Big Stink about Retirement Negligence

I just found out that USSPEEDSKATING had been negligent in reporting my official retirement to the U.S.O.C. How did I find this out? Well, yesterday I received in the mail a 1099-misc, which is a Miscellaneous Income form, a copy of which will be submitted to the Internal Revenue Service, stating that I received $3150.00 in nonemployee compensation from the United States Olympic Committee.

As it turns out, the U.S.O.C. was not notified of my retirement until November of 2006, and so they kept me on their Elite Athlete Health Insurance plan for the year of 2006. Therefore, I am now responsible for paying taxes on $3150 in benefits that I had no idea I was getting.

I am aware of the official rules for elite athlete retirement. The athlete's responsibility is to notify the federation (USSPEEDSKATING) of their retirement, in writing. Also, the athlete is responsible for informing US Antidoping of their retirement (which I did promptly in early January of last year). Upon receiving the notification of the athlete's retirement, it is the responsibility of the federation to notify the U.S.O.C. of the athlete's retirement. USSPEEDSKATING failed to do so.

Now, in this post, I will restate my retirement plans, and my reasons for retiring WHEN and HOW I did. Let this post also serve as my official testimony for Mr. Howard Jacobs, an attorney who was hired by a group of short track skaters' parents to investigate unfairness on the part of USSPEEDSKATING.

I retired immediately following my 1000 meter race on December 31, 2005, at the U.S. National Long Track Championships, which was one of the competitions taken into account in the selection of the 2006 Olympic Team. On that day, I had prepared a written statement of retirement. This statement was signed by at least a dozen witnesses. These witnesses included Chief Referee Ernie Kretchman and U.S. National Sprint Coach Ryan Shimabukuro.

Approximately 10 minutes following my 1000-meter race, I handed my signed statement of retirement to USSPEEDSKATING President Andy Gabel. I can contact a friend who has photos of me handing this statement to Gabel.

The reason why it was important for me to retire immediately after my last race at the so-called "Olympic Trials" was in protest of unfairness in USSPEEDSKATING's Olympic Team selection criteria, and in protest of the composition of the actual Olympic Team Selection Committee, which was inherently stacked three to two in favor of USSPEEDSKATING Team athletes, and against athletes from alternative training programs.

I felt that the Olympic selection rules were completely open-ended, allowing the selection committee to take results from the 2005 Fall World Cup season and the U.S. Nationals and spin the results in the best interest of their chosen athletes. I felt that the particular individuals chosen for the 5-member Long Track Olympic Team Selection Committee WOULD do this, because three of the five members were individuals who were employed and paid by USSPEEDSKATING to work directly with skaters who trained in USSPEEDSKATING programs.

At the time of my retirement, I had not qualified for the Olympic Team outright but was next in line to be added, and at a roster of 8 women, USSPEEDSKATING had not yet filled its quota of women for the Olympic Team. They had the option of adding two more women, for a total of ten. I retired because I knew that I would not be added to the team, even though either I or the woman who finished immediately behind me would have been better choices for the Team Pursuit event (due to our superior ability to hold steady lap times at high speed, and our superior ability to match teammates' strides while skating together). However, I believed that an inferior choice for that event would have her position on the Team Pursuit protected because she was a member of a USSPEEDSKATING training team, while I and the woman who finished behind me were not.

Another reason why I believed the Olympic Team selection would be unfair is because of an alleged relationship between one of the committee members and the Team Pursuit skater at the center of the controversy. Though the exact nature of this relationship was never fully exposed, many people felt it was blatant enough to demand the exclusion of the administrator in question from his position on the Selection Committee.

Further information came out that proved me right in my assessment of the situation. Following the original Selection Committee decision on the women's team, which in fact was NOT to add additional women to the team, a coach of one of the other women's Team Pursuit skaters DEMANDED A RE-VOTE on the women's team, stating that in the best interest of his own skater's medal chances in that event, he wanted to replace (the skater at the center of the controversy) with Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr -- the woman who had finished behind me at the Trials. But the Selection Committee stood by their original decision.

A couple of months later, during the Olympics in Torino, I got an email from a spectator saying, "If either you or Nancy had been on that pursuit team, then all the women would have gone home with a medal."

As a side note, two extra men WERE added to the 2006 Olympic Team, filling USSPEEDSKATING's quota for male athletes. Both these men were members of Tom Cushman's USSPEEDSKATING Allround training team. I believe that Cushman, a member of the Selection Committee, pushed for the addition of Charles Ryan Leveille in part to justify allowing this skater to walk-on to the National Team prior to any qualification competitions earlier in the fall, and I believe that he pushed for the addition of Clay Mull to make up for betraying and neglecting Clay (and the rest of his own team, paying more attention to Charles, whom he had just "discovered") leading up to the Fall World Cup Qualifier and thereby screwing up Clay's chances of qualifying for the Olympic Team in the 5000 meters.

As it turned out, USSPEEDSKATING did not bring enough women to Torino, and embarrassingly failed to fill its full entry quota in the 1500 meters -- an event that either Nancy or I would have loved to be able to skate. USSPEEDSKATING had failed to take into account the severity of the injuries faced by two of its female skaters, both of whom declined to compete in that event. The next woman who could have been entered in the 1500, who happened to be the one at the center of the Team Pursuit controversy, declined to skate because she "hadn't been given at least 24 hours' notice."

I believe that the events surrounding and following the selection of the 2006 Olympic Team proved that I was right in considering the USSPEEDSKATING Selection Criteria unfair, and that I made the right decision by retiring on December 31, 2005. It is a shame that USSPEEDSKATING did not follow through and report my retirement to the U.S.O.C.

The fact that I retired on the last day of 2005 is well known and well documented. On the day of my last race, I walked into the Utah Olympic Oval a competitive speedskater, and I walked out of the Utah Olympic Oval a retired athlete. By January 1, 2006, I was officially NOT A COMPETITIVE ATHLETE but a molecular biologist who had re-entered the job market. I was employed by the end of February and at that time I started getting health insurance through my work.

Inertia: Why USSPEEDSKATING is unlikely to change

"When you first started speedskating and we received our first few issues of The Racing Blade, I noticed that more than half of the photos in it were of old men shaking hands at some Hall of Fame banquet. It was then that I realized what kind of society my child would be entering."

Even if it had been possible for my mother to explain sports politics to me when I was eleven years old, she wouldn't have been able to convince me that it would matter, and why I wouldn't be able to overcome it simply by focusing on racing against the clock.

My family have always been the type of people who would rather go the long way than to step on other peoples' toes; who'd hope that honest hard work and achievement would speak for themselves. But though my parents were the kind of people who would prefer to avoid entirely the type of organization that is run by illogical thugs-- seeing it as an immovable hazard rather than something that could be changed -- I had always seen my fight with USSPEEDSKATING as an opportunity to make the world a better place.

From what I've observed in the past year since my retirement from competitive speedskating, I do not believe that this organization has the potential to change. What is it that I want most for myself right now? I want to wake up in the morning without feeling the gnawing obsession to shape my words into the weapon that will do the most possible damage to my enemies. After all, why continue to endure a state of toxicity, with no hope of reform?

These are the reasons why I think USSPEEDSKATING will not change:

1. The satisfaction of most of the current National-level skaters is somewhat unsettling. Most don't seem to care how much the Norwegian team earns, for example, and aren't concerned with state-sponsored "shamateurism," where athletes from other countries are supposedly "soldiers," or "students," but in reality are paid to train full-time. For many American skaters, all they know is that "Mom and Dad are totally stoked that I'm on the National Team and I won't have to be looking for a job any time soon."

That kind of attitude just makes me wonder who it is that I'm fighting for, and almost makes me embarrassed to care.

2. The athletes who are smart enough to be dissatisfied, while being strong and talented enough to be champions AND have the financial means to support their speedskating careers WILL make it, if they find a way to work around USSPEEDSKATING. And when they do become champions, USSPEEDSKATING will take all the credit.

3. USSPEEDSKATING continues to attract like-minded people to employ (for example, former athletes who were once screwed over by the federation, who have sold out and are now willing to screw the next generation). At the same time, USS continues to repel intelligent, logical, and ethical individuals who would have something of value to offer.

4. The lack of oversight from the U.S.O.C. and incomplete investigations of unfairness by even higher authorities are just another sad commentary on American society; it makes me see that "ethics has left the conversation entirely," and that there seems to be no higher authority that will make corrupt organizations shape up.

5. The dynamics of the forces of power, money, and old attitudes in USSPEEDSKATING between the CONTROLLERS and the CONTROLLED will continue to push against each other in such a way as to keep the system locked in place.

6. "It's just not worth it." For those of us who've tried to change USS, you find that the American speedskating culture is full of small-minded, miserable people, who are fighting over what amounts to bread crumbs.

After a while, you start to feel self-conscious of your own righteous anger, because on the whole, people just don't get it or don't want to see what's wrong. "Maybe if we ignore it, it will go away."

I hope that USSPEEDSKATING's decisions continue to be the joke of team locker rooms around the world. As for me, I'll be going snowboarding this weekend because I don't hate life enough to waste another hundredth of a second in the foul and choking atmosphere of USSPEEDSKATING.