Ohno Zone > Apolo Anton Ohno Interview, June 2004

Part 3: A look ahead to the 2004-2005 season 

At the end of the World Championships in March, you mentioned that a lot of changes were in store before next season. What did you have in mind?
I’m still learning about myself, my physical potential, my mental potential, I’m still growing. I’m only 22 years old. Every year, I get done with a competition and I try to improve for the next season. A lot of the athletes last year improved a great deal. Many countries did, too. So I think the sport itself is rising, in terms of depth. Hopefully I can step that up as well.

This season I’m really focused on myself and my goals. I’m really not going to get involved in any of the petty little things that I was involved in last year, because it really got me nowhere. I was fighting for things that I thought were right, and it was important to do at the time. But this season, it’s starting to get closer to the Games, and I need to concentrate on the specific goals at hand.

This is my dream, and I love skating so much. I love it so much. I’m already in a healthier state of mind. I have a little more confidence, which is kind of funny, coming off of last season, but it’s okay. I’m watching ‘The Lance Chronicles’, getting pumped up.

Are you planning to keep training in Colorado Springs?
I really, really hope so. I love training in Colorado Springs. I like the group we have here. But last season I was dealing with a lot, from the federation to just small, nitty-gritty problems. But this season has been better already. I’m not going to let any of that kind of stuff bother me this year, so hopefully you can see a new face and a new skater this year – much stronger and more like myself.

I only had a couple of competitions last year where I thought I skated like myself, which were Prague and Italy. The rest of the time I just felt off. I was always battling something, whether it was the federation or whatever. I never really felt like I had a chance to focus and skate to my potential the entire season. It took a lot out of me. It really did.

This upcoming year is a new season and I already have a solid plan. The distractions that I had last year were hard on my mind but will not take place this season!

How disruptive is it to have a new coach for the third season in a row?
We have the highest turnover rate of any business in the country! From a business standpoint – I just finished a business class last semester, and I was like, ‘Wow!’ It really opened my eyes to a lot of things.

We need to have a great coaching staff that is involved with the athletes, so that the team can bond with this person. It will create an atmosphere and game plan for the upcoming seasons. This has not been the case in the past and I hope that it will change.

Right now we need to get these guys going, including myself. We have to improve, ‘cause [other] teams are improving quickly, in terms of training and in terms of technique. We have to step it up.

You're in a class by yourself as far as short track in the U.S. How does that make you feel – extra pressure, since you're expected to win everything all the time? Or less pressure, because you do win all the time?
There is pressure. But the only pressure I really feel is from myself. All the pressure everyone else puts on me is really nowhere near the pressure I put on myself. I really have very high expectations of myself. I shoot for the sky, just like anybody should. We all should shoot for – not our limits, but our potential. I think I can reach [it], all the time, any day of the week. It just comes down to a little bit of luck, maybe, in short track, a little bit of good timing, and some boots that work and some blades that work.

What would you change about the sport if you could?
In terms of team skating, it’s starting to get dangerous. The protective gear and obviously, how the competitions are run – [they need to be] a little more consistent.

The sport has grown from what it used to be in the mid-90s to late 90s. It’s even grown from 2002. I just want to see changes made to the sport to make it better, to make the sport more enjoyable, make it safer. The speed is going to go up, no matter how small they make the rink, what they’re trying to do with the blades. Guys are going to keep going faster and faster. Hopefully they can start implementing some of those padding systems* – that’s going to help out a lot.

*Note: The Calgary Olympic Oval has a unique system of crash pads that move upon impact, breaking a skater's crash, as opposed to the more usual rigid pads backed by the hard boards of a typical ice rink.

Speaking of making the rink small, there was a proposal sent to the ISU to make the track smaller -- instead of 111 meters it would be reduced to 100m. One of the reasons given was that it would lead to slower speeds around the corners, which would presumably make falls less dangerous. What do you think of this idea?
I don't think that's going to happen. Any time you go down with another skater and they have skates on their feet, I think it’s going to be... dangerous. I think short track [rinks] are small as it is – very small, in terms of the track size. I don’t really know where they want to go with that or how they want to approach it.

There are some new faces in Colorado Springs this season. Who do you see as the up and coming U.S. skaters?
It’s hard to tell, because I’ve really never seen these skaters skate before. I know when I came into the program, man, I was just blown away by the stuff I did not know. But then I really started to learn and became hungry for knowledge about the sport. That in itself really was amazing.

It’s too early to tell right now. Even to see who’s going to make the first World Cup team, it’s too early to tell. Some guys are in awesome shape right now, then a month later they’re not skating very well. We’ll see. We’ll see who can tough it out and who improves a lot. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of improvements, though. I know there’s a whole 'nother world out there of skaters in the U.S. and hopefully we can find those people and get them training in a good training group.

One big issue with the U.S. team is lack of depth. What does it take to build that depth in the U.S. program?
[Skaters] have to be taught the correct way from the beginning. I know that for many years the way a lot of skaters were taught is not the right way, and you can see it in the technique and the way they race. It’s very easy to distinguish a skater from Canada or Korea from a U.S. skater when you go down the line. Those guys are just on a different level.

I know that we can improve. If we’re skating as well as we are now, without the knowledge that they have, we can really surpass that. It’s going to take time, and hopefully we’ll get [a coach] who is passionate and who knows their stuff. That’s what it comes down to.

As far as you know, is your first competition going to be the fall World Cups?
Yeah, in China. Before every single set of World Cups there is going to be a domestic trials now. I don’t know why they did that, who thought of that idea. It’s a really bad idea. In my opinion, we compete so much as it is anyways. The travel alone is very demanding on our bodies and minds, so I don't believe that we need to be racing domestically because the difference internationally and nationally are like night and day. Hopefully the skaters can have a chance to discuss this with US Speedskating and get some things changed because it doesn't help our international performance.

What are your goals for this coming season?
Well, performance-wise, I want to compete very, very, very well -- obviously. I want to be top three consistently. But on another level, there’s a lot of things I want to learn this upcoming season. It’s a stepping-stone to the Games. We don’t compete that much during the Olympic year, so this year, it’s good to get a lot of international competitions in, race against these international guys.

Continued - The 2006 Games and beyond

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