Catching Fire on the Ice : Gold Medal Finish Fuels Participation in the Pickwick Speed Skating Club

They came in all sizes and shapes. Their clothes varied from the skin-tight uniforms on display at the Winter Olympics to the jeans-and-sweaters look on display at your neighborhood roller rink. Their skills varied from novice to the nation’s elite.

Only their dreams linked them. It was the Monday night after Bonnie Blair won her gold medal, and, as they moved around the Pickwick Ice Arena, hunched over in the standard position of the speed skater, many of the skaters imagined themselves in Calgary--the crowds cheering, the flags waving, the timers ticking, the East Germans and the Russians matching them stride for stride, until finally they stretched across the finish line, saw they had won the gold and reached for the ceiling, ultimate joy etched into their faces.

The image of Blair winning the gold in the 500-meter speed skating event at the Calgary Olympics will be in the nation’s consciousness for a while. This Mary Lou Retton on skates likely will sell a lot of cereal, soft drinks or whatever she chooses to endorse over the next few years, but she already has done a masterful job of selling her sport.

Evidence of that fact could be found at this weekly gathering of the Pickwick Speed Skating Club. The organization has been in existence for a quarter-century without any recent drastic fluctuations in the size of its membership. There are about 25 skaters in the group, but that number ballooned on this recent Monday with the arrival of 10 novices out to try the sport.

In all, there are three speed skating clubs in Southern California, but only about 60 active participants for a sport that has about 3,000 nationwide.

That may change. At a meeting of the De Morra club in Paramount two Saturdays ago, 125 new faces showed up to swell the ranks of the 25 or so normally on hand.

“They all want to be the next Bonnie Blair,” said Pickwick member Connie Orpin, a skater for 23 years. “And those who do skate are getting a little more serious seeing what it can be like.”

Added club member Michael Jondreau of North Hollywood, “People are going to talk about Bonnie Blair for the next four years as they have been for the last eight about Eric Heiden.”

Heiden roared into the headlines at the 1980 Games by winning five gold medals in speed skating, one fewer than the total number of medals won by this whole country in Calgary.

The new interest is greatly appreciated out at Pickwick, but the true aficionado gets his or her back up when their activity is compared to Blair’s gold medal performance. Blair won her medal in the long track program. Pickwick skaters only engage in short track. There’s a very basic difference, above and beyond the distance. In long track, held outdoors before Calgary, the object is merely to record the best time. In short track, usually indoors, the goal is to finish first in the field regardless of time. Just stay ahead of the pack and you win.

Chris Tolot, 14, of Los Angeles talked his mother into bringing him to Pickwick last Monday night after being inspired by the Olympics. As with all novices, it took Tolot a little while to get used to this new activity, but he plans on coming back.

Why not? It’s good exercise, good fun and a cheap thrill. Compare it to figure skating--where lessons from a top coach can cost from $60 an hour, or skiing, where lift tickets alone can run $30 a day, not to mention the vast array of expensive equipment needed--and speed skating looks like a real bargain. Membership in the Pickwick club costs $55 a year. The ice time for an evening is about $5 and the coaching is free. Top of the line skates can cost as much as $600, but a decent pair can be bought for $180.

“The sport demands,” Jondreau said, “a certain period of time when you feel like a fool, are frustrated and wonder why you’re doing it. But if you stick with it and break through, it’s all worth it.”

No argument from Jim Wigney, coach of the Pickwick club.

“Speed skating,” he said, “is not an easy thing to do, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It can take five years to become really good. There are naturals in our club who have real potential and then there are those who have fun doing it even though they are never going to be really great.”

Before speed skating, Jondreau, 39, was a weekend hockey player.

“I switched,” he said, “because speed skating offered more discipline and the opportunity to really learn how to skate. This sport is 80% technique and 60% fitness.”

Uh, isn’t that 140%?

“That’s what it takes.”

Some who skate at Pickwick do so for more than just discipline. Charles King, 18, of Studio City and Caroline McCullough, 14, of La Puente were among the elite group from which the ’88 U.S. Olympic squad was chosen. Both wound up second alternates. Janie Eickhoff of Los Alamitos, the current junior world sprint champion in track cycling, started speed skating for the strength it would add to her legs, but has become so enamored with her new sport, she may now shoot for both the Summer and Winter Games.

Richard Reuben, 57, of Chatsworth was the oldest skater in action Monday. He had given up active participation in the sport 40 years ago, but was lured back to the ice by a friend who helped coach the Canadian figure skating team at Calgary.

The idea that you just have to stay ahead of the pack in short track and you win has drawn a comparison to roller derby. But mention that and the aforementioned aficionados will once again come to their sport’s defense.

“I don’t see how they can say that,” Wigney insisted. “It’s more like a combination of a track meet and a chess game on ice. What is required is fitness and a knowledge of the tactics. But what they show a lot of on TV are the skaters falling, the same way they show the auto crashes in auto racing.”

Jondreau was just as adamant. “Unlike roller derby,” he said, “there are few falls and no contact allowed in short track.”

Perhaps the attraction of the sport was best enunciated by King, who chose speed skating over figure skating, the more high profile of the two.

“I just like,” he said, “to go fast.”