Long Track Speed Skating

You don't end up with as many medals as Cindy Klassen without causing some serious wear and tear on the body.

In Klassen's case, it is the knees. So in the spring of 2008, the six-time Olympic medalist in long-track speed skating found herself confronted by a difficult decision: She was on top of the sport, but she needed to walk away.

A decade earlier, Klassen tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee nearly all the way through during a high-school basketball game. The injury never healed properly and, though Klassen has amassed more Olympic medals than any other Canadian, she has also accumulated more than her share of scar tissue.

Her left knee was facing similar problems and required some "cleaning up" by doctors as well, Klassen says. So with the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics fast approaching, she made a bold move and left the speed-skating circuit, taking all of last winter to recover from surgery.

"We tried so many different treatments, but nothing was really working. Surgery was the last option," the 30-year-old says. "It was just too painful. In everything I was doing, it was bothering me."

The hard decision to step back from speed skating for a full year also came as Klassen cut the 2008 season short to be with her sister, who was nearly killed in a car accident in Manitoba that spring.

As Klassen returned to the speed-skating scene last year, though, watching from the sidelines wasn't easy. Fans who crowded into the Richmond Oval in March to watch the world single-distances championships saw a familiar face - the star of the 2006 Turin Games who won five medals, including a gold in the 1,500 metres - shuffling around in street clothes. Klassen admits she was pining to be back on the ice.

"When you come to a competition like that, you want to be racing," she says. "It was kind of strange."

She knew double knee surgery would require patience and the past year has been an exercise in waiting. Before she could get back on the ice, Klassen had to start in the water. Her much-anticipated comeback began in the pool, to ensure any movement didn't put her knees at risk.

An unexpected flare-up of swelling would delay training and could ultimately derail the plan to be back in competition this fall. A careful program of jumps and lunges in the water was devised to reclaim leg strength. She then moved onto dry land with weights and the bike. With each successive stage of the training, her legs held up to the increasing demands of the workouts.

"We've really been trying to ease me back into it," Klassen says. "I'm more of a powerful skater and so having that explosiveness, that's really important."

When summer came, a time when most of the sport takes a few weeks of vacation, it was time for Klassen to step up her workout. She headed to Tucson, Ariz., for nine days of cycling, logging rides of more than five hours to build endurance. "It was mostly just volume," she says. "But it was so nice to get into some warm weather and ride outside."

From there it was back to Calgary and Richmond, B.C., where she would get back on the ice and, for the first time in a long time, push herself.

Though Klassen took short spins around the track early this year after the surgery, in part to see how the ice felt at the newly built Richmond Oval, those were nothing like training. Late this summer, her workouts returned to the familiar intensity she was waiting for.

"I do feel good," Klassen says. "Every time I get on the ice, it feels great. So I'm feeling confident about that."

She doesn't fret too much about not taking any time off this summer for a holiday. After the Olympics are over, there will be plenty of weeks to relax. But there is one casualty that has come from devoting her summer to the comeback.

In previous years, her escape from competition was a carefully timed retreat to the family cottage in Manitoba, not far from where she grew up in Winnipeg.

"I guess it's kind of nerdy, but one thing I really love to do is blueberry picking," Klassen says. "Usually in July, or maybe the beginning of August, I like to be there during blueberry season."

Though focused on training, Klassen holds out hope her mom will send a blueberry pie to Calgary, where she now lives. The pie may not fit with the strict dietary requirements of her Olympic training, but Klassen is willing to make that one exception. "It would be worth it," she says.

At a time when all else is being sacrificed for the comeback, the blueberries would be a taste of how good next summer could be, once she has returned to skating and hopefully found the podium again.