The U.S. speed-skating team is in a pretty good situation right now, and Wasatch Front residents who want to see the team in action are in a pretty good situation, too.
As of this week, the long-track speedskating team has made the Salt Lake area its permanent training home.
Here, not only do the skaters have the advantage over other national teams of familiarizing and acclimatizing themselves thoroughly at the site of the 2002 Winter Games, they can also live high (in Deer Valley) and train low (in Park City and Salt Lake City) — an effective technique for endurance sports.
"Our coaching staff has determined the best way to prepare our athletes for competition at the Olympic Games of 2002 is for them to live at an altitude above 8,000 feet," said Finn Halvorsen, U.S. Speedskating long-track program director. "We are confident that factor is critical to our success in Salt Lake City and will be the difference in winning medals."
The team will be living near, though not quite at, that elevation in a Deer Valley house rented for the team by the local branch of the law firm Holme, Roberts & Owen (it's at 7,350 feet). U.S. Speedskating announced the donation Friday.
"It's a good fit," said Holme partner Steve Smith.
At least the name is. U.S. Speedskating has dubbed the place the "HeRO" house both for the (hopefully) heroic athletes living there and as a play on the law firm's initials.
Most, though not all, long-track speed-skaters specializing in both sprint and longer distances will live and train here. The most notable exception: the nation's best sprint skater, Casey FitzRandolph, who will maintain his training regimen in Calgary.
"They have the fastest ice in the world, and I have the two fastest training partners in the world," he said. Those would be Canadians Jeremy Wotherspoon and Mike Ireland, who finished first and second, respectively, in last season's world sprint competitions. (The season for FitzRandolph himself was hampered by an accident last December in which he broke his sternum).
FitzRandolph was in town tem-
porarily for U.S. Speedskating meetings.
"In an ideal situation, you would like to be with your countrymen," he said. "The coaching, too — there's a lot of coaching at events. . . . There are a lot — a lot — of advantages in being here in Salt Lake City."
One disadvantage is that Utah still doesn't "have ice," as they say, since the Kearns speedskating oval is still under construction. With the recent failure of the roof, completion has been pushed back from next fall to next winter, which means the team members training here will have to travel to Butte, Mont., and Calgary to get on-ice training.
Here, they will do such things as bike, run, lift weights and in-line skate in large parking lots.
Nevertheless, being at the site of the Olympics, with the easy access to elevation living and training, makes the Salt Lake area ideal, especially off-season.
"It should be impossible for other nations to copy this," Halvorsen said.
E-mail: alan@desnews.com