Speed skater, 17, retiring after Olympics

Posted: Tue February 10, 1998 at 2:10 AM ET

Holum will skate in Wednesday's 3,000-meter event   Mike Powell/Allsport

NAGANO, Japan (Knight-Ridder) -- What looked to be the first of many may, in fact, be the one and only.

Speed skater Kirstin Holum is just 17, but there is no adolescent flux to her personality. She radiates the air of someone who won't budge once she has dug her toe into the ice. In this way, the junior world record holder resembles her mother, Dianne, an multiple Olympic medalist who coaches her daughter in their hometown of Milwaukee.

A few short months ago, Kirstin, a distance specialist who will skate in Wednesday's 3,000-meter event, was being portrayed as one of the athletes who would lead the U.S. into the next millenium. The 2002 Winter Olympics, a home Games in Salt Lake City, was to be her showcase.

But Kirstin has her own ideas about where she wants to be four years from now. Quite literally, she wants to go back to the drawing board. Before the U.S. Olympic Trials were even over, Kirstin had announced her intention to quit skating after this season. She has applied to several top-level art schools on the East Coast and wants to pursue a career as an illustrator.

"I look at people who have been in the sport for so long and I don't want to be like that," Kirstin, a senior at Pius XI High School in Milwaukee, said at the time. "I have no idea what it's like [not to skate], but that's what I want to find out."

So the world's memory of Kirstin Holum will be frozen at 17, rosy-cheeked and proclaiming, "I'm proud to be here ... it's exciting ... it's an honor, especially because I'm so young." There are worse fates.

Dianne Holum followed suit just last week by announcing that she will quit coaching after 25 years. A full-time physical education teacher at two suburban Milwaukee high schools, Holum said she is frazzled by years of long hours and extensive travel and would have bowed out even if Kirstin had decided to continue.

"I've just reached the point where I don't have enough energy," said Dianne Holum, who also coaches U.S. sprinter Cory Carpenter. "I've put myself on survival mode the last few years."

Thus, this is the last hill the Holums will climb on their bicycle customized for two. Their farewell to the sport will come in the same country where, in 1972, Dianne Holum carried the flag in opening ceremonies and went on to win gold and silver medals in the 1,500-meter and 3,000-meter events respectively. She took home silver and bronze medals in the previous Olympics in Grenoble.

"Sapporo was so long ago, I don't believe that was me," said Dianne Holum, who went on to coach Eric Heiden during his quintuple-gold-medal performance in 1980. She was pregnant with Kirstin at the time.

There is no funereal air to these proceedings as far as the Holums are concerned, although they are clearly pumped. "You want the emotion," Dianne Holum said.

They have been characteristically businesslike at training sessions, although the peripatetic Dianne admitted she is far less nervous here than at any other Olympics she has ever attended as a participant or a coach.

Several extended family members made the trip to Nagano, including Dianne's two sisters and her mother, Arlene, who lives in Elgin, Illinois.

"I never in my wildest dreams imagined I'd have a grandchild doing this," said Arlene Holum, 71. "There's a lot of deja vu.

"I'm proud of Kirstin because she's not only a good athlete but a good student and a terrific artist and a terrific person."

Kirstin holds U.S. records in the 3,000 and 5,000-meter events and is the reigning world junior champion. Last year, she became the youngest-ever U.S. All-Around champion.

She was somewhat disappointed when she missed qualifying for the Olympic team in the 1,500-meter distance. But she realizes that her early departure from the sport means she will not have time to accomplish all she might have once envisioned.

That may include the 3,000 meters, where the field is deep and formidable. The last two Olympic gold medalists at that distance, Germans Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann and Claudia Pechstein, say they will have to skate world records to have a chance of being in the top three.

"You think about winning a medal, but there is such huge competition," Kirstin said. "Everyone is skating so well. I am up there, but it would have to be quite a miracle."

Bonnie DeSimone is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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