The Other Side of Several Stories:
Last night, I met with Ryan Shimabukuro to discuss some of the controversial issues I covered on this blog. I was so pleased that Ryan was willing to do this, and also that he still considered me a friend no matter what happened or what was said during the past season.
I learned a lot from my conversation with Ryan, not only about his own point of view, but also about USSPEEDSKATING's position on several of the stories I told on The Protocol. After hearing what Ryan had to say, I realized that maybe I should have given "the other side" a chance to tell their story.
The reason why I'm posting this is because the truth is important to me. In controversial stories such as the ones I told on The Protocol, especially the ones involving some instances of an athlete being screwed over by the federation, there is a shade of gray. Not everything is clearly black or white. Therefore, having the opportunity to hear both sides of a conflict can bring us all closer to the truth.
Just as in science, it is important for a researcher to retract data that has been proven wrong, it is important for me to let people know when I have failed to consider the source of my information or to tell both sides of a story. The only way I can inspire positive change in the sport of speedskating is by making every attempt to be a trustworthy source of information, and to make sure that if I am being critical of the organization, then my criticism is based on the truth.
As far as my own stories of my own experiences of being mistreated by USSPEEDSKATING, I stand by them 100%. These are any stories I've told of things that happened to me, things I saw with my own eyes or heard with my own ears. Stories shared with me by others, on the other hand, are stories of one person's word or perception against another's, and then my own interpretation of the events that transpired comes in on top of that, to become a post on The Protocol.
I must admit that I almost always jumped to take the "anti-USS" position on any story, because it totally seemed to fit with my own experiences with the federation. But in all fairness, let me now present The Other Side, and let you, the reader, decide what you think is right.
1. The main issue Ryan and I talked about is when I posted about the Olympic Trials, saying he was "holding the lap board for me, and then a few hours later, was fighting against me in the draw." I got this information from a skater's parent who was at the draw and told me that "Ryan was one of the USS coaches fighting for the top 4 women to be in their own separate grouping for the draw," and to keep me and Erin Porter down in the next group.
From my perspective, I knew that I could have a good race no matter whom I was paired with, but it just disturbed me, because from that parent's story, it sounded like Ryan was trying to artificially separate the top 4 women out and put me at a disadvantage.
But there were a few things that I did not know at the time. One of these things is that on the men's side, Ryan also had a couple of guys who were just out of the top grouping, and he was still trying to keep the top 4 guys separate from the next group down. His rationale for wanting to maintain these groupings was to keep people of the same speed together so that no pair would have trouble crossing over and running into each other on the backstretch. It makes sense to me now.
Still, I felt that one of the races of one of the Top 4 women's pairs was called back for no good reason, after one of the women stumbled, but there was no false start on the pair. I feel certain that if anyone other than another one of The Chosen had been that skater's pair, then that person's coach would have noticed that the pair had been called back for no good reason. Ryan says he fought for the Top 4 women based entirely on time, and not based on the names of the skaters. I do believe him, and whatever happened at the start of that particular race had nothing to do with his involvement.
2. I thought it was not fair that two men were added to the Olympic Team to skate the pursuit, while USSPEEDSKATING did not add two women. The reason for adding two men and not two women is that there were not enough men among those who had qualified in individual distances who WANTED to skate the team pursuit, while there were plenty of women who were ALREADY QUALIFIED for the Olympic Team who had agreed to skate the team pursuit.
However, even though USSPEEDSKATING has used this as an excuse for not taking more women to the Games, I still think that this was the wrong decision for them to make. I think the main problem with the way the Olympics played out for the U.S. women's team is that USSPEEDSKATING underestimated the severity of the injuries of two of their competitors, and they also underestimated the additional toll, both physical and mental, that the team pursuit event would take on the athletes during the Olympic Games. Skating several rounds of a 6-lap race is not insignificant, and I'm not surprised that some of the athletes might be reluctant to race too much more after that kind of effort.
Still, in my own skating career, I've raced a 1500 and a 3000 on a sprained ankle and a 10K with full-blown bronchitis and a temperature of 101, so I feel I've earned the right to criticize Amy Sannes for not stepping up to race the Olympic 1500 meters. People who were there said, "Well, we couldn't hold a gun to her head and make her skate." No, really, they should have. They should have thought of me and Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr. sitting at home, and they should have pointed a gun at Sannes and said, "Get the fuck out there, you worthless and ungrateful piece of shit."
I did not believe that Amy Sannes was a good choice for the team pursuit, anyway, but Ryan said it wasn't Mike Crowe who pushed this decision through at all, while I was sure it had been Crowe. I still think I have good reasons for believing Sannes was not a good choice for this event: She skates her 1500's by getting up to top speed but dying in the last lap, she can't skate a 3K at all (compared to Canada's Shannon Rempel, who, despite being a sprinter, can go under 4:20 in the 3K on any given day), and most importantly of all, Sannes IS NOT A TEAM PLAYER and has complained repeatedly about skating behind at least a few of the women who were in contention for skating the team pursuit last season.
Ryan insists that Sannes proved, in competition, that she was not a weak link on the team. But I'm not sure -- after the pursuit race at the Torino World Cup, Maggie was saying that she still had a lot of energy left, but Amy was pretty much spent.
3. There was a story I told about a junior boy who supposedly got left off the list for being added onto the National Team last year, because he had too much going on with school. This was a story told to me by the boy's mother, who had heard from the boy's coach that USS had been considering inviting him to the team, but decided not to, for that reason.
In fact, the boy in question was not even in consideration for a National Team spot. There was another skater who WAS in consideration for one of these spots, but in a tough decision, was denied. I should have considered the source of the information on this one. (the coach, I mean, not the parent.)
4. There was a story of a junior girl who was denied funding on a junior competition trip because she only wanted to attend one of the race weekends, not both, causing her to miss too much school in between. USS's position on this is that juniors have to either commit to ALL of the trips, or they get no funding at all. Maybe this is not an optimal situation, but that was the rule at the time. If this rule is found to be generally unacceptable, then the people who are affected by it will have to try to pressure USS into changing the rule.
5. During the Olympics, I briefly mentioned the disorganization of USS staff leading to the failure of the pursuit teams. This came from a story from a parent of a skater who said that after the women's team failed to qualify for a medal round, the coach and program director told them not to bother to show up for their consolation round.
USS's position on this is that they INSISTED that both the men's and women's pursuit teams show up for their consolation races because, "This is the Olympic Games!!!" In this case, it's obviously one side's word against the other's.
6. I also talked about the failure of USS to fill all of its spots in the women's Olympic 1500 meters. Chris Witty and her coach, Bart Schouten, insist that they gave USS plenty of time to know that Chris was not going to skate the 1500, enabling them to fill that spot with another skater. Bart insists that Chris's hip was severely injured and that she was physically unable to skate that race.
USS says that Bart and Chris waited until the last minute to inform USS that Chris was not going to skate the 1500, which didn't give any other woman the chance to prepare for the race. Ryan said that Maggie said she didn't want to skate it for sure, and that Amy said she'd only do it if she had a day's notice.
I found out soon after that Maggie was injured, and was righteously pissed that Amy simply didn't want to skate that event. I felt at the time that Crowe had protected her spot on the team pursuit by failing to add women to the team, and that this was the only reason why we didn't have an alternate for the 1500 meters. I felt that Amy owed it to us to go out there and show the world the 2:12 she was probably going to skate. (What, did she think that if she'd had a day to prepare, she'd have been on the podium? No way! If she'd had a day to prepare, she might have pulled out a 2:09 instead of a 2:12.)
7. At the USS Spring Board Meeting, it was not Mike Crowe but Bill Cushman who said the USOC should give USSPEEDSKATING more money. Ryan says that Cushman is not aware of how much help the USOC gives, but that Crowe is. The fact that this was said by Cushman and not Crowe is the only inaccuracy I'd like to remedy in the post about whether the program director deserved his salary. I stand by everything else, including my belief that he in fact did not deserve his salary or his job. Apparently, the new leadership of USS agreed with me.
8. The issue of the athletes who breached the Athlete Agreement also came up, and the usual 2 sides to this story were presented: The federation sees the athletes who breached as selfish sellouts who don't care what happens to the rest of the skaters, while the athletes who breached insist that USS doesn't give them what they want or need. I tend to support the individual sponsorship position because of how badly I've been treated by USSPEEDSKATING throughout my career, because I disagree with how they allocate resources, and because I want to choose my own coach.
But Ryan presented another unusual twist to this story, saying that "the Dutch destroyed USSPEEDSKATING by throwing money at us." By this, he meant that maybe the real reason why the Dutch bank DSB wanted to sponsor some of the individual athletes within USS was an attempt to break USSPEEDSKATING apart. It makes sense to me that USS would think this way, but even in the unlikely case that this were true, I AM NOT SORRY THAT IT HAPPENED.
What I mean to say is that I'm not surprised to hear that USSPEEDSKATING once again believes that the only reason why they have any problems is that someone or some group has a "conspiracy" against them. The previous season, the supposed "conspiracy" involved the Norwegian team stealing American intellectual property, and now USS believes the Dutch banks tried to break their team apart by offering to sponsor the top American skaters. So, does this now mean that DSB is sorry that they supported the top American Olympic medal winners at the expense of the Dutch skaters? They sure don't seem to see it that way. After all, when the 2005-2006 season was done, DSB offered a sponsorship to the American sprinter Kip Carpenter.
Of course, the Dutch conspiracy theory is absurd and is another excuse that USS will use for the falling apart of the federation. I feel bad for the skaters, because they surely will suffer due to the current lack of funding. But when Ryan asked me how I'd feel if USS had suddenly lost funding in the middle of the season and became unable to send me to World Cups, the only thing I realized was how close my attitude had really come to that of a terrorist. I realized that I had nothing to lose, because under the current system of USSPEEDSKATING, I knew there was no way I would ever be able to have the speedskating career I wanted and knew I deserved. And, having reached that point of utter hopelessness, I was so willing to see the federation ripped apart that I was not only willing to contribute to the process of its destruction, but I was also willing to experience the destruction of what was left of my own speedskating career in the process.
9. I talked with Ryan about not being able to tolerate his celebration of Amy Sannes's unexpectedly good 500 meter race at the Olympic Trials. He said that it wasn't anything personal, but that he just appreciates good sport, and that he'd congratulate any athlete or coach on a good performance.
I told him about the progression of my hatred for Amy; how at first she was nothing more than an unfriendly, antisocial and selfish person, but then she officially became "a bitch" when she left me without a ride to a competition by jumping on the last seat of another team's van after we had planned to drive up together. Ryan agreed that after that, I didn't even owe her the common civility of acknowledging her existence.
---
Well, I guess that pretty much covers the misinformation of some of my previous posts. The only concerns I may have are about the actual "truthiness" of some of the things I have written, not about the effect. In fact, I think that those of my posts that have caused people to say, "Hey, that's not how it happened, it happened like THIS!!" turned out to be some of the most useful ones, because they got people to talk about the real issues.
I have no regrets if my words have contributed to the shake-up and the firings that happened in USSPEEDSKATING throughout the past few months. I do believe that Katie Marquard was a poor face for the organization and set up a toxic, clannish, unwelcoming culture for the federation that was not conducive to progress and growth. I do believe that Andy Gabel is untrustworthy, to say the least. I do believe that Tom Cushman is utterly clueless. I do believe that Mike Crowe is an unskilled leader who has demonstrated inconsistencies between his words and his actions. I'm glad these people have lost their positions and will no longer be leading USSPEEDSKATING down the wrong path.
In conclusion, let me try to sum up the main reason why I was so pissed off at USSPEEDSKATING that I was willing to play "suicide bomber" with my speedskating career: I believe that the reason why I was willing to do this is the knowledge that in any speedskating federation other than this one, I would have been treated as a valued member of a strong women's team, instead of treated as an enemy by a system that sets up a sick and backwards environment where spoiled princesses are expected to thrive in a sport that is not suited to the success of spoiled princesses.
One of the things that USSPEEDSKATING needs to figure out is what sort of women's team they want to send to an event where they will face skaters who posess BOTH THE WILL TO WIN AND THE SUPPORT OF THEIR FEDERATION. Are these things really mutually exclusive?
Last night, I met with Ryan Shimabukuro to discuss some of the controversial issues I covered on this blog. I was so pleased that Ryan was willing to do this, and also that he still considered me a friend no matter what happened or what was said during the past season.
I learned a lot from my conversation with Ryan, not only about his own point of view, but also about USSPEEDSKATING's position on several of the stories I told on The Protocol. After hearing what Ryan had to say, I realized that maybe I should have given "the other side" a chance to tell their story.
The reason why I'm posting this is because the truth is important to me. In controversial stories such as the ones I told on The Protocol, especially the ones involving some instances of an athlete being screwed over by the federation, there is a shade of gray. Not everything is clearly black or white. Therefore, having the opportunity to hear both sides of a conflict can bring us all closer to the truth.
Just as in science, it is important for a researcher to retract data that has been proven wrong, it is important for me to let people know when I have failed to consider the source of my information or to tell both sides of a story. The only way I can inspire positive change in the sport of speedskating is by making every attempt to be a trustworthy source of information, and to make sure that if I am being critical of the organization, then my criticism is based on the truth.
As far as my own stories of my own experiences of being mistreated by USSPEEDSKATING, I stand by them 100%. These are any stories I've told of things that happened to me, things I saw with my own eyes or heard with my own ears. Stories shared with me by others, on the other hand, are stories of one person's word or perception against another's, and then my own interpretation of the events that transpired comes in on top of that, to become a post on The Protocol.
I must admit that I almost always jumped to take the "anti-USS" position on any story, because it totally seemed to fit with my own experiences with the federation. But in all fairness, let me now present The Other Side, and let you, the reader, decide what you think is right.
1. The main issue Ryan and I talked about is when I posted about the Olympic Trials, saying he was "holding the lap board for me, and then a few hours later, was fighting against me in the draw." I got this information from a skater's parent who was at the draw and told me that "Ryan was one of the USS coaches fighting for the top 4 women to be in their own separate grouping for the draw," and to keep me and Erin Porter down in the next group.
From my perspective, I knew that I could have a good race no matter whom I was paired with, but it just disturbed me, because from that parent's story, it sounded like Ryan was trying to artificially separate the top 4 women out and put me at a disadvantage.
But there were a few things that I did not know at the time. One of these things is that on the men's side, Ryan also had a couple of guys who were just out of the top grouping, and he was still trying to keep the top 4 guys separate from the next group down. His rationale for wanting to maintain these groupings was to keep people of the same speed together so that no pair would have trouble crossing over and running into each other on the backstretch. It makes sense to me now.
Still, I felt that one of the races of one of the Top 4 women's pairs was called back for no good reason, after one of the women stumbled, but there was no false start on the pair. I feel certain that if anyone other than another one of The Chosen had been that skater's pair, then that person's coach would have noticed that the pair had been called back for no good reason. Ryan says he fought for the Top 4 women based entirely on time, and not based on the names of the skaters. I do believe him, and whatever happened at the start of that particular race had nothing to do with his involvement.
2. I thought it was not fair that two men were added to the Olympic Team to skate the pursuit, while USSPEEDSKATING did not add two women. The reason for adding two men and not two women is that there were not enough men among those who had qualified in individual distances who WANTED to skate the team pursuit, while there were plenty of women who were ALREADY QUALIFIED for the Olympic Team who had agreed to skate the team pursuit.
However, even though USSPEEDSKATING has used this as an excuse for not taking more women to the Games, I still think that this was the wrong decision for them to make. I think the main problem with the way the Olympics played out for the U.S. women's team is that USSPEEDSKATING underestimated the severity of the injuries of two of their competitors, and they also underestimated the additional toll, both physical and mental, that the team pursuit event would take on the athletes during the Olympic Games. Skating several rounds of a 6-lap race is not insignificant, and I'm not surprised that some of the athletes might be reluctant to race too much more after that kind of effort.
Still, in my own skating career, I've raced a 1500 and a 3000 on a sprained ankle and a 10K with full-blown bronchitis and a temperature of 101, so I feel I've earned the right to criticize Amy Sannes for not stepping up to race the Olympic 1500 meters. People who were there said, "Well, we couldn't hold a gun to her head and make her skate." No, really, they should have. They should have thought of me and Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr. sitting at home, and they should have pointed a gun at Sannes and said, "Get the fuck out there, you worthless and ungrateful piece of shit."
I did not believe that Amy Sannes was a good choice for the team pursuit, anyway, but Ryan said it wasn't Mike Crowe who pushed this decision through at all, while I was sure it had been Crowe. I still think I have good reasons for believing Sannes was not a good choice for this event: She skates her 1500's by getting up to top speed but dying in the last lap, she can't skate a 3K at all (compared to Canada's Shannon Rempel, who, despite being a sprinter, can go under 4:20 in the 3K on any given day), and most importantly of all, Sannes IS NOT A TEAM PLAYER and has complained repeatedly about skating behind at least a few of the women who were in contention for skating the team pursuit last season.
Ryan insists that Sannes proved, in competition, that she was not a weak link on the team. But I'm not sure -- after the pursuit race at the Torino World Cup, Maggie was saying that she still had a lot of energy left, but Amy was pretty much spent.
3. There was a story I told about a junior boy who supposedly got left off the list for being added onto the National Team last year, because he had too much going on with school. This was a story told to me by the boy's mother, who had heard from the boy's coach that USS had been considering inviting him to the team, but decided not to, for that reason.
In fact, the boy in question was not even in consideration for a National Team spot. There was another skater who WAS in consideration for one of these spots, but in a tough decision, was denied. I should have considered the source of the information on this one. (the coach, I mean, not the parent.)
4. There was a story of a junior girl who was denied funding on a junior competition trip because she only wanted to attend one of the race weekends, not both, causing her to miss too much school in between. USS's position on this is that juniors have to either commit to ALL of the trips, or they get no funding at all. Maybe this is not an optimal situation, but that was the rule at the time. If this rule is found to be generally unacceptable, then the people who are affected by it will have to try to pressure USS into changing the rule.
5. During the Olympics, I briefly mentioned the disorganization of USS staff leading to the failure of the pursuit teams. This came from a story from a parent of a skater who said that after the women's team failed to qualify for a medal round, the coach and program director told them not to bother to show up for their consolation round.
USS's position on this is that they INSISTED that both the men's and women's pursuit teams show up for their consolation races because, "This is the Olympic Games!!!" In this case, it's obviously one side's word against the other's.
6. I also talked about the failure of USS to fill all of its spots in the women's Olympic 1500 meters. Chris Witty and her coach, Bart Schouten, insist that they gave USS plenty of time to know that Chris was not going to skate the 1500, enabling them to fill that spot with another skater. Bart insists that Chris's hip was severely injured and that she was physically unable to skate that race.
USS says that Bart and Chris waited until the last minute to inform USS that Chris was not going to skate the 1500, which didn't give any other woman the chance to prepare for the race. Ryan said that Maggie said she didn't want to skate it for sure, and that Amy said she'd only do it if she had a day's notice.
I found out soon after that Maggie was injured, and was righteously pissed that Amy simply didn't want to skate that event. I felt at the time that Crowe had protected her spot on the team pursuit by failing to add women to the team, and that this was the only reason why we didn't have an alternate for the 1500 meters. I felt that Amy owed it to us to go out there and show the world the 2:12 she was probably going to skate. (What, did she think that if she'd had a day to prepare, she'd have been on the podium? No way! If she'd had a day to prepare, she might have pulled out a 2:09 instead of a 2:12.)
7. At the USS Spring Board Meeting, it was not Mike Crowe but Bill Cushman who said the USOC should give USSPEEDSKATING more money. Ryan says that Cushman is not aware of how much help the USOC gives, but that Crowe is. The fact that this was said by Cushman and not Crowe is the only inaccuracy I'd like to remedy in the post about whether the program director deserved his salary. I stand by everything else, including my belief that he in fact did not deserve his salary or his job. Apparently, the new leadership of USS agreed with me.
8. The issue of the athletes who breached the Athlete Agreement also came up, and the usual 2 sides to this story were presented: The federation sees the athletes who breached as selfish sellouts who don't care what happens to the rest of the skaters, while the athletes who breached insist that USS doesn't give them what they want or need. I tend to support the individual sponsorship position because of how badly I've been treated by USSPEEDSKATING throughout my career, because I disagree with how they allocate resources, and because I want to choose my own coach.
But Ryan presented another unusual twist to this story, saying that "the Dutch destroyed USSPEEDSKATING by throwing money at us." By this, he meant that maybe the real reason why the Dutch bank DSB wanted to sponsor some of the individual athletes within USS was an attempt to break USSPEEDSKATING apart. It makes sense to me that USS would think this way, but even in the unlikely case that this were true, I AM NOT SORRY THAT IT HAPPENED.
What I mean to say is that I'm not surprised to hear that USSPEEDSKATING once again believes that the only reason why they have any problems is that someone or some group has a "conspiracy" against them. The previous season, the supposed "conspiracy" involved the Norwegian team stealing American intellectual property, and now USS believes the Dutch banks tried to break their team apart by offering to sponsor the top American skaters. So, does this now mean that DSB is sorry that they supported the top American Olympic medal winners at the expense of the Dutch skaters? They sure don't seem to see it that way. After all, when the 2005-2006 season was done, DSB offered a sponsorship to the American sprinter Kip Carpenter.
Of course, the Dutch conspiracy theory is absurd and is another excuse that USS will use for the falling apart of the federation. I feel bad for the skaters, because they surely will suffer due to the current lack of funding. But when Ryan asked me how I'd feel if USS had suddenly lost funding in the middle of the season and became unable to send me to World Cups, the only thing I realized was how close my attitude had really come to that of a terrorist. I realized that I had nothing to lose, because under the current system of USSPEEDSKATING, I knew there was no way I would ever be able to have the speedskating career I wanted and knew I deserved. And, having reached that point of utter hopelessness, I was so willing to see the federation ripped apart that I was not only willing to contribute to the process of its destruction, but I was also willing to experience the destruction of what was left of my own speedskating career in the process.
9. I talked with Ryan about not being able to tolerate his celebration of Amy Sannes's unexpectedly good 500 meter race at the Olympic Trials. He said that it wasn't anything personal, but that he just appreciates good sport, and that he'd congratulate any athlete or coach on a good performance.
I told him about the progression of my hatred for Amy; how at first she was nothing more than an unfriendly, antisocial and selfish person, but then she officially became "a bitch" when she left me without a ride to a competition by jumping on the last seat of another team's van after we had planned to drive up together. Ryan agreed that after that, I didn't even owe her the common civility of acknowledging her existence.
---
Well, I guess that pretty much covers the misinformation of some of my previous posts. The only concerns I may have are about the actual "truthiness" of some of the things I have written, not about the effect. In fact, I think that those of my posts that have caused people to say, "Hey, that's not how it happened, it happened like THIS!!" turned out to be some of the most useful ones, because they got people to talk about the real issues.
I have no regrets if my words have contributed to the shake-up and the firings that happened in USSPEEDSKATING throughout the past few months. I do believe that Katie Marquard was a poor face for the organization and set up a toxic, clannish, unwelcoming culture for the federation that was not conducive to progress and growth. I do believe that Andy Gabel is untrustworthy, to say the least. I do believe that Tom Cushman is utterly clueless. I do believe that Mike Crowe is an unskilled leader who has demonstrated inconsistencies between his words and his actions. I'm glad these people have lost their positions and will no longer be leading USSPEEDSKATING down the wrong path.
In conclusion, let me try to sum up the main reason why I was so pissed off at USSPEEDSKATING that I was willing to play "suicide bomber" with my speedskating career: I believe that the reason why I was willing to do this is the knowledge that in any speedskating federation other than this one, I would have been treated as a valued member of a strong women's team, instead of treated as an enemy by a system that sets up a sick and backwards environment where spoiled princesses are expected to thrive in a sport that is not suited to the success of spoiled princesses.
One of the things that USSPEEDSKATING needs to figure out is what sort of women's team they want to send to an event where they will face skaters who posess BOTH THE WILL TO WIN AND THE SUPPORT OF THEIR FEDERATION. Are these things really mutually exclusive?
posted by Eva at 3:55 PM
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