Friday, February 8, 2002
'He's going to the Olympics'
It was a family friend who predicted Jeremy Wotherspoon's future at an early age
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
SALT LAKE CITY -- It was Kathy Albrecht, the mother of a younger skater, who saw it first.
She was one of the moms who took the Red Deer kids to a regional speed skating competition in Fort St. John, B.C.
"That's when she told me 'Jeremy is going to be in the Olympics,' '' said Sharon Wotherspoon.
"Jeremy was nine. That was when he won his first medal. He skated under the Canadian age-group record.
"We were talking about that the other day. Her son Grant is going to the Olympics, too. He's now six-foot-five and he's in luge.''
Sharon said her son was convinced it was the breakfast he had eaten that morning.
"He had french toast. He believed that's what made him skate really fast. He figured he had to have french toast every time he skated after that.''
Sharon phoned home from Fort St. John and told husband Bill what had happened.
"He had broke a Canadian record and he had no experience whatsoever. I just flipped. I was a little amazed at the whole thing.''
They thought Mrs. Albrecht was getting a little carried away with what she said about their kid being in the Olympics. Now Jeremy is here, a silver medal from the Nagano Olympics already in his trophy case and people making predictions that he'll win two medals here, one of them a gold. Maybe even both.
Bill, born in Edmonton and raised in Regina, met his bride from Lashburn, Sask., at the University of Saskatchewan. The two graduated and began careers as teachers. Jeremy was born in Humbolt, Sask. They soon moved to Red Deer and to the house where Jeremy grew up and where mom and dad still live today.
There's a football-field-sized green in the middle of the crescent where they live. At this time of year there's a hockey rink which a neighbour, a Red Deer fireman, builds every year. In the summer the kids play every game going on the grass.
SPEED SKATING TOWN
"One thing Jeremy loved doing right away was running,'' said dad, the phys. ed. director at Normandeau school.
"He started playing hockey at age six. And he started speed skating at eight.''
Red Deer, for some reason, has always been a speed skating town.
"The sport has a long history here,'' says Bill. "It's as big as Edmonton's club. And Edmonton has a pretty big and active club.''
His first set of speed skates were old to the point of almost being antiques. But Jeremy didn't seem to mind, much.
"He'd skate short-track in September and October in the arena, go outside and skate long-track in December and January and then go back in the rink and skate short-track again until spring.''
Sharon remembers "hearing other skaters saying that he really had a feel for the ice,'' but she didn't make much of it.
"Kids' bodies change and we tried to keep it all in perspective. And it was tough to get too carried away. They were quite a pack of kids. Steven Elm was one of them,'' she said of another Red Deer speed skating Olympians.
"They'd tear around the snowbanks and you'd hear people saying things like 'That's those Red Deer boys again.'
"I remember they were at a competition in Edmonton one day and they were off in the trees playing and Jeremy almost missed his race.''
But one day, Jeremy came up to his mom and said what Mrs. Albrecht had said when he was nine and won his first race and set his first record.
"I can't remember when it was exactly, although I do remember it was a sunny day in the summer and Jeremy said 'I'm going to be in the Olympics someday.'
"I thought 'yeah, ha, ha,' '' Sharon confesses now.
Bill remembers another day.
"Jeremy was about 12. He'd just won a couple age group races and set a couple of records. He came up to me and said, 'Dad, I got it all figured out. If I take two seconds off my time every year for the next eight years, I'll have the world record.'
"He did it!''
CALGARY OLYMPICS
But the real inspiration, Bill believes, was watching Gaetan Boucher in the 1,500 metres at the Calgary Olympics.
Boucher had won two golds in Sarajevo four years earlier. He finished 12th in '88 and declared himself finished.
"But that wet his desire, that wet his appetite,'' he said of his 25-year-old son.
But maybe more than anything, they both say, it might have been Red Deer.
"This is a wonderful sports volunteer community,'' says Sharon, who feels the city is so special something is always happening which reduces her to tears, like the anonymous citizen who paid their way to Nagano.
2002 Games Long Track Speed Skating Coverage
