Revising my last post (which I just deleted):

I thought I might run into trouble with my last post because so many people have never experienced the side of Derek that I have experienced. Some people just rub each other the wrong way, and for some reason, Derek and I never got along. That's OK. We're not on the same training team any more.

I have had dual feelings about Derek, because I have always admired his hard work and achievements. However, I do feel that he has used his status as gold medalist to overstep his boundaries in terms of respecting other skaters, in a way that I have not seen other speedskating gold medalists do. I would like to share my feelings about this on my blog.

There was a time when I had kind of hoped that Derek would see that I also trained hard, and that I faced similar struggles of funding my skating career and of overcoming disrespect in this sport; that there were more similarities between us than differences. Instead, unfortunately, I found skating to be much less enjoyable when we were on the same team. Besides the incident at dinner on the World Cup trip, where he insisted that Bart make me talk to him (to the point, by the way, that I had to ask Bart if I could be excused and go to my room), there were others.

How would you like it if, every time you skated in a pace line, somebody yelled at you for throwing off their rhythm by taking an extra step? Or for making a small skid on the outer lane while stopping on the way to a lactate test? (When Tom watched this particular interaction taking place, he shook his head in disbelief, and asked me if I wanted him to say anything. I said no.)

I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who admire Derek's dedication and attention to detail. Of course, these things are admirable. But how far should a person be able to go in order to maintain the ideal environment for THEIR OWN training, at the expense of others? This is absolutely a valid question. Also, is there a hierarchy of achievement in the sport that forces us to put up with more from, for instance, gold medalists than from others?

Should I always be forced to leave the environment in order to maintain peace? Should I always have had to leave the pace line and finish my workout on my own, while the rest of the team skated together? Have I no right to state the limits of what I will tolerate, just because I've never even skated in the A Group?

A gold medal doesn't mean jack to me in terms of deciding how I'm going to treat someone. I treat people based on how they deserve to be treated; meaning, by how they treat me. In the same way, I wouldn't expect any gold medalist to treat me like I'm halfway human and either need to stay out of their way or be forced to go out of MY way to do nice things for them.

By the way, I am on very good terms with Olympic medalists Chris Witty, Casey Fitzrandolph, Joey Cheek, Kip Carpenter, and Jen Rodriguez. I see all of these athletes as examples of true sportsmanship. I don't see them using their status to set themselves up against other athletes, or as an excuse to overstep the rights of others. Therefore, I have several examples to use in comparison when something seems to be off.