My image, my role, and my purpose in this sport:
Springtime is always a time of reflection for me; a time when the skating season ends and I think about where I have been and where I'm going. Along with that come thoughts of funding and the sponsorship search, and I often use this time to ask people for advice on how this is done. I have learned that, in speedskating, it is important to maintain a positive and wholesome image, because even though you can't always sell your results, you have to be able to sell your personality.
This is kind of hard for me to swallow, because, as I've said before, it is important to me that metric speedskating is the kind of sport where nobody has to care about you in order for you to succeed. But, when you look for sponsorship, you are forced to MAKE somebody care about you and your story.
Looking for sponsorship has always been such an odious chore to me because it seems so much like begging, and this is a concept that has always been utterly foreign to my whole family. When I look around me at some of the local "Olympic wanna-be's" who have no shot at making the team this year but are lying and misrepresenting themselves in the press in order to obtain funding, it turns my stomach and I want no part of it.
I wish that the results I have already achieved could stand on their own, but unfortunately, if I want to survive, then I have to sell myself. "The system" does not recognize an athlete in my position. My funding situation is a farce. For the upcoming season, I will be receiving a stipend of $150 per month, beginning in June.
So, I always come back to thoughts of the sponsorship search, and I begin to consider the image of myself that I want to present to the world, and compare that to the accepted ideal of the wholesome Olympian. I think back to the time when I was a kid growing up, remembering how my brother and I used to love watching the Olympics so much that we'd both cry during the closing ceremonies, knowing it would be another 4 years before the Games were back on TV. There was a time in my life when the only thing I wanted was to be the best speedskater in the world, and I was ready to dedicate my entire life to the sport. But too many things got in the way.
Everyone who lives in reality knows that sports have a dark side: Eating disorders, abuse of athletes by coaches, the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and the list goes on and on. Once you have experienced the dark side of sports the way I have, there is no turning back. Certain experiences cannot be erased from one's memory. I have been a victim of events surrounding the Salt Lake Olympic Bribery Scandal. I was blackballed by my own federation when I asked them for help. I have been used as an experimental lab rat by people I trusted to make me skate faster. How, then, would it be possible for me to ever become the wholesome, ever-smiling champion who stares at you from the cereal aisle in the grocery store? I'd have to get a lobotomy! I'd have to soak my brains in bleach!
Of course, I still love speedskating and want to win, but I want to win AS MYSELF. I want to be there to represent all the kids who never reached their goals in sports, because I know that most of them suffer in silence and their stories will never be told. These are the people who dread those 2 weeks every 4 years, when the Olympics come around, and they have to watch other people living out the dreams they were never able to achieve. I know. I have been there. If I become an Olympian, I don't want to become one of those people who tell those who failed that it's their own fault and that they didn't try hard enough.
I think the American sports system needs someone like me. I want to be the "conscience" of the system. I want to be the truth that didn't walk away. Most people think that all you have to do in sports is to train hard and make sacrifices, and you will succeed. I beg to differ. For me, the whole process has been more like crawling on my belly on the ground and occasionally getting kicked in the teeth. Meanwhile, I'm looking around me and watching people who don't really care about their sport getting a free ride. I consider it my duty to bounce back, bloody but grinning, and to show The Man that he can't keep me down!!
How, then, would I describe my "image?" First of all, I'd say it isn't very marketable, ha-ha-ha!!! I'm the kind of athlete who considers "exposing hypocrisy" to be my second favorite sport, but I also don't take myself too seriously. I'm the sort of person who rides a skateboard down to the Oval the week of the World Sprints and people call me a "fruit loop" until I go out there and skate a 1:17.1 in the 1000 meters. Most of all, though, I'm the frumpy Sociology student who is working on a dissertation entitled, "WHY the Kids Aren't Alright." Maybe I'll report my findings after Torino.
Springtime is always a time of reflection for me; a time when the skating season ends and I think about where I have been and where I'm going. Along with that come thoughts of funding and the sponsorship search, and I often use this time to ask people for advice on how this is done. I have learned that, in speedskating, it is important to maintain a positive and wholesome image, because even though you can't always sell your results, you have to be able to sell your personality.
This is kind of hard for me to swallow, because, as I've said before, it is important to me that metric speedskating is the kind of sport where nobody has to care about you in order for you to succeed. But, when you look for sponsorship, you are forced to MAKE somebody care about you and your story.
Looking for sponsorship has always been such an odious chore to me because it seems so much like begging, and this is a concept that has always been utterly foreign to my whole family. When I look around me at some of the local "Olympic wanna-be's" who have no shot at making the team this year but are lying and misrepresenting themselves in the press in order to obtain funding, it turns my stomach and I want no part of it.
I wish that the results I have already achieved could stand on their own, but unfortunately, if I want to survive, then I have to sell myself. "The system" does not recognize an athlete in my position. My funding situation is a farce. For the upcoming season, I will be receiving a stipend of $150 per month, beginning in June.
So, I always come back to thoughts of the sponsorship search, and I begin to consider the image of myself that I want to present to the world, and compare that to the accepted ideal of the wholesome Olympian. I think back to the time when I was a kid growing up, remembering how my brother and I used to love watching the Olympics so much that we'd both cry during the closing ceremonies, knowing it would be another 4 years before the Games were back on TV. There was a time in my life when the only thing I wanted was to be the best speedskater in the world, and I was ready to dedicate my entire life to the sport. But too many things got in the way.
Everyone who lives in reality knows that sports have a dark side: Eating disorders, abuse of athletes by coaches, the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and the list goes on and on. Once you have experienced the dark side of sports the way I have, there is no turning back. Certain experiences cannot be erased from one's memory. I have been a victim of events surrounding the Salt Lake Olympic Bribery Scandal. I was blackballed by my own federation when I asked them for help. I have been used as an experimental lab rat by people I trusted to make me skate faster. How, then, would it be possible for me to ever become the wholesome, ever-smiling champion who stares at you from the cereal aisle in the grocery store? I'd have to get a lobotomy! I'd have to soak my brains in bleach!
Of course, I still love speedskating and want to win, but I want to win AS MYSELF. I want to be there to represent all the kids who never reached their goals in sports, because I know that most of them suffer in silence and their stories will never be told. These are the people who dread those 2 weeks every 4 years, when the Olympics come around, and they have to watch other people living out the dreams they were never able to achieve. I know. I have been there. If I become an Olympian, I don't want to become one of those people who tell those who failed that it's their own fault and that they didn't try hard enough.
I think the American sports system needs someone like me. I want to be the "conscience" of the system. I want to be the truth that didn't walk away. Most people think that all you have to do in sports is to train hard and make sacrifices, and you will succeed. I beg to differ. For me, the whole process has been more like crawling on my belly on the ground and occasionally getting kicked in the teeth. Meanwhile, I'm looking around me and watching people who don't really care about their sport getting a free ride. I consider it my duty to bounce back, bloody but grinning, and to show The Man that he can't keep me down!!
How, then, would I describe my "image?" First of all, I'd say it isn't very marketable, ha-ha-ha!!! I'm the kind of athlete who considers "exposing hypocrisy" to be my second favorite sport, but I also don't take myself too seriously. I'm the sort of person who rides a skateboard down to the Oval the week of the World Sprints and people call me a "fruit loop" until I go out there and skate a 1:17.1 in the 1000 meters. Most of all, though, I'm the frumpy Sociology student who is working on a dissertation entitled, "WHY the Kids Aren't Alright." Maybe I'll report my findings after Torino.
posted by Eva at 9:00 AM
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