Family Pride, With Arms Wide Open

It’s not every day you bump into San Bernardino’s first family of speedskating in the mosh pit of a Creed concert in Salt Lake City.

Team Parra, champions of the Olympics and the world by way of the Inland Empire, were a lane change away from the headline band at Tuesday’s Medals Plaza ceremony. Although, to be honest, they were most interested in the opening act.

Gilbert Parra, 55, was there, clad in a white “Team Parra: Going for Gold” sweatshirt and Olympic pin-covered cap, wiping away tears as his son hit the stage.

Maria McCracken, 54, was there too, nervously munching snack chips stashed inside her parka pocket as she kept telling herself, as if she were trying to convince a disbeliever, “My son won the gold medal. My son won the gold medal.”

So they skewed a little older than your average Creed demographic. So they came to the plaza, where the worlds of VH1 and “SportsCenter” collide every night, eager to hear a more traditional standard, lyrics written by Francis Scott Key.

“What If.”

“My Sacrifice.”

“Higher.”

“One.”

Some of Creed’s most popular singles ... or the abridged version of the Derek Parra success story?

Earlier in the day, Parra became the first American double medalist at these Games by becoming the first Mexican American to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. He also might have become the shortest male speedskater to stand atop the Olympic medal stand--research on that one still pending--and probably the first Fig Newton fiend to break the world’s 1,500-meter record.

Standing 5 feet 4 inches in his stocking feet, Parra out-maneuvered all the tall timber from Germany and the Netherlands at the Utah Olympic Oval, turning in a remarkable time of 1 minute 43.95 seconds--breaking the old world record by more than a second.

“I remember one time when I went to see Derek skate in Colorado Springs,” his mom, Maria, was saying. “This huge, tall German skater came up to me and said, ‘So, you’re the one who made that little guy?’

“I laughed and said, ‘Yes. And Derek would like to be as tall as you.’

“He looked at me and smiled and said, ‘I would like to skate as good as Derek.’”

Tuesday, no one else in the world was that good. That explained what Derek was doing, warming up the audience for Creed with a gold medal around his neck and “The Star Spangled Banner” pumping over the sound system.

As he received his medal from International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta, taking a break between figure skating protests, Derek broke out in tears. So did Gilbert. So did Maria.

“He gets that here,” Maria said, patting her chest. “That’s a gift for him. He’s able to express his feelings--and that takes courage. That’s what I love about him. He’s not afraid to show what he is and who he is.”

A few feet away, Gilbert blinked his reddened eyes.

“It’s just too emotional to put into words,” he said. “He’s a good-hearted boy. We’re all emotional in this family. We get carried away from time to time.”

This would be as good a time as any, considering Derek’s long, difficult road to get to that stage. Making the transition from inline skating to long-track speedskating in 1996. Bouncing from San Bernardino to Delaware to Milwaukee to Orlando, looking for work, looking for training rinks.

Getting married three years ago and having his wife Tiffany give birth to daughter Mia on Dec. 14--two days before the U.S. Olympic trials and a week and a half before Derek had to head overseas from competition in Europe.

“Mia and I live in Orlando,” Tiffany said, smiling. “Sometimes, so does Derek.”

Moments after Derek received his medal, the members of Creed lumbered onto the stage. But before the first number, lead singer Scott Stapp called Derek out for an encore. “Come on and give it up for an Olympic champion,” Stapp told the crowd, and Parra came back out for a few handshakes, claps on the back and another ovation, seemingly stunned by the attention.

“We love Creed!” Tiffany shouted. “I’m jealous. I want to be up there with him.”

Back in San Bernardino, Gilbert imagined the party was spilling over into Graziano’s Pizza Place and the local Zendejas restaurant.

San Bernardino, the world capital of speedskating.

“It is now!” Gilbert said, beaming. “It’s back on the map.”

But will they be serving Fig Newtons, Derek’s favorite pre-race fuel food, alongside the pepperoni and the burritos?

Helping Nabisco get the post-Olympic marketing campaign rolling, Gilbert retold the story of how Derek once ate a roll of the cookies before an important race and won it. “Since that day,” Gilbert said, “he’s been eating Fig Newtons. We try to keep him stocked.”

Gilbert and Maria are divorced and remarried, Maria now living in Happy Camp, Calif., where she and her current husband run their own business.

A gold-mining club called “New 49ers.”

No kidding. According to Maria, the club travels around Northern California, hunting for new deposits of the precious metal.

“We dig for gold,” she said, grinning as she set up the punch line of the day, the punch line that brought Team Parra to Utah in the first place. “And Derek got his here.”