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Derek Parra: 1970—: Athlete

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When Derek Parra set a new world record in the men's 1,500-meter speedskating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, he also became the first Mexican-American to win a gold medal at the Salt Lake City Games. Parra was an unlikely victor in the sport of long-track speedskating, having tried it for the first time just six years before. The Southern California native became a favorite subject for sports writers at the Salt Lake Games, who found the story of his rise from the barrio appealing. Parra himself was pleased with his success. "If I can challenge any kid—doesn't matter if they're Mexican or Asian or black or white—to challenge themselves and reach for their dreams," the 31-year-old told San Bernardino Sun reporter Paul Oberjuerge, "that's more important than anything else."

Raced for Food

Parra grew up in San Bernardino's West Side neighborhood. His mother had departed when he was a toddler, and Parra's father worked as a prison guard to support him and his brother. As a kid, Parra and his older brother, Gilbert, loved to skate at the Stardust Roller Rink. Having no money for snacks, they began racing as a way to win food tickets from others. "We used to race for hot dogs and Cokes," Gilbert Parra told St. Petersburg Times columnist John Romano. Parra began competing in races using the new inline skates, though his father disapproved; he sometimes refused to drive him to meets, but changed his mind when others began telling him that they had seen his son on television.

As a teen, Parra met a Florida roller-skating coach named Virgil Dooley at a U.S. Olympic Committee training camp. Parra told Dooley that he would like to train with him after he finished high school. He then graduated early and bought a ticket to Tampa, and phoned the coach. "He said, 'Could I stay with you for a couple of days until I find a place to live?,'" Dooley told Romano in the St. Petersburg Times. "I said, 'Yeah, I guess that'll be all right.' He lived with us for seven years." While Parra trained with Dooley, he held various jobs to pay his expenses. At times he was so poor that he sometimes took food destined for the dumpster at the fast-food restaurant where he worked.

That single-mindedness helped make Parra a champion. He dominated inline skating for nearly a decade, winning 18 titles and setting world records for speed. He was also earning about $50,000 annually. At the 1995 Pan American Games, he was the most decorated athlete. He was keenly disappointed when inline skating was not chosen as a new Olympic sport for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. Around this time, another inline skating champion, K.C. Boutiette, urged Parra to try ice skates. By switching to speed-skating, Parra might have a shot at the Olympics.

Parra had worn ice skates only once before in life. He tried it, and decided to stick with it, despite some initial difficulties. "It was very frustrating coming to the ice and being a nobody, especially after being the best in the world," he told Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service reporter Kamon Simpson. "I knew I could do it, but the results weren't coming as fast as I wanted them." By 1998 and the Nagano Winter Games, Parra had made the U.S. men's team, but did not get a chance to compete because a higher-ranking skater showed up. He considered quitting, but his wife, Tiffany, urged him not to give up yet.

Trained on World's Fastest Ice

Parra made the 2002 Winter Olympics his goal. He trained in Milwaukee, and worked at a Home Depot store there. In late 2000, he moved to Kearns, Utah, to train. Kearns's newly constructed Olympic Oval was situated more than 4,700 feet above sea level, making it the world's highest-altitude speedskating track. The high altitude also gave the ice a particularly dense quality, which made it a much faster surface. Again, Parra found a job at a local Home Depot store, which was the sole participating corporate member of a United States Olympic Committee sponsorship project. Athletes who met qualifications would work at the store 20 hours, but be paid for 40, in exchange for allowing themselves to be featured in commercials. In all, 140 Olympians were participating in the Home Depot program, and Parra appeared in a television ad with Tristan Gale, the women's skeleton competitor. He was a favorite of customers and co-workers alike. "The way Derek runs around this place, it's no wonder he's a speedskater," supervisor Lara Berry told Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service writer Mike Bianchi. "If a customer buys 12 bags of concrete, he's the guy who volunteers to load it in the car for them."

In March of 2001 the Utah Olympic Oval was host to the world speedskating single-distance championships. Parra came in second in the 1,500-meter race, the first medal finish for a U.S. men's team member in six years. His performance added to the anticipation surrounding the coming Salt Lake Games, and Parra continued to train intensely. He barely returned to Florida in time for the birth of his daughter, Mia Elizabeth, on December 14, 2001, and had to leave again a few days later. The situation was a stressful one. Parra's wife worked and was still in college, and there were some tearful phone conversations. "We get in arguments because I'm not there," Parra explained to a Madison, Wisconsin paper, the Capital Times. "I can't help out, and that just makes it worse. There's plenty of times during the year where you ask yourself, 'Is it really worth it?' Then you go out and skate and have a good day, and you say, 'Yeah, it is.'"

When the 2002 Winter Olympic Games opened in Salt Lake City, Parra was considered a long shot for the first men's speedskating event the next day, the 5,000-meter race. He had never done well in longer races, a sport usually dominated by the Dutch and Scandinavian-country teams. Moreover, Parra, who liked to snack on Fig Newton cookies as a night-before race ritual, was shorter than most in the sport at just 5 feet, 3 and a half inches; most champion speedskaters are tall and long-legged, which gives them a clear physical advantage. But on February 9, Parra clocked in a finish of 6:17.98 to huge cheers from crowd. The time set a new world record in the sport—the first broken in the 2002 Games—but just a half-hour later, Dutch skater Jochem Uytdehaage crossed the finish line on what had been deemed the world's fastest ice, beating Parra by just by three seconds to take the gold.

Sportswriters began predicting that silver-medal-winner Parra might become the second U.S. speedskater in Olympic history to win three medals; the feat had not happened since Eric Heiden's five gold medals at the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, New York. On February 19, before a crowd that included his wife, brother and father, King Harald V of Norway, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Parra took to the ice in Kearns for the 1,500-meter men's speedskating competition. He set a new world record, 1:43:95 seconds, and took the gold medal. He and his coach, Bart Schouten, took a victory lap around the Oval with the American flag. Not even silver-medal winner Uytdehaage was surprised by the outcome, the Dutch athlete told the Grand Rapids Press. Uytdehaage remarked that Parra's performance at the world championships the year before had made him a skater to watch. "This is not really a big surprise, because I have seen Derek come up and up and up," Uytdehaage told the Grand Rapids Press. "I knew Derek would skate very fast, and this may sound strange, but I was happy for him to break the record. It was an awesome skate."

Landmark Win—Both National and Personal

Parra's gold that day was the 20th medal for the U.S. Olympic team at the Salt Lake Games, a number that the U.S. Olympic officials had deemed its goal (the U.S. team would eventually finish with 34 in all). Parra was thrilled that his wife could be there in the stands to see it. "I was hoping I would do well," he told New York Times writer Edward Wong. At the starting line, he continued, "I saw her up in the stands, and I told her before the race that I love her. Out of all the crowd, I could see her face there. It was really uplifting, because we've been away for so long. We see each other only every two months."

Parra surprised many a few days later on February 22, when he finished in twelfth place in the 10,000-meter men's speedskating contest. "I was hoping to have a good race and finish on a good note, but I'm tired," he said at a press conference afterward. "The 10K, it was just way out of reach, even going into this race, more than the 5K was…. I just didn't feel technically sound and was not too efficient in the first 5,000 (of the 10,000), and I started fatiguing and overheated." Uytdehaage took another gold medal for his first-place finish in this event. Still, Parra was pleased at his overall performance, noting that a gold and silver each "are just beyond what was probably possible," a Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service report by Charean Williams quoted him as saying. "It was something I dreamed, but to actually have it in my hand and realize the dream is unbelievable." Even his older brother was impressed. As Gilbert Parra told Romano, the St. Petersburg Times columnist, "When he was little, he wanted to be like his older brother. Now I want to be like him."

Parra was upbeat about his future plans, and admitted to some realistic goals regarding his future in the sport. "My wife and I talked about it, and if it's not something I can't make a living off of, then I'll just go to Orlando and have a normal job and be a normal father and husband," Williams quoted him as saying. He was also looking forward to paying a visit to his former school, Roosevelt Elementary, in San Bernardino, and speaking to students who use roller- or inline skates on the same streets he did. "Mexican-Americans can reach for their goals," Parra asserted to Oberjuerge in a report that appeared in the Daily News. "Growing up in Southern California, I would have never even dreamed of being in a Winter Olympics sport, the sport of giants." He was also proud to have bested other world-class skaters who had the luxury of training full-time because of generous government support. His win, he told the Grand Rapids Press, "shows that a working-class man can be at the top of the podium, or on the podium."

Sources

Periodicals

Austin American-Statesman, February 10, 2002, p. C1.

Capital Times (Madison, WI), February 20, 2002, p. 1C.

Daily News (Los Angeles), February 10, 2002.

Grand Rapids Press (Grand Rapids, MI), February 20, 2002, p. C4.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, March 9, 2001; February 11, 2002; February 22, 2002.

New York Times, February 19, 2002; February 20, 2002; February 21, 2002.

St. Petersburg Times, February 20, 2002, p. 1C.

On-line

U.S. Speedskating, http://www.usspeedskating.org (February 27, 2002).

—Carol Brennan