Turin – For 60 miserable minutes Saturday, Chad Hedrick lost his swagger, buried his blazing grin and did something that stunned his coaches, his family in the stands and the speedskater himself.
He sobbed, hard and heavy. Two hours before his 5,000-meter race, Hed- rick broke down over the enormity of the Olympic moment. He cried for the years of thigh burn he had endured in his quest. Mostly, though, he wept for his grandmother – the woman who taught him how to devour life in big gulps and who died the same day, 13 years earlier.
With his tear ducts spent, his nerves calmed and his grandmother’s name freshly written on his skate blades, Hedrick stomped the rest of the long track field and seized Team USA’s first gold medal of the Winter Games.
“My Grandma, she gave me some extra power today and I could feel it with two laps to go,” Hedrick said. “I was a little tired and it was just like: This is for her.”
Trudging through soft ice that stalled other racers, Hedrick pounded out remarkably efficient laps that pushed him across the line almost two seconds faster than Dutch silver medalist Sven Kramer, the world-record holder. Hed- rick finished in 6 minutes, 14.68 seconds, revving his historic bid to tie Eric Heiden’s record of five gold medals.
Hedrick instantly tore off his hood, pumped his fist and then bear-hugged his coach, Bart Schouten – the man who had talked him off the emotional ledge two hours earlier.
The crying jag erupted as Hedrick walked through Oval Lingotto, scanning the early crowd, counting the 20-plus years he had invested in his craft, including a long run as an in-line legend when he won dozens of world titles and invented a signature push move dubbed “The Chad.” Four years ago, Hedrick abandoned that circuit, changing his entire world at a blackjack table. After folding his hand, Hed- rick glanced at the casino TV and saw his friend, Derek Parra, grab gold in Salt Lake City. Hedrick ached for that same audience.
Saturday, Parra talked on his cellphone as Hedrick soaked in the surroundings and warmed up his body. But he had been in Turin far too long without a real race to vent his nervous energy. Doubts began to sprout, about his equipment, about himself.
“Twelve days sitting in your room, rolling around your bed,” he said. “It takes a toll on you. The battle is before the race. All your thoughts … are harder than the race itself. …
“I’m a really confident skater. But you start to think about things you really don’t need to think about.”
Like missing his grandmother, Geraldine Hedrick, “my buddy and my No. 1 supporter,” who died Feb. 11, 1993.
Hedrick tried to walk off his welling emotions. He tried to stifle the tears by breathing deeply. He returned to the locker room.
“But (the crying) would come back again,” Schouten said. “He was a little thrown off that he was like this, (as if) he didn’t know himself.”
The coaches were just as shaken. They knew Hedrick as a quick-winking, hard-partying Texan who loved to promise – and often delivered – world records. On all other days, he was mentally the toughest man on the ice, the intimidator who gobbled up pressure, the Olympian who thought of himself as skating’s Michael Jordan.
“I sort of felt like a sissy,” Hedrick said. “… I had to go up in the stands and give my family a hug to get rid of the tears.”
Back on the ice, Hedrick huddled with the team’s sports psychologist, Keith Henschen, who said meltdowns are normal for many athletes before their Olympic debuts. Schouten tried to divert Hedrick’s attention to the task instead of the Olympic moment.
“There is nothing you could have done to prepare any better,” the coach told him.
Hedrick hit the ice churning hard. By lap three, he was skating faster than any man had all day. By lap seven, he had pushed his gap to two seconds. With four laps to go, his tongue was hanging out and he was gasping for air. Schouten screamed to him to remember his grandmother.
“You’re going to do all this for Nanny today!” the coach yelled each time Hedrick zipped by, on his way to gold.
“Man,” Hedrick said later, “the next four races are going to be a lot easier than this one.”
With that, the party was back on for Hedrick and his 20-something-person posse.
“We’re going to be roaming around everywhere (tonight). I’ve never been one to go home at 10 o’clock and go to bed whenever I do something well,” he said. “We are going to celebrate and have a little bit of fun.”
Staff writer Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
