away and “hesitate”, which would stop the rotation, and they wouldn’t get on top of the air, lose the airfoil and land short. There were only a few athletes that seemed to master the jump. Kaarel Nurmsalu, from Otepaa, jumping on his home hill, won both nordic combined jumping events (as well as a bronze medal in the special jumping).

FS: Were athletes at Junior Worlds also on the European trip last summer, and were they able to apply lessons from that?

KL: The athletes that went to Europe in the summer were the athletes “targeted” to represent the U.S. in the 2011 World Juniors. In nordic combined, it is critical that the athletes get in some training on jumps at lower altitudes, because there is more air pressure, and lower in-run speeds are used. The guys were able to ski jump on five different hills in [our] training camp last summer, in Zakopane, Poland; Stebske Pleso, Czech Republic; Villach, Austria; and Kranj, Slovenia. Each jump has its own characteristics, and it is important for athletes to learn how to adapt to the different hills. Still, a single trip to Europe is not enough to properly prepare, but it is better than no trip.

FS: Do your athletes ever come east to train?

KL: Yes—typically, for a camp with the U.S. team in October, in Lake Placid. It’s a huge help for them to be with our own guys. With juniors, we’re always going to struggle to keep them in contact [with elite athletes] while they’re in high school.

FS: Is there more training variety in Europe?

KL: Sure. There’s a lot more facilities there. Here, we have Steamboat. Then five-and-a-half hours away is Park City. Then, there are facilities in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois…You can figure out how to jump your own hill really well. Then you have to take that ability and apply it to new venues.

It’s ironic that kids tend to do the sports that are in their back yard. We try to have kids be well-rounded. They try alpine, tele skiing, jumping, cross-country. The kids coming up through our ranks tend to be mostly nordic combined. It’s just fun to fly off the side of a mountain.

FS: In the U.S., nordic combined seems to have a smaller talent pool than cross-country. But the nordic combined program seems to have developed steadily over the past 20 years.

KL: Yes, the nordic combined talent pool in the U.S. is tiny, compared to the other powerhouse nations of Germany, Austria, Norway, France, and others. We have experienced coaches and have been able to craft plans that create the outcomes that have been achieved. It was not a fluke that Bill Demong, Johnny Spillane and Todd Lodwick became the best and most revered nordic combined athletes on the planet, bar none, for two years running. Those three won more medals than all other teams in the past two world championships and Olympics. That success was achieved by having the appropriate financial backing and support that started before the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Unfortunately, the financial support has dwindled each year. If we are to continue this high level of success, we’ll have to fully support the next generation of athletes that are on the rise.

FS: The U.S. cross-country program has made big strides in the last ten years, but isn’t yet at the level of the U.S. nordic combined program. Do you have any insight about this?

KL: That is a difficult question that can be answered better by the brain trust of cross-country. From the nordic combined side, I think the recent successes have come from a combination of things. First, the current U.S. coaches—Dave Jarrett, Chris Gilbertson and Greg Poirier—have been together longer than any other U.S. nordic combined coaches. This continuity has allowed the nordic combined program to develop, and finally prosper. Also, the most successful nordic combined athletes have had [persistence]. Todd Lodwick, Bill Demong, and Johnny Spillane were exposed to the highest level early in their careers, learned that the bar was set high, and continued to strive to be the best.

Success can take time. Athletes need time to develop and make progress. There will be ups and downs, bumps in the road. Coaches and administrators need to be patient. Results will come when the talent, determination, and dog-hard

Kerry Lynch

work all come together. Athletes need to be supported as they are coming along. Too often, athletes are written off too soon, and go different directions. We have seen that many of the top endurance athletes reach success at advanced athletic ages. Given more time and better financial support, our stellar stable of cross-country athletes can win medals. No questions about it.

FS: Do people ever hassle you about the past?

KL: It never comes up. It was a moment in time. You want to leave the sport better than you found it. It’s a shame when athletes retire and don’t share. There’s no point to just retire and keep information to yourself. Mostly…you have a passion for it. It’s a lifestyle. People that harbor animosity about things in the past, it takes them about a minute to get to know you. They realize you mean well for the athletes. They assume because this happened, you’re this kind of person. I’ve got one speed: that’s mach 1 with my hair on fire. I bring that fire and determination to help kids to well. Once people see that… I don’t spend one second on the past.

May 10, 2011