WINTER OLYMPICS : It’s a Sad Race Day for Jansen : Hours After Sister Dies, Speed Skater Falls; Mey Sets Mark

The biggest race and the worst day in Dan Jansen’s life ended in defeat and tears on a patch of ice far from his hometown in Wisconsin, but too close to a tragedy from which he couldn’t skate away.

Only hours after he learned of the death of his sister, Jansen decided he should race.

“That’s what Jane would have wanted,” he said.

But on a night when East German Jens-Uwe Mey set a world record, one of America’s best hopes for a gold medal in speed skating fell on the first turn of the 500-meter event Sunday and did not finish the race.

“Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be,” Jansen said.

Eight days ago, Jansen won the World Sprint Championship in West Allis, Wis., where his sister, Jane Beres, 27, was hospitalized with leukemia.

Beres’ condition worsened Saturday night, and several of the 12 Jansen family members who drove from Wisconsin in two vans left Jansen on the eve of his race and flew home to her bedside.

Jansen spoke with Beres, a mother of three, for just a few minutes early Sunday morning. She died less than three hours later.

“She could understand me, but she couldn’t talk back,” Jansen said. “But I got to talk to her and I’m very happy about that. And later on I called again and they told me that she passed away.”

Each member of Jansen’s family encouraged him to race, to try to find a place to hide from his sorrow out there on a layer of ice, but that place did not exist.

“I couldn’t put it out of my mind,” he said.

Jansen took his place in the inside lane and dug the toe of his left-skate blade into the ice behind the starting line. He would be skating in the second pair beside Yashushi Kuroiwa of Japan.

At the sound of the gun to start the race, Jansen was already across the line and the gun fired again to signify a false start.

The next start was a clean one for Jansen, but it was also a slow one. Jansen and Kuroiwa moved down the first straightaway and into the first turn.

Jansen was crossing over one skate in front of the other when his skate blade appeared to hit the ice unevenly. He lost his balance, his feet went out from under him and he fell to the track.

The crowd of 4,000 in the glittering new Olympic Oval gasped and then fell silent.

“As soon as he fell, my heart sank,” said U.S. team captain Erik Henriksen.

Jansen slid into Kuroiwa’s lane and slammed into the padded wall at the side of the track, bounced off it and slid into the Japanese skater, knocking him to the ice.

“It was so fast, I can’t remember much,” Jansen said. “I felt like it slipped out from under me, and the next thing I knew, I was in the mats.”

During warm-ups, Jansen didn’t like the feel of the ice. He wasn’t gripping the ice very well with his skates and he couldn’t push as hard as he wanted.

Jansen fell just around the curve from where U.S. Coach Mike Crowe was watching the race.

“He said he felt funny,” Crowe said. “I don’t know if it was a result of what happened to him or not.”

Jansen got up and skated away, holding his head with his hands. When he passed by the U.S. bench, Crowe skated beside Jansen for a moment and Crowe put his arm over Jansen’s shoulder.

Jansen was consoled by his fiancee, Canadian speed skater Natalie Grenier, then left the track to meet with his family. Jansen did not meet with the media, but spoke to three pool reporters.

“He’s always been a really tough and strong personality,” Crowe said. “I have no reason to believe he won’t continue to be that way.”

Jansen spent the afternoon alone in a hotel room that the U.S. speed skating federation provided for him. Earlier, the U.S. speed skaters held a team meeting and voted to dedicate their Olympics to the memory of Jane Beres.

But none of the U.S. skaters did well. Nick Thometz finished 8th, Henricksen 15th and Marty Pierce 22nd. Maybe the memory was too hard to take for the other skaters besides Jansen.

“It was difficult to get up for the competition as much as they would have liked,” Crowe said.

Thometz did not think that Jansen’s personal tragedy affected his own race.

“It’s too bad for him and unfortunately, it came at a real bad time for him, but I tried not to let it worry me,” Thometz said. “It’s difficult to be up when you have a tragedy like that. That might be part of the reason you fall down.”

Mey broke Thometz’s world record with a time of 36.45 seconds. Thometz had set the former record of 36.55 on March 19, 1987, in Netherlands.

Mey’s performance was the best race of a record-breaking event. Not only did Mey break Eric Heiden’s Olympic record of 38.03, but so did 26 other skaters Sunday night.

Jan Ykema of Netherlands narrowly won the silver medal with a time of 36.76, edging Akira Kuroiwa of Japan, who won the bronze at 36.77.

Jansen didn’t win anything. He didn’t even finish the race. But on Thursday, he will skate again, in the 1,000-meter race. Maybe then he will be able to forget.

Jansen hopes he can.

“There’s nothing I can do about today.”