Speedskater Catherine Raney's road to Salt Lake started when she was about 5 years old and her older sister balked at the family's decision to move from Nashville, Tenn., to Elm Grove, Wis., where her father had a new job waiting.
Most parents can sympathize with what came next.
"My sister was three years older than me, and it was really tough for her to move. So my parents bribed her with figure-skating lessons," she said. "I wanted to be just like my sister, so they gave me lessons, too."
Raney, who at age 21 has qualified for the women's 3,000-meter team, will compete in her second Olympics. She finished 22nd in Nagano. But it was hard to see that Olympic dream all those years ago as she twirled around the rinks of Wisconsin, trying to be like her sister.
It was especially hard when, at the age of 12, she fell during a competition and slammed her knee into the boards. From then on, she had trouble jumping without pain. Her kneecap was deteriorating, and her chances for a competitive career were dwindling.
Enter David Paul and Marc Norman, two nationally prominent short-track speedskaters who happened to train in the early morning hours at the same rink where Raney, by then 13, did her workouts.
"The two of them said, 'Let's see what you can do,' " Raney recalls. They challenged her to a race. She was wearing her figure skates, but her competitive fire burned too brightly to worry about that. "I didn't want them to think I was a little girl who couldn't do it."
They timed her. She did well. Not only that, she loved it. Soon, she was throwing speedskating moves into her figure-skating practices, risking her mother's disapproval. Eventually, it was no use. She had to give up the figure skates and the pretty costumes and put on the aerodynamic body suit that makes every speedskater look like Spiderman. She had found herself, at last.
Even then, she never thought much about the Olympics. She thought it was great to see five-time gold-medalist Bonnie Blair when she worked out at the same rink, but Raney was racing around the track for one reason only ? she thought it was fun.
She had one more thing going for her ? the Pettit Ice Center in Milwaukee, a world-class facility virtually in her back yard. By 1997, at the age of 17, she made her first breakthrough by qualifying for the World Cup team. Finally, she could see that the Olympics were a possibility.
Raney sees a lot of parallels between her life and what some other young girl growing up along the Wasatch Front might experience. After the Games are over, Utahns will be left with a world-class facility in Kearns. That could easily translate into Olympic careers for children who for now can only watch and dream.
"It's an amazing sport to get into," she said. "Being in Salt Lake is a great opportunity to get involved in it."
There is one final irony. Marc Norman, one of the skaters who challenged her to her first race, is now a sought-after ice-maker who understands the intricacies of making fast ice out of deionized water. He made the ice on which she will compete in the 2002 Games.
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