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Monday, December 29, 2008 | 
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Jennifer Rodriguez represents America’s best hope in long track for 2010 Winter Games
By Gary D’AmatoMILWAUKEE — Jennifer Rodriguez knew there were going to be some ups and downs when she returned to speedskating after more than two years away from the sport.
This week, however, has provided the mother of all setbacks.
Just days before the start of the U.S. Long-Track Speedskating Championships, which begin on Saturday at the Pettit National Ice Center, Rodriguez came down with a stomach virus that sapped her strength. When she returned to the ice to train, still ill, she broke a skate blade.
“Every skater is super-sensitive to their blades,” she said. “I’ve had my blades for, like, six years and now I’m on new blades that I’ve never skated on. It’s a nightmare.”
The old Rodriguez, the three-time Olympian who won a pair of bronze medals at the 2002 Winter Games, might have been more easily able to shake off the bad breaks. With just a few months of training behind her, however, she’s worried about making the winter World Cup team.
Rodriguez plans to skate the two 500-meter races and the two 1,000s at the Pettit Center but probably will skip the 1,500, normally one of her best races.
“We’ll see,” she said. “As sick as I was and having to deal with my skates, it’s not going to be easy.”
The setbacks are especially frustrating because the 32-year-old Miami native broke through two weeks ago to win a 1,000-meter race at a World Cup event in Nagano, Japan. It came in just her fifth race back, after disappointing results in Berlin and Heerenveen.
“Everything felt really good,” she said. “It just clicked. That’s why I’m so (mad) right now, because finally I got it together again and now I’m starting over. I’m pretty stressed right now.”
Despite all that, Rodriguez still represents America’s best hope for a medal on the women’s long-track side at the 2010 Vancouver Games. The question is whether one year is enough time to regain her form.
“It’s in her,” said Ryan Shimabukuro, the U.S. team sprint coach. “The goal is to be even better than she was in 2002. To get on the podium again next season, it’s going to take a greater effort. She knows that.”
This time around, Rodriguez, who lived and trained in Milwaukee for three years in the 1990s, wants to enjoy the journey and the process of improving, so much so that she said she didn’t care about winning races.
“My goal is to cross the line at the Olympics and be completely satisfied with my race,” she said. “If I retire after that, I can be satisfied: OK, that was the best I could do. Usually, if I put my best race out there, the results are good.”
That would be in stark contrast to her performance at the 2006 Turin Games, when she was burned out and finished eighth in the 1,500, 10th in the 1,000 and 11th in the 500.
“Yeah, I was pretty much hating life,” Rodriguez said with a laugh.
She quit after Turin, walking away in the middle of the World Cup season. She figured she’d return for the 2006-’07 season feeling refreshed and refocused but when the time came to get back on the ice she had “zero desire.”
“I couldn’t be around skating,” she said. “I didn’t want to think about skating.”
Rodriguez and then-husband KC Boutiette (they have since divorced) opened a bicycle shop in Miami and Rodriguez was “conned into” competing in track cycling, but she didn’t have much passion for that, either.
About a year ago, Boutiette talked her into returning to the ice — short-track, just for fun — and she realized how much she missed skating. She was working as an intern for NBC and had to weigh the pros and cons of a comeback. Finally, in March she contacted Shimabukuro and told him she was ready.
“Personally, do I think she’s capable of medaling in Vancouver? Absolutely,” he said. “But it’s going to be a step-by-step process. She’s got a lot of work to do.”
Right now, Rodriguez would be happy just to skate a few decent races at the Pettit Center.
“It was my choice to come back and I’m glad I did,” she said. “I’m having a good time. It’s going to be a rocky road, up and down. The whole first half of the year has been more than probably most people could take.
“But it wouldn’t be worth it in the end if you didn’t have some ups and downs, you know? If it was too easy, it wouldn’t be fun.”
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