Speaking of Retirement: The Importance of Retiring Well
When you're involved in a sport at the elite level, you start to think of your life in terms of an annual cycle of training and racing. It's easy to start thinking that this routine will go on forever, but, of course, it can't. I have actually been thinking about my retirement from speedskating since the beginning of last season, and here is how that came about.
I had been working in the lab at Salus/Genta for two full seasons, and it was becoming obvious that the hours I had to maintain and the mental stress of working in science was detrimental to my speedskating performance. My mom and I talked about this, and she offered to help me out financially so that I could quit working and focus on skating full-time until the 2006 Olympics. I was very reluctant to accept this. I had tried very hard to support my own skating career so that I could make my own decisions about when to stop skating, and I wasn't sure I'd be ready to be done after 2006.
However, after Genta closed down last July and I was stuck without a job in science that fit my training schedule, I was forced to re-examine my options. It has often happened to me in my skating comeback that I have to look at two options that are quite painful, and have to choose the one that is slightly less so. After a couple of months of deliberation, I chose to accept Mom's help.
Guess what she had to do to help me out? She had to liquidate one of her retirement accounts. That made me feel really great. But she knows that when I'm done skating, I have a very promising career in science waiting for me, and there won't be anything for our family to worry about.
At first, this whole situation made me feel like I was in a "12-step program" designed to cure my addiction to speedskating so that I could get on with my life. "Give the next one and a half seasons your best shot, and then hang 'em up." So, for about a year now, I have been coming to terms with the impending end of my speedskating career.
----
The way in which an elite athlete's career comes to an end is very important. End things on a sour note and you risk having to carry the baggage around for the rest of your life. My first "retirement" left me feeling like my life and destiny were out of my control, and even though I tried very hard to find purpose and enjoyment in other pursuits, I was left with too many bad feelings. I ran away to Southern California for grad school partly to escape all thoughts of winter sport, but you know there's something wrong when you sit there on the beach just staring at the waves because you know you're too depressed to go surfing any more. Speedskating was like a thorn lodged inside of me that I couldn't squeeze out.
I came back to speedskating to tie up loose ends, and to see if I could gain control over the rest of my life by fixing what went wrong on the ice. In the process, I have also been learning about the process of retirement.
----
"I am not what I have already accomplished. I am who I aspire to be."
( -from Andrew Love, loosely quoted before his first cup of coffee)
One of the greatest examples of a good retirement is Dr. Eric Heiden. His 5-gold performance at the 1980 Olympics is arguably the greatest individual sports achievement in history. Now he is a respected orthopedic surgeon at UC-Davis. You'd think if anyone had a right to having a big head, is Dr. Heiden, but he is one of the nicest, most down-to-earth guys you could ever meet.
I met Eric Heiden on my first World Cup trip in November 2001, when he came along as our team doctor. I remember sitting with him at dinner in Innsbruck one night, and we talked about the mechanism of HIV infection of T-cells. That was pretty cool! He also told us some stories from his own days of skating. I always knew that Heiden had trained hard, but in his stories, there wasn't any of that attitude of, "I won because I suffered the most." He seemed to acknowledge and recognize his natural physical giftedness through his humor and humility.
I believe that moving on to other goals in life, as Dr. Heiden has done in the field of medicine, is the best thing an athlete can do. From my perspective as a current US Speedskating athlete, I can see that Dr. Heiden's involvement with our team is representative of his positive experience of retirement from the sport. You can see that he wants to help us in the best way he knows how - and that is by being our team doctor on trips. Unlike some other former skaters, he doesn't feel the need to remain involved in the sport in order to perpetuate his own glory or to use the current generation of champions for some other advantage.
---
Regarding retirement from a sport, there is always this question: Do you have to win, or to reach your highest goal, in order to have a happy ending? Certainly, in speedskating, one couldn't do better than Eric Heiden did in 1980!
But, honestly, how many athletes' careers end well? My friend Anna, who used to be an elite-level long distance swimmer, has a perspective on that. She believes that happy endings in sports are extremely rare, even if an athlete manages to win an Olympic gold medal. She has said to me, "The best way to end an athletic career is to have an aneurysm while you're standing on the podium with your gold medal around your neck!" She cited several examples of very successful swimmers who tried to defend their titles but were thwarted by injuries or were pushed out by younger, up-and-coming athletes. It can't be fun to watch your career go down, if you haven't managed to leave while you're on top.
I'm always inspired by the story of my friend Derek Groves - a former Kearns Dirt Oval teammate of mine. I brag to everyone that Derek is "the most well-adjusted former speedskater I know." Though he didn't even come close to reaching his goals in the sport, he finally realized that his heart wasn't really in it anyways, and now he owns an interior design company and custom furniture gallery right here in downtown Salt Lake City. He loves what he does, and has absolutely no regrets.
---
As I said before, a big part of my comeback to speedskating is about retiring well. It's not just about revenge and proving something to the people who hurt me before, although that certainly is a part of it. It's not just about winning, though being successful would be nice. It's about seeking answers to my questions of why athletes fail or succeed; why they get frustrated and quit; determining the real obstacles along the way. It's about measuring the size of the gap between the image of the Olympics, and my sport in particular, that is portrayed on TV every 4 years, and the reality of our lives as athletes. Maybe I'll have the opportunity to open some eyes along the way, but even if nobody is paying attention, I need to put these questions to rest, for myself. As my friend Anna says, I am in the process of saving my own soul.
The goal is to leave the sport at peace with the effort I put into it, and with the knowledge I have gained. Then, I hope to move on to other aspirations in life, without regrets and without a fear of looking back.
When you're involved in a sport at the elite level, you start to think of your life in terms of an annual cycle of training and racing. It's easy to start thinking that this routine will go on forever, but, of course, it can't. I have actually been thinking about my retirement from speedskating since the beginning of last season, and here is how that came about.
I had been working in the lab at Salus/Genta for two full seasons, and it was becoming obvious that the hours I had to maintain and the mental stress of working in science was detrimental to my speedskating performance. My mom and I talked about this, and she offered to help me out financially so that I could quit working and focus on skating full-time until the 2006 Olympics. I was very reluctant to accept this. I had tried very hard to support my own skating career so that I could make my own decisions about when to stop skating, and I wasn't sure I'd be ready to be done after 2006.
However, after Genta closed down last July and I was stuck without a job in science that fit my training schedule, I was forced to re-examine my options. It has often happened to me in my skating comeback that I have to look at two options that are quite painful, and have to choose the one that is slightly less so. After a couple of months of deliberation, I chose to accept Mom's help.
Guess what she had to do to help me out? She had to liquidate one of her retirement accounts. That made me feel really great. But she knows that when I'm done skating, I have a very promising career in science waiting for me, and there won't be anything for our family to worry about.
At first, this whole situation made me feel like I was in a "12-step program" designed to cure my addiction to speedskating so that I could get on with my life. "Give the next one and a half seasons your best shot, and then hang 'em up." So, for about a year now, I have been coming to terms with the impending end of my speedskating career.
----
The way in which an elite athlete's career comes to an end is very important. End things on a sour note and you risk having to carry the baggage around for the rest of your life. My first "retirement" left me feeling like my life and destiny were out of my control, and even though I tried very hard to find purpose and enjoyment in other pursuits, I was left with too many bad feelings. I ran away to Southern California for grad school partly to escape all thoughts of winter sport, but you know there's something wrong when you sit there on the beach just staring at the waves because you know you're too depressed to go surfing any more. Speedskating was like a thorn lodged inside of me that I couldn't squeeze out.
I came back to speedskating to tie up loose ends, and to see if I could gain control over the rest of my life by fixing what went wrong on the ice. In the process, I have also been learning about the process of retirement.
----
"I am not what I have already accomplished. I am who I aspire to be."
( -from Andrew Love, loosely quoted before his first cup of coffee)
One of the greatest examples of a good retirement is Dr. Eric Heiden. His 5-gold performance at the 1980 Olympics is arguably the greatest individual sports achievement in history. Now he is a respected orthopedic surgeon at UC-Davis. You'd think if anyone had a right to having a big head, is Dr. Heiden, but he is one of the nicest, most down-to-earth guys you could ever meet.
I met Eric Heiden on my first World Cup trip in November 2001, when he came along as our team doctor. I remember sitting with him at dinner in Innsbruck one night, and we talked about the mechanism of HIV infection of T-cells. That was pretty cool! He also told us some stories from his own days of skating. I always knew that Heiden had trained hard, but in his stories, there wasn't any of that attitude of, "I won because I suffered the most." He seemed to acknowledge and recognize his natural physical giftedness through his humor and humility.
I believe that moving on to other goals in life, as Dr. Heiden has done in the field of medicine, is the best thing an athlete can do. From my perspective as a current US Speedskating athlete, I can see that Dr. Heiden's involvement with our team is representative of his positive experience of retirement from the sport. You can see that he wants to help us in the best way he knows how - and that is by being our team doctor on trips. Unlike some other former skaters, he doesn't feel the need to remain involved in the sport in order to perpetuate his own glory or to use the current generation of champions for some other advantage.
---
Regarding retirement from a sport, there is always this question: Do you have to win, or to reach your highest goal, in order to have a happy ending? Certainly, in speedskating, one couldn't do better than Eric Heiden did in 1980!
But, honestly, how many athletes' careers end well? My friend Anna, who used to be an elite-level long distance swimmer, has a perspective on that. She believes that happy endings in sports are extremely rare, even if an athlete manages to win an Olympic gold medal. She has said to me, "The best way to end an athletic career is to have an aneurysm while you're standing on the podium with your gold medal around your neck!" She cited several examples of very successful swimmers who tried to defend their titles but were thwarted by injuries or were pushed out by younger, up-and-coming athletes. It can't be fun to watch your career go down, if you haven't managed to leave while you're on top.
I'm always inspired by the story of my friend Derek Groves - a former Kearns Dirt Oval teammate of mine. I brag to everyone that Derek is "the most well-adjusted former speedskater I know." Though he didn't even come close to reaching his goals in the sport, he finally realized that his heart wasn't really in it anyways, and now he owns an interior design company and custom furniture gallery right here in downtown Salt Lake City. He loves what he does, and has absolutely no regrets.
---
As I said before, a big part of my comeback to speedskating is about retiring well. It's not just about revenge and proving something to the people who hurt me before, although that certainly is a part of it. It's not just about winning, though being successful would be nice. It's about seeking answers to my questions of why athletes fail or succeed; why they get frustrated and quit; determining the real obstacles along the way. It's about measuring the size of the gap between the image of the Olympics, and my sport in particular, that is portrayed on TV every 4 years, and the reality of our lives as athletes. Maybe I'll have the opportunity to open some eyes along the way, but even if nobody is paying attention, I need to put these questions to rest, for myself. As my friend Anna says, I am in the process of saving my own soul.
The goal is to leave the sport at peace with the effort I put into it, and with the knowledge I have gained. Then, I hope to move on to other aspirations in life, without regrets and without a fear of looking back.
posted by Eva at 8:02 AM
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