Athlete profile: Hiroyasu Shimizu

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

Hiroyasu Shimizu has never forgotten the words of his father Hitoshi (HEE-toe-shee)..."You have to give 200 percent, because you are so small"...those are the words that made Hiroyasu the fastest man on ice...Hitoshi passed away when Hiroyasu was in high school..."His father was Spartan," says Hiroyasu's mother Tsueko (TSOO-ay-koh)...when Hiroyasu was only a little kid, Hitoshi assigned him to grinding practices...but Hiroyasu believes that is where he got his basic physical strength...Shimizu, the ace of the Japanese sprint team and the world record holder in 500m, started speed skating when he was only three years old..."His older sister skated and we just took him together to the frozen lake," Tsueko remembers. "Before we knew it, he was skating, too"...Shimizu's hometown, Obihiro, a town in the northern island of Hokkaido, Japan, is a skating Mecca...Shimizu was a silver collector as a child, just not quite good enough to win...in one tournament, Hitoshi saw his seven-year-old son crying, "Always second place"...the father saw the competitiveness in Hiroyasu, which made him want to help Hiroyasu win...by the time Hiroyasu was in the fourth grade, he was roller skating in the summer to train for the winter -- and neighbors criticized Hitoshi for pushing his son too hard...Hitoshi told Hiroyasu, "You have to be home within a half hour after school"...Hitoshi made Hiroyasu wear geta, the Japanese wooden clogs to strengthen the toes...Hiroyasu practiced matawari (mah-tah-WAH-ree), a leg split sumo wrestlers practice, to achieve the flexibility to generate the longest stride possible out of his rather short legs...the practice was even harder in the winter on ice...Shimizu talks about that time with fondness, "My dad often punched me, sometimes even kicked me"..."Hiroyasu fell all the time on ice but he was so quick to get up," recalls Tsueko, "because he knew his dad would punish him if he doesn't"...Hitoshi was diagnosed with stomach cancer when Hiroyasu was still in grade school..."I can't be here with you forever, you got to grow up quickly"...Shimizu knew what those words meant, that is why he was able to put up with the "Spartan" practices without complaining...in the last days of Hitoshi's life, when the son visited the father in the hospital, the father told him to leave, saying, "You don't have time to be here"...Shimizu practiced as usual on the day of his father's funeral, saying, "That's what my dad would have told me to do"...in the weight room of the Shirakaba Gakuen High School, there was a kid who collapsed after each set of stationed biking..."What is this kid doing?" the speed skating head coach Toshiyuki Sakai wondered...that was a 16-year-old Shimizu, who just did not know how to pace himself...Shimizu was well known even before he went to the great skating program of the Shirakaba, but Sakai had doubts about the diminutive Shimizu, which were gone when he saw Shimizu's attitude to overcome the size disadvantage in his work ethic... "Shimizu was never forced to practice," says Sakai. "He wants the hardest practices"...in the last year of high school, Shimizu raced with the best sprinters in Japan and only Eventsual Albertville bronze madalist Junichi Inoue was faster...Shimizu just missed the Albertville Olympics, but when he entered Nippon University, he knew he was in a good environment to train to become a world class competitor, skating next older teammates like Inoue and Toshiyuki Kuroiwa...Shimizu won his first ever World Cup in the first year in college...Shimizu went into the Lillehammer Olympics as one of the medal favorites, but the Japanese team made a major mistake of not deciding who is going to race the 500m until five days prior to the race, and Shimizu was thrown off rhythm... "It was only my second year in the international competitions and I lacked the experience," Shimizu remembers. "I don't think fifth place was that bad"...after Dan Jansen retired, the world of speed skating sprint was centered around Shimizu and a Japanese teammate, Manabu Horii...in the 1994-95 World Cup season, Shimizu won six races to win the overall title, and soon, the Japanese Skating Federation announced that Shimizu already has a spot on the Japanese Olympic team for Nagano...Shimizu's 500m world record of 35.39 set two years ago in Calgary might be the most difficult to break even with the clap skates...Shimizu's start is the best in the world, as he would pass the 100m in 9.5 seconds...that is achieved with Shimizu's unique style, very low to the ice, with his knees bent at acute angles...Horii is a high school teammate of Shimizu, although Horii is two years senior...Shimizu works for a precision machine manufacturer...