Support team a key part of speedskaters' success
Randy Starkman
Canada's powerhouse speedskating team could once fit their support crew in a suitcase. Now, they need a bus.
Clara Hughes was among those scoffing initially when there was talk of Canada aspiring to become the leading medal-winning nation at the 2010 Winter Olympics. She couldn't see it happening when athletes could not access the most basic of services.
Now entering these Games, she and her teammates on Canada's long track juggernaut can't imagine having a better set-up.
"I remember the days when we used to fly to Europe with a foam roller—and that was our therapist," said veteran Kristina Groves. "We had a couple of trips we didn't have anything. I can't even believe how many people we have supporting us now."
It's a diverse unit with nearly 20 members, comprised of doctors, physiologists, strength trainers, physiotherapists, sports psychologists, massage therapists, a video specialist, a nutritionist and a skate technician.
The group is known as the I.S.T. — or Integrated Support Team — but coach Marcel Lacroix has another name for them.
"I consider the I.S.T. team as assistant coaches," said Lacroix, who coaches medal hopefuls Christine Nesbitt and Denny Morrison among others. "I can rely on those guys at anytime for anything. They are there for the athletes, they are there for me. I couldn't ask for any more than what those guys provide right now. They are definitely the best in the world at what they do."
Lacroix has a ready supply anecdotes. He was convinced two years ago there was something wrong with Nesbitt's new pair of custom-made boots. She felt great in them, there didn't appear to be anything wrong when skate tech Alex Moritz first checked them out, but her top end speed has disappeared.
Lacroix asked Paul Dorotich, the team's video whiz — who also has a degree in biomechanics — to rig up a device designed to normally measure how much pressure is applied in a shoe to test Nesbitt's skates. It was quickly determined the only pressure Nesbitt was putting into the ice was with her big toe. Moritz and Dorotich quickly adjusted her skate to fix the problem.
"Two weeks later, she was skating like a maniac and winning the 1,500 metres in Salt Lake City," said Lacroix. "Without those guys, she might have had a really crappy season. It would have had nothing to do with technique or physical fitness or attitude. It was a team effort."
On a team where Cindy Klassen has come back from double knee surgery and Jeremy Wotherspoon from missing a whole season with a broken arm, there has been plenty of work to go around.
Gordon Bosworth, the lead on the medical team whose 30 years of experience includes working in the soccer's English Premier League, takes pride in the commitment of the whole group.
"We've got to make sure that whatever those coaches ask for, we can give them," said Bosworth. "That sounds simple, but it's not actually that simple because the coaches are all very different people and they've all got very different needs. That's been a challenge, too. That's been a journey we've all been on and are still on."
A small group — Bosworth, physiologists Dr. Dave Smith and Scott Maw, sports psychologist Derek Robinson and strength trainer Matt Jordan — meet on a regular basis to review the status of each athlete. That puts all of them in the loop and means a coach can approach any one of them to get the full picture.
"Whenever somebody goes down, somebody's injured, something's tweaked, they're on it right away and within a couple of days people are back on their feet," said Lucas Makowsky, a bright young hope who won his first World Cup medal this season.
"Until you can totally experience it yourself, it's almost hard to explain just because they're so attentive to each individual athlete. It totally eliminates the question of whether I'm going to be at peak physical shape come race time."
For Hughes, it's sometimes as much what they don't do as what they do.
"There's this thing that happens and our physiologist — Dr. Dave Smith — talks about it, he calls it 'j squared', it's job justification," she said. "And when it comes to the Olympics, everyone's trying to justify their job and be like 'I'm needed here.'
"I know on our support staff nobody is trying to justify what they're doing, they're just there when I need them, if I need them. They're not getting in my space and affecting my psychological approach, the process I go through to reach a performance."
It wasn't always such a well-oiled machine. There was a period of much turmoil under previous team leader Finn Halvorsen, who resigned after last year's world championships in Richmond. It also took the group some time to adjust to one another at first.
The speedskating team is divided into different training pods under different coaches, some based in Calgary and others in Richmond. Under Halvorsen, the team had set up two separate I.S.T. units, but Olympic program director Brian Rahill decided to bring them together when he took over. That decision had created a strong bond.
"The thing that makes this work is all of these guys are really dedicated to the athletes," said Rahill. "They know that ultimately it's the athletes and the coaches that will determine the performance."
Lacroix likes to tell a story he thinks played a role in building this team behind the team. It was when the group was in its formative stages and things did not seem to be clicking at all.
They were on the road for an event and Lacroix came up with the idea of bringing the I.S.T. unit into his room to show them a music video — of Metallica playing with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Called S&M, the video showed that the dissonant pairing of the heavy metal gods with a symphony orchestra could produce something special.
"I said 'Guys, the way I see our team is we've got different personalities, we've got different types of people, and I want you to listen to this music,'" said Lacroix. "On the DVD, you see violins play and then you see the drummer pounding away like an animal and then you see this proper lady with a trombone.
"You had it all, old school, new school. The music they produced was phenomenal. Why? Because everybody was respecting each other. So this 60-year-old violin player was sitting beside the lead guitarist, who's got a goatee and long hair and cutoff T-shirt. You know what I mean? It all worked out.
"I said 'Listen guys, if we do this like this, we can produce a lot of good music together.'"
It could certainly help get the anthem played more than a few times in the next two weeks.
