Old Reliable : Making Like George Foreman, Breen Dominates Her Sport at Advanced Age

There probably isn’t a way to say this delicately. . . .

But Ellen Breen is old.

Not Elvis old. Not Beatles old, either, or even Eagles old. Michael Jackson old would probably be appropriate, which still makes her younger than most.

But as a world-class athlete in a demanding snow discipline, this ballet skier two months from age 32 is a creaking relic.

She risks a month in traction during a brief exercise peppered with jumps and flips down a 20-degree slope, accompanied by blaring recorded music and a determination that has placed her at the pinnacle of her sport.

Breen, defending World Cup champion, is riding a hot streak. In seven events she is undefeated, the last victory coming in Altenmarkt, Austria, on Thursday. Remaining are three more, all in Europe, with a break next week for the World Championships in LaClusaz, France.

It is not inconceivable that this woman in her athletic dotage (the next oldest of the 12-member U.S. ballet skiing team is 26) could

sweep the table, winning gold in the World Cup, the World Championships and the Nationals, which conclude the circuit for Americans in late March at Snowbird, Utah.

Though of late she’s been flushed with success, her career’s genesis was infinitely more modest.

“I talked my folks into sending me to a freestyle camp at Big Bear when I was in the ninth grade,” Breen said. “The next year I competed in my first event. It was at China Peak (now Sierra Summit) north of Bakersfield and I won--by default. There were no other women entered.”

Roz Breen has more-vivid memories of those early, humbling days.

“She was terrible,” said Ellen’s mother, half of a strong parental support group that includes Jim Breen, an assistant principal at West Valley Adult School in Woodland Hills.

“She was a big joke to everybody. I just couldn’t understand why she competed every week to come in last. I understand now--she was going through a learning cycle the hard way.”

Of course, the joke’s now on the rest of the world, and her rivals aren’t laughing.

Jim Breen, who left New Mexico’s high country as a young adult to escape white winters, couldn’t understand it, either.

“All three of our kids played varsity sports in high school (there are two older boys), but she’s the only one who went back into the snow,” he said.

The slopes beckoned while Ellen Breen waited impatiently to complete her senior year at Chatsworth High, where she played girls’ basketball.

“I was probably a little too short (5 feet 3) to play college ball anyway,” she recalled. “People told me I could hang like Michael Jordan, but I couldn’t do anything when I was up in the air. I had a shot like a brick.”

Off she went to Lake Tahoe with great expectations, but a week later homesickness drove her back to her family’s West Hills residence in tears. She came home again once more before finally sticking.

“My dad told me he was disappointed,” she recalled. “He said if I didn’t give it a chance I’d regret it the rest of my life. He said, ‘I never want you to look at a hill and wonder If you could’ve made it.’

“I can look back and honestly say I wouldn’t be doing this right now without the support of my parents. They helped me out both financially and emotionally,” said Breen, who still lives at home during the off-season.

Breen is dominating after sporadic adult successes--just enough of them to keep her chasing the dream.

Then Jan Brewer Carmichael went from tormentor to mentor and Breen’s career took flight.

An eight-time World Cup ballet ski champion, Carmichael retired in 1991. Her absence from the tour, along with that of Switzerland’s Connie Kisling, opened the door, and Breen kicked it down. She won the gold medal at the World Championships that year and repeated in ’93. The event is held every other odd-numbered year.

Carmichael, 37, the irrepressible coach of the U.S. team, has a way of dousing her answers with rhetorical questions.

“Ellen always had the ability, you understand?” she half-asks. “She just never gave herself enough credit or allowed herself to win. Ellen always thought (Kisling) and I had magic, because we already were a name.

“It would be like you playing golf against Arnold Palmer. She thought she could never reach that level.

“Most people do that. It’s human nature. When you walk into a room with a group of people you start ranking yourself immediately, where you belong, you understand?”

More readily understood is what Carmichael, “the big sister I never had,” has done to refine Breen’s routine.

“Jan changed my music to the theme from Jurassic Park. She thought it would work better for me,” Breen said.

Carmichael explained: “The music creates her as very dynamic, with the big athletic moves she does. Jailhouse Rock (her former chart) is too radical, too tomboy, too wild for her, you understand?”

The sport combines features of gymnastics and ice skating. In any run there are six required elements combining jumps and flips, within the framework of so-called artistic impression--how you use the music, how you interpret it. Upper-body strength is needed to execute the various trampoline-like maneuvers using ski poles as springboards.

Jack Wright was Breen’s strength coach in the formative years.

“She could do 14 chinups,” said an awed Wright, a personal trainer and part-time actor.

“Most women can’t even do one, and most men couldn’t come close to 14.”

This power recently kept Breen’s World Cup string alive in Breckenridge, Colo., where she finished last among eight heat qualifiers.

“Even though no scores carry over into the finals, the judges are definitely influenced,” said Breen. “You make your run in reverse order of your heat finish, and they almost always save the highest scores for the end.”

Not to worry.

Breen, first out of the blocks, executed a Rudy. This is a maneuver routinely performed in gymnastic floor exercises, but never before by a woman in a world ballet skiing event.

Lifting herself up on one pole and twisting one-and-a-half times, Breen nailed her Rudy and effectively finished off the competition before it left the gate. Rudy has since become a regular part of her routine.

“Complete domination, very Ellen,” enthused Carmichael, who has made a dinner bet with her student that she’ll go undefeated this season.

And it won’t be at a certain budget chain restaurant, where Breen has worked occasionally as a waitress. “I want a real dinner.”

Skiers are for the most part fatalistic about injuries, taking the position that it’s a risk that comes with the territory. But Breen incurred one where the timing was less than exquisite.

In December, 1991, the same year she stamped her international mark by winning the World Cup for the first time, Breen suffered a knee injury that threatened her participation in the Winter Games at Albertville, France.

Surgery was considered, but only briefly, because a medical intrusion would have kept her away from the Olympics where ballet skiing was being showcased as a demonstration sport.

Instead she chose the uncertainty of therapy.

“She went to Inglewood (for therapy) five days a week for a month,” Wright said. “Amazing. You wanna go down to Inglewood from the Valley every day for a month? But it worked for her. She came back with the knee stronger than it was before she got hurt.”

And none too soon. “Thirty-six hours before the U.S. team was scheduled to fly to France, Ellen got medical clearance and the coaches told her she could go,” said her mother.

Although Breen is savoring the moment, her future is a consideration. “Before this year started, I was thinking about making it my last one,” she says in a rapid-fire delivery that mirrors her breakneck sport, as if she were running out of time on a parking meter and had nothing in her ski-pants pockets except her lip balm. She attacks the slopes in the same manner, using only 90 seconds of the allotted two minutes to complete her run.

“If I’m having this much fun by the end of March, I may go another year, but only one.”

And there’s the cruel irony. Her main motivation throughout has been to see the sport into the Olympics. In 2002, the earliest ballet skiing could be recognized as a medal sport, Breen will be almost 39 years old.

“If it doesn’t happen for me, that’s OK,” says Breen. “I’m not doing this to be rich or famous anyway. But when we get in, whenever that is, I’ll be there--if not as a spectator then a coach. I’m not about to miss that moment.”