DURANGO — It happens often in sports: Highly acclaimed athletes retire, then are drawn back.
Life in the ordinary world, they find, is not quite as compelling as the quest for Super Bowls or gold medals.
Skier Mary Riddell, just like the NFL’s Brett Favre, can’t resist the limelight. The gold medal-winning Paralympics skier who grew up in Dove Creek and trained at Purgatory is planning a comeback.
Riddell plans to race this season and be in shape for the next Paralympics, scheduled for March 12-21, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, just after the Winter Olympics.
She retired from competitive racing in 2003 after winning medals at the 1998 and 2002 Paralympics, along with three consecutive overall world titles from 1998 to 2001. She then became an emergency medical technician, which she’s most recently been doing in Farmington, N.M., for San Juan Regional Paramedics.
But at 28, ski racing is not out of her blood. She had that epiphany last winter while helping as a coach.
“I was watching the giant slalom,” she recalled. “I was thinking, ‘I want to race in this race. Why can’t I go up there and race?’ ”
Former U.S. Disabled Ski Team coach Kevin Jardine encouraged her, and the idea stuck in her head. But she also knew what the commitment involved.
“I thought about it for probably three months. I just kept thinking, ‘Do I really want to take this on again?’ ”
The reality is it’s a lot of hard work and dedication. And she’d given away to younger racers everything she’d owned that was associated with ski competition. In some ways, she’d be starting over.
She spent a week training in Aspen last winter, and despite dislocating an ankle she decided that, indeed, she was ready for a comeback.
“In the beginning there’ll be glitches,” she said, but “you never forget how to race.”
Riddell was born about two months prematurely. Just after birth, due to circulatory problems, she lost her right leg a few inches below the knee. She hadn’t even turned 4 when her parents introduced her to skiing. With the help of mentor Lana Jo Chapin, a U.S. Disabled Ski Team member from 1984-89, Riddell learned to race.
Riddell was 18 when she won her first Paralympic medals — four total, including a gold in the giant slalom — in Japan in 1998. She hit the world tour hard, and eventually earned 11 glittering glass globes for event and season Disabled World Cup wins. In Salt Lake City in 2002 she won two more Paralympic medals.
Exploring the world through ski racing became a lifestyle, and she made many friends along the way.
Some of those friends and acquaintances are still in the loop, including U.S. disabled team coach Ray Watkins, a former teammate.
That’ll make her transition easier, but becoming a team member is not a priority and may not even be possible. Although she’s a bit of a legend in the Paralympic world, she’s been out of racing so long she lacks the current racing points to earn an automatic spot on the U.S. team.
Her expenses will increase, but she can race without being on the U.S. team. In fact, she is trying to raise money through “The Race for Gold Project,” which her website describes as “a grass-roots fundraising campaign where Mary’s global community of family and friends can help her achieve this goal.”
She has begun selling copies of the “Vintage Mary Riddell Ski Print,” an 18-by-24-inch poster-sized color drawing of Riddell in 1940s-era ski gear. The artist is Carrie Cline of Durango. The prints are $100 each, and she hopes sales will raise enough for her to make it through the next two seasons. It’s Riddell’s way of giving back to those who support her.
The season is fast approaching, and Riddell’s enthusiasm is growing. Her first race is planned for early December in Breckenridge.
“I think it’s a matter of getting your head in the game,” Riddell said. “I spent a lot of time not thinking about racing.”
Now she’s watching videos of her past races, doing offseason “dry-land” training such as weightlifting, and planning for the upcoming season. She hopes to compete in 15 to 20 events in the U.S., Canada and, possibly, Europe.
“Qualifying to go to Vancouver is going to take a lot of hard work,” she said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, she’s back,’ and an open-door invitation, and ‘OK, here you go.’ I’m starting basically on the bottom rung of the ladder.”
She vows to have more fun, to not take her experiences for granted, and not develop a sense of entitlement during this second adventure. “To really appreciate what you have with the ski team, you need to quit, and get a real job. You’ll have a lot more appreciation for the things that you do.”
So is this another story of a washed-up athlete who doesn’t know when to quit? Hardly. She’s not even 30. Riddell simply misses the lifestyle and misses her friends. Of course, another gold medal would be nice, too.
