Long Track Speed Skating

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CALGARY - On his skates, gliding along the Olympic Oval ice, you wouldn't know anything had ever happened to Jeremy Wotherspoon.

Off the ice, he rolls up the sleeve covering his left arm and shows you the 30-centimetre-long reddish reminder of just how quickly things can go wrong, even for the world's greatest long-track speed skater.

"It's getting there," Wotherspoon said of the left-arm damage that ended his 2008-09 World Cup season and threatened his hopes of competing at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. "Right now, there are no physical limitations, except my strength. My left arm is weaker than my right. I just have to keep training and thinking about the direction I want to take."

Wotherspoon's personal GPS remains set for Vancouver, although he and coach Mike Crowe have had to alter their preparations since last November's bone-breaking crash in Berlin. It was there, during a World Cup race, that Wotherspoon fell while navigating the final turn and slammed into a protective barrier.

While there were pads alongside the track, behind them was a metal bar. Wotherspoon hit the bar while travelling an estimated 60 kilometres an hour and suffered a spiral fracture of his upper left arm. The crash also impacted Wotherspoon's radial nerve, as did the surgery, which removed pieces of shattered bone before a plate was installed and locked in place with 11 screws.

For months afterward, the 32-year-old said he experienced nerve problems in his left hand.

"I couldn't pick anything up. I couldn't make a fist," he said. "It was frustrating, but it's all come back."

Less than three months after the accident, Wotherspoon was back on the ice at the Olympic Oval trying to regain a little of the balance and confidence he'd lost. This week, he's pushing himself harder on and off the ice with the rest of his Canadian long-track teammates as they build for the start of this year's World Cup circuit.

"The plan for me is to miss the first few World Cup races in Europe, stay here and train and then compete," he said, referring to the December World Cup races set for the Oval.

Crowe added he is carefully monitoring all of Wotherspoon's training efforts.

"We have to decide: Do we go towards the 1,000 [metres] or stick to the 500? This is in terms of training," the coach explained. "His fitness level and recovery, that's going very well. ... He'll tell you how he's feeling on the ice."

Wotherspoon and Crowe have done their share of talking since joining forces two years ago.

Crowe is a highly-regarded former U.S. national team coach who worked with Bonnie Blair and Chris Witty and helped the American long-track team win eight medals at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. Wotherspoon is a 12-time World Cup overall champion who has struggled at the last two Winter Olympics and even thought of leaving the sport after finishing no better than ninth in Turin in 2006.

After a year off, Wotherspoon chose to return but wanted a new coach with fresh ideas. Crowe's credentials and experience in readying athletes for a home Olympics made him the ideal man for the job.

"I enjoy working with Jeremy. I enjoy an athlete who can challenge me with questions," said Crowe, who joined Speed Skating Canada in 2007. "He's trying to reach a level that no athlete has reached before. He wants to be the absolute best and that's why he's been able to come right back [from disappointing results in the past] and make himself better."

"I didn't know Mike that well before," Wotherspoon said. "But Finn Halvorsen [the Canadian long-track program director who resigned earlier this year] said he knew what Mike's strengths were, his training techniques and programs. I knew I was ready to change something and it's been good for me."

Crowe is appreciative of how well Wotherspoon is bouncing back from his Berlin mishap and points to an added benefit: Others on the team are following Wotherspoon's progress and finding inspiration in the determined man with the nasty-looking scar snaking up his left arm.

"You know [former U.S. president] Teddy Roosevelt's The Man in the Arena [speech]?" Crowe asked. ‘... The man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.' We have that written on a piece of paper; it's in our dressing room. To me, it's kind of [like] Jer."