Speedskater Chases an Olympic Double

In her Olympic dreams, speedskater Chris Witty usually hears the rhythmic click and scratch of blades gliding over a frozen rink.

At the Sydney Olympics, she’ll also hear the hum of bicycle tires over a wooden track. It’s a sound that could vault her into a rare group of Olympians.

Witty, who won two speedskating medals at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, is pursuing a rare Olympic double in Sydney as a member of the United States cycling team.

Racing in the women’s 500-meter time trial, she’s trying to become the second U.S. athlete, and the first American woman, to win medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

“I’m hoping I can squeak past a few people,” said Witty, 25. “I’d love to get gold. Anything can happen at the Olympics. People can come out of nowhere.”

Worldwide, only three athletes have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Witty is the ninth American named to compete in both games.

“It’s a real motivator,” Witty said. “I’m the ninth ever? That in itself is special.”

Speedskating and cycling are complementary. Speedskaters train on bikes during the summer to work out their hamstrings, calves and cardiovascular systems.

But make no mistake. Although Witty wants to win in Sydney, she’s a speedskater first. Focused on the 2002 Winter Olympics, she continues to train with the U.S. speedskating team in Park City.

As for cycling?

“It’s good practice,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of pressure in Salt Lake, so going to Sydney will be one more experience to have under my belt.”

Witty already can draw on her Nagano experience.

“Going to Japan, I was a medal favorite, and that’s totally different than going without expectations,” she said. “I know what it’s going to be like in Sydney with the media, the outside pressure and the amount of excitement on the day of the event.”

As a teen-ager growing up in West Allis, Wis., Witty and her speedskating buddies traveled to velodromes in nearby Kenosha and Northbrook, Ill., twice a week for training races.

She found she could ride as well as she skated.

“It was fun,” said Witty, a junior national cycling champion. “That’s how I got started in cycling. Eventually, people started saying, ‘Hey, you’re getting pretty good at this.”’

After Witty won a speedskating silver medal in the 1,000 meters at Nagano and a bronze in the 1,500, she decided to spend the next summer racing on a bicycle.

The result: first place in the 500-meter time trial at nationals and fourth at the 1998 world championships.

“She’s very talented,” said Des Dickie, coach of the American cycling sprinters. “She’s an elite athlete and she knows what it takes to produce world-class results.”

However, the grueling pace in 1998 took its toll. After the cycling schedule, Witty took a few weeks off and was back with the speedskaters at the end of September.

By March 1999, she was exhausted.

“It was very stressful,” she recalled. “The mental part of it was hardest, although it’s physical too. When you race year-round, you don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of speed training.”

This time, she doesn’t plan to rejoin the speedskaters until December. Still, the summer offers no less of a challenge.

So far, Witty has cycled at World Cup races in Moscow and Mexico City. Next week, she’s going with the speedskaters to Calgary, Canada, for two weeks of skating training.

In early August, she’ll head to Colorado Springs for U.S. Cycling’s weeklong sprinters camp, and later in the month, the U.S. cycling nationals. The U.S. Olympic team will be in Australia for another week of training before the Games begin in mid-September.

Witty admits she’ll never fully develop as a cyclist because she can’t devote herself full time to the sport.

And while she’s a possible medal contender in Sydney, Witty considers herself an underdog. Four-time world sprint champion Felicia Ballanger of France is among the gold medal favorites.

Whatever happens, Witty expects to become a more-rounded athlete.

“If you can, why not do it? If you had the opportunity, why would you pass it up?” she asked.

“Plus,” she added with a laugh, “it’s good training for speedskating.”

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U.S. Cycling Web site: https://usacycling.org

U.S. Speedskating site: https://usspeedskating.org