In his first Olympic appearance for the United States, Dan Jansen was a few months shy of his 19th birth anniversary when he stepped on the track at the Zetra Ice Rink in Sarajevo on 10 February 1984 to race in the 500 meters. Jansen was in the sixth pair (of 21) and his time of 38.55 seconds put him in third place an mere .01 second ahead of fellow American Nick Thometz who had skated in the first pair. Jansen’s stay on the podium was short lived however, because Canada’s Gaétan Boucher completed his race in 38.39 in the very next pairing dropping Jansen to fourth where he remained just 16/100 seconds shy of a medal.
Skating first in the 1000 meters four days later, he had no such comparable disappointment finishing 16th of 43 competitors. Still, it was a promising start for a young skater who, over the ensuing decade, would set eight world records while chasing an elusive Olympic gold medal.
Calgary 1988 and true heartbreak.
With an eye toward reaching the Calgary Olympics in 1988, Jansen continued to skate and to move up in the world rankings. In 1985, he finished third overall at the world sprint championships and in 1986 he was ranked first in the world in both the 500 meter and 1000 meter distances. In 1987 Jansen had to navigate two detours in his Olympic journey.
[Photo from AARP.]
The first came when he contracted mononucleosis. His physical recovery was long but manageable. The second was more difficult because he learned that his sister Jane had leukemia. As the 1988 Olympic Games approached, Jansen appeared to be peaking at the perfect time. Skating in his hometown of West Allis, Wisconsin a week before the Opening Ceremony, Jansen won the 500 meter World Sprint Championship and was certainly among the gold medal favorites for the Calgary Games.
The race was scheduled for 14 February. Early that morning the phone rang in the Olympic Village. His 27 year old sister Jane had taken a turn for the worse and was dying. Someone held the phone to her ear and Jansen said, “I love you.” Jane died in the time between that phone call and his race. He spoke with his mother who urged him to compete so Jansen went onto the ice track. After a false start, he stumbled and fell on the restart and failed to finish.
Speaking to reporters sometime afterward he said,
When I got out to the track, nothing felt the same. My skates were slipping around and I couldn’t control them, and when that happens it’s hard to think you’re going to have a good race. The day before, there was nothing that was going to make me lose. On that day, there was nothing that was going to make me win.
But the 1000 meter race remained ahead. Perhaps he could regain his form. Perhaps he could find some inner peace. Perhaps he could gain a measure of redemption.
Competing in speed skating one is quite literally on two very different but very thin edges. One is the edge in times. It’s a sport where races are typically decided by hundredths of a second. The other edge is the equipment itself. Try this experiment: Walk across an ice rink in your shoes. How fast can you do so without falling? Next try it or imagine trying it wearing a typical pair of ice skates with a 12 mm wide blade. Now, get out a metric ruler. A speed skater’s blade is typically one millimeter wide and at the highest level, the best male skaters are usually hurtling around the track at speeds approaching 50km/h (31 miles per hour). What do you think happens if you lose the slightest bit of focus?
When he took to the ice on 18 February, Jansen faced all of these challenges with the added pressure of representing his country in the Olympics and the expectation that he would win the race despite still carrying the emotional burden of his sister’s death just four days earlier.
This time, there was no false start. Six hundred meters into the race, Janssen was not only on pace to win gold but to set a new world record in the process. But there was that edge. And that weight. And the tiniest lapse. And in a flash, his dreams of Calgary gold were over.
[Photo from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.]
No prince in Albertville.
Despite his disappointing inability to finish in Calgary, Jansen continued skating and skating well. By 1991, Jansen was the second ranked skater in the world in his two sprint races behind Germany’s Uwe-Jens Mey. At the U S Olympic Trials in December 1991, Jansen finished in 36.59 seconds – the fastest 500m time of the year. Then a bit over a month later and just a few weeks before the start of the Games, Jansen set a new world record of 36.41 at a competition in Davos, Switzerland breaking by .02 second the record established by Mey at the same track just a week earlier.
The stage was set for a titanic showdown in Albertville. With a time of 37.46 – more than a second slower than his newly established world record, Jansen not only finished .32 seconds behind Mey but .2 seconds behind bronze medalist Junichi Inoue of Japan. As he had in Sarajevo, Jansen finished fourth.
Whether the result of disappointment or the conditions of skating on an outdoor track in Albertville (where no World or Olympic records were set) he fared even worse in the 1000m race. Jansen seemed to hit a wall on the final lap and finished 26th.
Heartbreak turns to gold.
By now, once divorced, remarried and with two daughters, and perhaps understanding that for the average American the true measure of greatness in his sport requires Olympic gold, the Lillehammer Games offered Jansen, now 28 years old, two final chances that he might not otherwise have had had the Games continued on their four year cycle.
The 500m race took place on 14 February 1994 – six years to the day after Jansen’s sister Jane had died. Jansen slipped ever so slightly on his final lap and needed to put his hand on the ice to maintain his balance. That slight touch was enough to slow his time to 36.68 seconds and dropped him to an eight place finish.
We may never know if Jansen knew at the time that the 1000m race in Lillehammer would be his last. Neither may we ever know if that helped his mental approach. What we do know is, that skating in the fourth pairing, Jansen finished in 1:12.43 seconds not only bettering the time of his main competitor Igor Zhelezovsky of Belarus who had skated in the first paring but setting a new world and Olympic record in doing so. Still, he had to wait for an additional 34 skaters to finish before his gold medal was assured.
When the result became official, a group of Norwegians saw another group waving an American flag and rushed over to congratulate them. They didn’t know that most of them were members of Jansen’s family who, after 10 years and four Olympic heartbreaks finally had a chance to celebrate. As for Jansen himself, after receiving his medal
he scooped his daughter Jane – named for his sister – into his arms as he finally skated a long awaited victory lap.