In 1980, Eric Heiden thrilled the world by winning all five gold medals in speedskating at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. A boyish man-child with flowing hair, linebacker thighs and a golden suit as tight as skin, Heiden sped around the 400 meter outdoor oval of perfect ice in record time, setting standards of excellence that have never been broken. (As speedskating has moved indoors, his record times have been bested, but the impact of his accomplishment lives on in all who witnessed those two weeks in 1980.)
I was glued to the Olympics in 1980. I had been living in California for four years and I was starving for winter. Eric Heiden was my approximate age and each time he came around that final turn, shoulder to the ice, thighs pumping, skates flashing, I leaned slightly in front of my TV, the muscles in my legs flexing in unison, my fists subconsciously opening and closing ever so slightly.
• • •
THE frozen, interconnected lakes and rivers of the moraine country of Michigan drain a chaotic jumble of pock-marked hill and fields. They are remnants of the Ice Age, left behind 20,000 years ago by retreating glaciers. In this land, the reliable grid of farm roads that is so characteristic of lower Michigan disappears into a tangle of twists and turns were the roads struggle to thread their way along what dry ground remains.
While the other boys spent the long Michigan winters losing teeth playing hockey along the shore, I preferred to go out on to the silence of the open ice, the perfect ice. Slowly and methodically, I would lower my head and skate into the wind: skrit, glide, skrit, glide, skrit, glide… gradually picking up speed, skating for miles. When finally I’d gone far enough, I let the wind turn around to my back. Then in a glorious, effortless glide, I simply stood straight up, opened my arms and let the wind take me home.
After the Olympics, more than twenty winters passed before I found myself in Lake Placid on an impromptu winter vacation with my family. To my utter amazement, the perfect outdoor oval where Heiden won his medals and set his records was still there and was open for public skating every night. It was unthinkably ordinary, almost disappointing. In fact without the peeling Olympic rings and row of international flags flapping against the night sky, it was little more than a high school track with ice. It was difficult to imagine the entire world in this town, on this little rink.
I hadn’t set skate to ice more that five or six times in all of those twenty-something years. But happily we strapped on rented skates and cautiously, reverently approached the ice. The zamboni had just finished it off with a glassy polish so fine that the waving flags of all nations were reflected perfectly on its surface. The ice was hard, slick and incredibly unforgiving. Suddenly I became very old and brittle. With my first tentative thrust I lurched forward, ankles wobbling, calves complaining, wind turning me against my wishes ever so slightly to the side. Slowly and ponderously at first, I began to skate around the track: slipping and stumbling at times, even falling spectacularly right in front of my family, much to my daughter’s delight. But after a couple of uncertain laps I began to regain the knack of it. “Hey,” I said to myself, “this wasn’t so bad.” I could still skate. Why, this was a lot of fun!
I worked at trying to appear casual, like so many of the other skaters: chest out, eyes fixed, keeping my momentum working in an always forward, straight ahead fashion, not wasting unnecessary motion from side to side. I bent lower, leaned a little farther forward, feeling my skates cutting into the ice with each push and feeling the hard, perfect ice sliding by beneath my feet. I became less brittle, more young.
Going around the back turn I tried crossing one skate over the next like the racers do. I stumbled awkwardly at first but remained on my feet. My next try was smoother and the next was smoother still. As I gained speed around the turn, my shoulder dipped closer and closer to the ice – so close that the chill of the ice sucked the heat from my cheek. My nostrils flared open as I sucked in perfect air, the same air that Eric Heiden sucked in when he came around that final turn twenty-something winters ago. As I broke into the straightaway I could hear the crowd cheering!
My strong arms swung in perfect harmony as my bulging thighs thrust my long racing skates into the perfect ice. “Skrit, glide, skrit, glide, skrit, glide, skrit.” The sun glistened off my golden suit, my hair flapped against my face as I skated faster, faster. I passed the Russian, I passed the Dutchman, I passed two Frenchmen and a Swede. Pretty young girls were cheering and waving and old men threw their hats into the air as I closed in on the finish line in world record time. “Skrit, glide, skrit, glide, skrit, glide….”
• • •
“OK hot-shot, slow it down!” snarled the rink security guard in a red jacket as he glided up effortlessly alongside me from behind, “who do you think you are, Eric Heiden?” I pulled up sheepishly, embarrassed, and saw other skaters looking at me, shaking their heads, smiling behind their stern looks.
Busted.
Slowing down, I continued to skate, with each lap becoming more and more effortless, more and more fun. Lap after lap after lap I skated into the darkening wind, grinning as a single thought kept coming back to me in all of its humorous glory:
I’ll bet rink security has to go out there two or three times a week to flag some balding 40- or 50-something from Ohio, or Kansas, or Pennsylvania, out of his reverie and back to reality… back from 1980.
Eventually the big lights were turned off and the rink was shut down. The zamboni began its slow, methodical crawl and the perfect ice was closed for another evening. Back in the warming hut, I whistled as I unlaced my rented skates and returned them to a tired woman behind the counter whose eyes were already locking up the hut and heading home to dinner with her family.
