Kearns, Utah – One lane over, his friend churned hard for a world record Wednesday in the 5,000 meters at the U.S. long track national speedskating championships.
But by the end of the race, Derek Parra lagged almost a lap behind Chad Hedrick, immune to the arena cheers, lost in the moment.
That moment had little to do with skating. Still, it had everything to do with his Olympic dream.
Parra is on the brink of losing his spot on the U.S. long track team. His last shot at seeing Turin comes Friday in the 1,500 meters, the distance that brought him gold in 2002. But all week, his heats at the Olympic trials have been sluggish.
He has lost weight. He is not sleeping. And all along, he wouldn’t say why.
In the same building where he mouthed “I love you” to his wife, Tiffany, after winning gold, Parra tried Wednesday to finally bury that memory.
After his race with Hedrick, Parra dragged a trash can over to a pack of sportswriters, hoisted himself atop the rubbish and finally let loose.
“I skate with my heart and my family for so many years, and now that it’s gone, it’s been really hard,” Parra said.
In the midst of a thorny divorce – he’s alleging infidelities – Parra now seeks refuge in skating. But there is a problem: Zooming around the track isn’t helping Parra put any distance on the pain. He worries about his 4-year-old daughter, Mia, in Orlando, Fla. He mourns for the empty Christmas he just spent without her. He signs the legal papers that arrive in the mail.
And with all that, he is skating for his Olympic life.
“My mind, battling with what’s going on and letting it affect you too much … some days I’m OK, some days I’m not,” Parra said.
Tiffany was in the bleachers four years ago during Parra’s gold-medal race. He remembers looking up from the ice and seeing her face. It lifted him, he said then. Not long after that, Parra retired from the sport. It was Tiffany who coaxed him back a few months later.
They moved to Utah, where Parra worked at a Home Depot by day and trained by night. But Tiffany didn’t like Utah, he said, and she moved back to Florida after less than a month. He stayed behind.
Last summer, Parra flew back to Orlando and twice caught his wife with another man, he said, a charge to which Tiffany Parra declined to respond.
“We have a daughter and I would like to protect her and keep my personal life as private as I can,” she said Wednesday.
“I don’t want to rub my wife’s name in the dirt. It’s just something that’s personal,” Parra said. “I’m not the first person, not going to be the last person, to go through it. But the way in which it came about is devastating to me.”
Parra is planning to go home soon to retrieve his belongings and spend time with Mia.
But when talk turns to everything he still may lose, Parra chokes up.
“If I want to get to (Turin), I’ve got to put things behind me. If I can’t I’m not going. Just got to put things behind me,” he said, his voice quivering, his words coming between big breaths. “It’s my job.”
Now, he has 1,500 meters to find peace.
Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
