Interesting and inspirational Podcast from Allison:
There's a bit of an introduction, including an update on injured snowboarder Kevin Pearce...
www.gogameface.com/blog_detail.php?postid=430------------------------------
Annnnnd... Allison's first magazine cover! (Muscle & Body Magazine, January 2010)
UnbreakableRedefining the meaning of true grit, speedskater Allison Baver hasn't allowed a career-threatening injury sideline her pursuit of Olympic glory.
By Terry Webster / Photography by Laura Doss
U.S. Olympic speedskater Allison Baver thought her career was over after a devastating spill in a race last February. One year later, she’s going for Olympic gold in Vancouver, scars and all.
It was no big deal. She’d done it hundreds of times before — in practice, in regional competitions, at the World Championships, even at the Olympics. In short-track speedskating, outside passes are de rigueur, as common as faking a handoff in football or stealing second in baseball.
So when Allison Baver made her move from the back of the pack at last February’s 1,500 meter Samsung ISU World Cup finals, her thoughts were of taking the lead, winning the race, and adding yet another medal to her burgeoning trophy case. Never could she have envisioned the nightmarish scenario that was about to rock her world.
Read the entire article at:
www.muscleandbodymag.com/article.php?ArticleID=5485+++
It all happened so fast: the pass, the push, the chaotic helicopter spin off the track and into the air and, finally, the impact at more than 30 mph of flesh and bone into the rink wall. So explosive was the impact that a stomach-churning thud could be heard across the arena. After her body caromed off the wall pads, she came to a sliding stop on the ice. Despite the disorienting and jarring crash landing, Baver’s first thought was to get back into the race.
“I saw the others skating away from me,” she recalls, “so my first instinct was to get up and finish the race because anything can happen. Maybe other girls will fall or maybe everyone will fall and I can win.”
Rolling from her side onto her knees, Baver attempted to stand, to get back into the race, maybe get lucky and pull out a win. Then came the smack of reality.
“I had no control of my leg,” she says.
As agonizing pain surged through her right leg, the two-time Olympian realized that this was no typical fall, that her storied career as a short-track speedskater may have just come to an end only one year before the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
Inline for GloryIt looked like a dramatic end to a skating career that had begun almost by accident. “Ice skating wasn’t a big thing for us when I was growing up,” recalls Baver, who hails form Reading, Penn., a blue-collar city of 80,000. “There was one ice rink and it was far from my home, so we would go rollerskating as a family.”
Steadily she climbed the roller skating ranks, winning local events, then regional, and then medaling at nationals. At 12 years old, she was among the best female roller skaters in the country.
Then the sport transitioned to inline skating. No problem. Within a couple of years, Baver was ranked among the best inline skaters in the world and qualified to compete in the Inline Skating World Cup.
She soon found that there was only so much to accomplish with inline skating. “It didn’t make sense to me that there wasn’t an Olympic Games we could compete in. So I felt like I’d done all I could do in the sport,” she recalls. “It was time for me to retire.”
Icing ItA teenage retiree, Baver was then approached by her coach, Shawn Walb, who suggested she try taking her act to the ice. Although she agreed to lace up and step on the ice, her focus was lacking and the results showed. “I sucked,” she admits.
Seeing potential in her that Baver herself didn’t realize she possessed, Walb invited her to take a road trip to the ’98 Olympic trials in nearby Lake Placid, N.Y., hoping the sight of committed skaters might spark an interest in his student. While there, one of the Olympic hopefuls approached Baver.
“She remembered competing against me in inline skating,” Baver says. “As it turned out, I beat her, yet here she was trying out for the Olympics. Watching that made me feel like I could actually be there.”
She went on to qualify for the Olympic trials, becoming the first inline skater to make the switch to ice and qualify for the U.S. Olympic Short Track team. Two weeks before attempting to make the U.S. Olympic team, Baver broke the American record in a tune-up event, establishing herself as the dark-horse favorite going into the trials. She won the first event at the trials, then broke the American record.
“That was kind of cool,” she admits.
The wins kept coming. Four years later, she would take a bronze medal in the 3,000-meter event at the world championships, make another Olympic team, and become the winningest U.S. skater on the World Cup circuit in a decade and a half.
Then in February 2009, Baver traveled with the U.S. speed-skating team to Sofia, Bulgaria, to compete in the ISU World Cup. Going into the competition she was third in World Cup ranking in the 1,500 meter. A win here would give her the World Cup title and establish her as the front?runner in the event going into the 2010 Olympic trials.
Then came the pass, the push, the chaotic helicopter spin, the impact, and the very real possibility that at age 28, Allison Baver might be forced to retire from competitive speedskating.
Short Tracks, Long OddsThat collision with the wall in Bulgaria left Baver with a shattered tibia, a cracked fibula, a displaced ankle joint (the result of her tibia thrusting through it) and severe cartilage damage. Because of the extreme trauma to her cartilage, Baver was required to stay off her right leg for two and a half months — two and a half months during which the competition was hard at work prepping for the Olympics.
Once the full cast came off, Baver was put in a half cast. Then came a soft boot, and with it the slow, painstaking process of rehab.
“Physical therapy was all day,” she says. “I was there from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. I would stay one hour and just stretch my calf and use a bone stimulator for another hour. Time flies when you can’t walk and the Olympic trials are only months away. It seems like there’s not enough time in the day to do all I need.”
It was during the photo shoot for Muscle & Body when Baver had a disturbing experience. “When I pulled the boot over my right foot that day, I was almost in tears,” she says. “My foot had changed in shape so much and was so swollen that I could barely get it on. I called my mom on the way to the airport after the shoot and said, ‘Mom, I’ve been going through all this therapy and rehab and I don’t know if I’ll even be able to skate again.’”
Truth is, her doctors wondered the same. But she never gave up.
This past September, Baver qualified for her third U.S. Olympic team, overcoming what may well be the greatest odds stacked against any athlete competing in Vancouver this February. There are still signs of the injury from the pronounced scar down her shin, but otherwise she’s good to go. From a bone-crunching crash to learning to walk again, then to skate at a world-class level — all within a seven-month span — is truly the stuff of Olympic legend.
“I knew that if I could just make the Olympic team that I could win a medal, because that was the biggest hill I ever had to climb in my life,” Baver says, two and a half months before a trip to Vancouver that nearly wasn’t. “After getting through that, I know that anything is possible.”
Allison Baver Born: August 11, 1980
Height: 5’4”
Hometown: Reading, PA
Current Residence: Salt Lake City, UT
U.S. Olympic Teams: 2002, 2006, 2010
Career Highlights: Broke her own American record three times in the 1,000 meter. Has more medals on the World Cup circuit than any U.S. speedskater in the past 15 years.
A Week In Allison’s World What kind of commitment does it take to train for the Winter Games? Here’s Allison Baver’s typical workload.
7:30 a.m.: off-ice dynamic warm-ups (jog, bike, balance, ladder drills)
9–11 a.m.: skating
11 a.m.–1 p.m.: rehab, off-ice workout or stair running/jumps/plyometrics
2 p.m.: return to the rink
3–4:30 p.m.: skating two or three times per week, alternating days of weightlifting and other off-ice training
4:30–6 p.m.: technique training/ cardio[/img]