Jansen’s journey to new life

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Dan Jansen might have departed Calgary empty-handed, but the Wisconsin speed skater was the quintessential picture of courage at the XV Winter Olympics in Calgary.

“There were always a couple ways to look at it,” says the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame inductee.

“One, as the worst time of my life that I’d never want to wish on anyone. But the other side of it is, you have to take those situations and move on and learn from them.”

Jansen, then 22, was on the upswing of his career heading into 1988, and was considered a medal shoo-in.

But on the day he was scheduled to race the 500-metre final, he got a phone call telling him his sister Jane’s long battle with leukemia was nearly over.

“I talked to my family early on,” recalls Jansen. “I got a call at six in the morning, saying she probably wasn’t going to make it through the day. And then [another call] at maybe 10 o’clock or so, when she had passed away.

“I spoke to my mom and asked if they thought I should skate . . . we all knew, in my family, what it meant to Jane . . . that I go out and skate. Had I not done that, she would have just felt terrible for me . . . she would have felt bad about me not going out and trying.”

Jansen fell 100 metres into that event. Four days later, he fell again in the 1,000 metres while on a world-record pace. Immediately afterwards, he returned home on a donated private jet to bury the youngest of his five sisters. The funeral had been postponed until Jansen was finished competing.

“It was still something I was trying to convince myself that was really important and that I wanted to win it,” says Jansen. “I think part of me was fighting it as well and fighting the importance of the Olympics that day . . . I tried to just go out and go through the motions, like any other day.”

Jansen would later win Olympic gold in the 1,000 metres at Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994, after coming up short once more at Albertville, France, in 1992.

Jansen lives in Mooresville, N.C., with his wife Karen, a golf professional, and his daughters, Jane — naturally, named after his sister — and Olivia.

He’s a television speed-skating analyst who’ll work on NBC’s broadcast of the 2010 Olympics. He also does some corporate motivational speaking, using that day in Calgary as one of his topics.

He also started the Dan Jansen Foundation, for those fighting leukemia, in memory of his sister.

“It was obviously a huge part of life and my family’s life,” says Jansen, who recently finished a two-year stint as the Chicago Blackhawks’ skating coach.

“That whole year leading up to [the Calgary] Games . . . it’s still a time in my life that I look back on and actually talk about often.”