The Fall and Rise

By Richard Lacayo

American Speed Skater Dan Jansen was carrying a weight of grief last week, and he fell. At 22, he was at the top of his form, having won the 500-meter at the world sprint championships near his home in West Allis, Wis., just a week earlier. But at 6 a.m. Sunday, eleven hours before he was to pursue the gold at that distance in Calgary, Jansen was summoned to a phone. It was a call from the hospital room of his sister Jane with the news that she was rapidly losing her yearlong battle with leukemia. The eldest of nine children and a speed skater herself, Jane, 27, had urged him to go to Calgary despite her worsening health. While a brother held the phone to her ear, Jansen spoke to her, but she was unable to reply. Four hours later she had died.

It was an anxious and grieving Jansen on the starting line that evening. At the outset he jumped the gun. To avoid a repeat and disqualification, he held back for a crucial moment at the second gun, then bore down to make up for lost time. He went down suddenly in the first turn, clipping Japanese Skater Yasushi Kuroiwa and slamming into the sideboard. Looking back, he said that he might have been pushing too hard. It seemed as likely though that emotional pressure had made a difficult curve impossible.

When he fell the second time, on the straightaway of Thursday's 1,000-meter event, just 200 meters short of the finish, it was even more stunning, as if he had been forced down by sorrow alone. Watching from the gallery, Brother Mike, 24, had just assured a sister: "Dan's made it through the toughest turns. He's fine now." At the 600-meter mark, Jansen was .31 sec. faster than any of the competition. Then his right skate "caught an edge" -- hit the ice on the side instead of the bottom of the blade -- sending him to his hands and knees and into a wall. For a moment he sat on the ice, unbelieving, until Coach Mike Crowe and Teammate Nick Thometz came over to help him off. Arriving at the bench area, he embraced his fiancee, Canadian Speed Skater Natalie Grenier, and sobbed.

The scene brought to mind heartbreaking falls of American Olympic track stars: Jim Ryun tumbling at Munich, Mary Decker's astonished spill in Los Angeles. Jansen's mother Gerry, who had seen the race on TV, spoke for the millions who watched at home and in Calgary, where a cheering crowd fell into shocked silence: "I think we were all just kind of numb." Jansen's spills brought down much of the U.S. hope for a men's speed-skating medal. The team had gone to Calgary seeing a chance to replay some of 1980, when Eric Heiden took all five skating golds. But the team arrived feuding bitterly and publicly over starting lineups. When he was not named to race in the 1,000, dissident Captain Erik Henriksen filed two unsuccessful appeals with the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Meanwhile the competition has been reaching dizzying new speeds. In Sunday's race, 27 skaters broke Heiden's old record. After Jansen, the best U.S. hope for a medal had been Sprinter Nick Thometz. But following months of battling a low blood-platelet count and a recent bout of the flu, he finished eighth in the 500 and 18th in the 1,000. That race went to the Soviet Union's Nikolai Guliaev in 1:13.03. The silver went to East Germany's Jens-Uwe Mey, already winner of the 500 with a 36.45 record. Finally on Saturday the U.S. medal drought ended when Eric Flaim, who placed fourth in both the 500 and the 1,000, took second in the 1,500-meter event.

The day before, Jansen had flown home by private jet to attend his sister's funeral. "We hugged and we cried," said Mrs. Jansen. "My daughter's death has now become more of a reality to him." Later that day Jansen visited his sister's husband and her three young children. He gave them his Olympic participant's medal. At home the postman keeps bringing carts of mail full of sympathy and admiration. Jansen may have fallen on the ice, but the world would reach out if it could to lift him up.

With reporting by Lee Griggs/Calgary and Georgia Pabst/West Allis