With the 2010 Winter Olympic Games just a handful of months away, the U.S. speedskating team was in its final preparations for another run at gold medal glory.
A funny thing happened along the way, though.
Coach Bart Veldkamp, hired to bring a European training style and philosophy to the team, abruptly resigned or was fired — depending on which side of the story you read — with only 10 months remaining before the opening ceremony.
In his place, former Olympic hero Derek Parra was asked to step in, salvage the best of the situation and, along the way, try to get the skaters now under his charge onto the podium in Vancouver.
"I have to go with what I've got," Parra said. "You can't reinvent the wheel the year of the games."
Reinventing the wheel, though, might be the reason Parra finds himself with the job he now holds.
Veldkamp brought with him decades of Dutch experience when he agreed to mold the U.S. team. The Netherlands has long been the world's dominant country when long track speedskating is considered and Veldkamp was asked to help turn the Americans from contenders to champions.
Though his training system had plenty of success in Europe, his style and manner did not sit well with the American team. Some athletes never fully bought into the training program, others stuck with their personal coaches at sites away from the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns, and it was no secret many athletes were not happy with Veldkamp's training regiment.
"It took a while for the Americans to buy into his system," Parra said. "Some never really did. My job is to get everyone on the same page and focused for Vancouver."
The same page, however, might be from entirely different books and written by a handful of different authors.
With just nine months before competition begins in Canada, Parra acknowledges he doesn't have time to break everything down and start fresh.
Instead, he will ask his athletes to focus on what made them their most efficient in the past and to quickly build on that.
"Because this is the year of the Games," Parra said, "I'm going to try to refine the form."
For some, that won't be a difficult task. Shani Davis and Trevor Marsicano — perhaps not coincidentally two of the athletes who train with personal coaches — had stellar seasons. Others, such as veterans Catherine Raney-Norman and Chad Hedrick, did not have the seasons they had hoped for and are not at the level at which they enjoyed past Olympic successes.
"My job is to get (Chad) back to being Chad," Parra said. "He was the best skater in the world. But he took some time off and I think it's taken a long time to get his base back.
"With Catherine, we're going back to asking what made her tick," he said. "She was consistently right there contending for podiums. We need to get her back to that and then get her to focus in. She was right there, so we can regain that and see what happens."
One veteran speedskater also trying to recapture some of the magic that carried her to Olympic podiums in the past is Jennifer Rodriguez. As one of Parra's former teammates, she expects him to have a good influence on the team over the next few months.
"It's hard to know. His program will either work or it won't," Rodriguez said. "His skaters just need to believe in it. There's no time for anything else."
Parra said he is not interested in the drama and lack of communication that existed to a degree between Veldcamp, the skaters and their coaches. Rather, the three-time Olympic medalist and former world-record holder wants to manage and integrate the differing styles, techniques and methods that work best with each individual athlete.
"My goal is to bring unity back to this team," Parra said. "I can't really speak for any of the past coaches, but I'm not going to have a problem letting people train with their own coaches and do the things that work best for them. If they want to train with me, great. If there's something else that works better, I'm not going to stand in the way of that."
What that means is skaters such as Davis and Marsicano will probably spend little time training on the world's fastest ice. They are already at the top of their game and world champions.
Those who do train under Parra's watchful eye will be in for some hard work, though.
"My belief is that you should always make your practice harder than your races," he said. "If you're not willing to suffer, you shouldn't be on this team."
e-mail: jeborn@desnews.com