Parra’s Prize Is Still Golden

The results allow an introspective look at the last four years.

Derek Parra reflected on an Olympic experience considerably different from the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, where he stepped onto the podium to embrace history after becoming the first Mexican American to win gold in the Winter Olympics.

He will leave Turin with a shrug of disappointment, but certainly not shame.

Battling the emotional stress of divorce and advancing age, Parra finished 19th in the men’s 1,500-meter speedskating event at Oval Lingotto on Tuesday, a race he won four years ago. His time was 1 minute 48.54 seconds. In Salt Lake City, he skated the race in 1:43.95, then a world-record time.

“Today I was 19th, four years ago I was first,” he said. “But I raced the same, with all my heart, with everything I had.

“The most important thing for me was keeping my dignity and character on the way down, not being a poor sport, trying to go down the way I came up, with respect and character. I did the best I could.”

Although his daughter Mia, now 4, remained with Parra’s estranged wife in Ovideo, Fla., Parra carried a keepsake from his last visit in January: a small red ornament with a bell that he tucked in his jacket. He kept rubbing it during warmups.

A few weeks shy of 36, Parra, who grew up in San Bernardino, will return to Florida to visit Mia in late March, but there are commitments to keep beforehand.

He will race in Holland next week -- probably his last laps in a career that includes two Olympics, a gold and silver medal.

“I’ll do the old Rulon Gardner thing,” he said, referring to the gold medalist in wrestling at the 2000 Sydney Summer Games who left his shoes on the mat when he retired.

“I’ll leave [my skates] on the ice or throw them out to the crowd. People over there have been so great to me over the years, and they’ve embraced me as an athlete and a person, and I think it will be a fitting way to retire.”