"Fight for the Children, Eva!"

I feel the poking and prodding of the world of sports politics again. Right now, I'm not sure what I want out of all of this, and whether it's good for me, but I think I'm going to start posting again.

Before I begin, let me make one thing absolutely clear. I don't feel that I owe the sport of speedskating anything. Before I left graduate school to make my comeback, I was frustrated because people were literally telling me that it was my role and my duty to sacrifice my life to find cures for diseases, because I did not deserve a life of my own. I did not come back to speedskating to find the same kind of life waiting for me. I came back to speedskating because I wanted to find success and happiness doing something I loved. This did not happen.

At one point during the last few months of my skating career, I had a parent of a skater come up to me and tell me that my speedskating career was expendable because I was alone; because my entire family was not involved and had not made sacrifices so I could compete. For this reason, she felt, it was OK for me to stand up and speak out on behalf of all of the skaters, and if necessary, to face the consequences. And then she asked me how much longer I planned to skate a particular event, because her kid wanted to race it.

Words cannot describe how much I resent such an attitude.

And still, I feel that things need to be said, and I plan to take the time out of my busy life to say them. Why? Is it because other peoples' skating careers mattered, whereas mine never did? No, not really. It is because I have observed some of the things going on politically in the sport, and I see some very encouraging changes happening, and this makes me feel like people are finally starting to see the light -- and also starting to get brave enough to speak out and make change. But also, I've seen some abuses continuing to go on, and I've seen too many things getting swept under the rug.

Now that I've posted about how angry I've been about USSPEEDSKATING's treatment of me as an athlete, I feel that I can put that behind me. I realize it's important not to drag this sport through the mud, and that it's important to discuss the real issues. For me, the Protocol is the easiest way to do this, so whenever I can make the time, I plan to cover some of the isues that are most important to me.