Story posted Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Mono Can't Stop Olympian
GBS Grad Makes Speed Skating Team Despite Illness
By TOM ROBB Journal & Topics Reporter
Most athletes are at peak physical condition when taking their marks for an Olympic time trial, but when 19-year-old Glenbrook South High School graduate Lana Gehring qualified for the 2010 U.S. Olympic Speed Skating team last September she was still recovering from a case of mononucleosis.
Gehring made the short track speed skating team in two qualifying matches last September and November in Michigan. Just seven weeks before the September meet, Gehring was diagnosed with mono and told by her doctor she should take a few months off from intense training.
Gehring said she took two weeks off and came back slowly cutting her training days back from eight hours a day. And when she arrived at the September meet Gehring was not fully recovered.
"I tried to race smart once I was in the finals," said Gehring. "I held back in longer races to have the energy for the shorter ones." Gehring competed in nine races in one week at that meet.
"I'm super excited, I can't wait to go," Gehring told the Journal last week. "Everything's calm right now it hasn't sunk in."
Gehring will leave for Vancouver on Friday, Feb. 5 and will compete in her first race on Friday, Feb. 12.
On Monday, Feb. 1, Gehring learns what races she is competing in. She is currently racing in the relay where the U.S. team is ranked fourth and hopes to be placed in the 500-meter race.
Gehring first laced up a pair of skates when she was eight years old. She first followed in her big sister's footsteps to figure skating.
"But I liked to race," said Gehring.
Within a year, Gehring's parents brought her to a rink in Northbrook where she learned to speed skate. There, she met and trained with another boy from Glenview, then nine-year-old Brian Hansen. Both would train in Northbrook together until they were 15.
Hansen and Gehring are now bound for Vancouver in their first trip to the Olympics.
At 16, Gehring went to train at the Olympic training center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hansen commuted to a long track rink in Milwaukee four days a week after classes at GBS.
Many other past and perspective members of the team were training at Salt Lake. Gehring also received the training of the Olympic team's coaches.
She alternated semesters each year between a high school in Salt Lake and GBS.
In her amateur skating career, Gehring said she has been to "little hockey rinks all over the world" including the Netherlands, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Japan, Korea and Canada. She has skated in large cities like Berlin and small towns.
"We have it so great in America. Seeing all those different classes like in China, the neatness in Japan," said Gehring. "I love seeing how other people live at such a young age."
Gehring said the relay team has a good shot at the silver medal.
Both Hansen and Gehring said after the Vancouver Olympics they would continue to train for the 2014 Olympics in Russia.
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