Ellen
12-28-2005, 08:24 AM
DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Kris Freeman, who has type 1 diabetes, has come up with his own routine to constantly monitor his blood levels to adjust to cross-country training.
ANDREW CARDIFF /
Kris Freeman competes in a World Cup cross-country ski race. Freeman is America's first solid hope for an Olympic cross-country ski medal in more than two decades, in spite of an ongoing battle with type 1 diabetes.
Go ahead, tell him it's impossible. Kris Freeman got used to it a long time ago.
When the Winter Olympics begin in Italy in February, Freeman, 25, will be the latest in a long line of U.S. cross-country skiers who, you could argue, should be happy just to be there.
That's usually the case with American skinny-ski racers, who through most of modern history have been whipping boys and girls for the Europeans who dominate what clearly qualifies as one of the world's more grueling sports.
The Americans, whose lone medal in the sport came in 1976, a 30K silver courtesy of Bill Koch, normally are ecstatic with a top-30 finish in races that last an hour and a half and usually come down to a sprint between two guys named Sven and Olaf.
Which is why some people will smile politely when they hear Freeman, of Andover, N.H., tell the world this:
"I'm going to the Olympics to win a medal."
The thing is, Freeman is the only American in an entire generation with the snow cred to back it up. You may not have heard of him. But the rest of planet Nordic certainly has.
The Kris Freeman file
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_grey808080.gif
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gif
Age: 25.
Lives: Andover, N.H.
Trains: New Hampshire and Park City, Utah.
Height: 5 feet 10.
Weight: 170 pounds.
Body fat index: 4 percent.
Career highlights: Fourth place, 2003 World Championships 15k classic; Fifth- and sixth-place finishes in 2004 World Cup races; 15th in Olympic pursuit, Salt Lake City, 2002; member of fifth-place 2002 U.S. Olympic relay team.
Freeman turned Europe on its ear in 2003 when he handily won the 30K race in the world under-23 championships — and a week later finished fourth in the 15K classical race at the Nordic World Championships. He is unquestionably the best American Nordic skier since Vermont's Koch, who won the World Cup title in 1982.
That's impressive on its own. But it borders on amazing when you put down Freeman's stat sheet and pick up his medical chart.
In 2000, in the midst of training for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics, one of Freeman's routine U.S. Ski Team blood tests showed an alarmingly high blood-sugar level.
A follow-up test confirmed it, and a doctor didn't hesitate.
"It took him about five minutes to make the diagnosis — 'You're a type 1 diabetic,' " says Freeman, who was 19 at the time.
With no family history of a disease often passed down from parents, Freeman was stunned. Then he heard the doctors' decidedly non-pep talk about his future.
"They told me straight out that my career as an elite skier was over," he says.
His response that day set in motion the next five years of his life.
"I wasn't going to hear that," he says. "I went out and trained that same afternoon."
Olympic calendar
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gif
...
Jan. 3-10: U.S. cross-country championships Soldier Hollow, Utah.
Freeman began researching his disease, searching for elite-level athletes who had stayed in the game in spite of diabetes, which by outward appearance, seems to make competing in an endurance sport at any level unlikely.
For any diabetic, maintaining proper blood levels is a full-time balancing act, with as many as half a dozen daily insulin injections needed to offset additional blood sugar created by eating carbohydrates. At the same time, extreme physical exertion reduces blood sugar levels quickly, which can lead to weakness, shaky muscles, and in extreme cases, unconsciousness and even death.
A few elite athletes in other sports, notably U.S. sprint-swimming gold medalist Gary Hall Jr., have defied the odds and stayed on top in spite of complications from diabetes. But Freeman stood alone among elite endurance athletes.
"They told me I would have low blood sugar, I'd pass out, I'd never feel 100 percent," he recalls.
But his doctors, he insisted, "didn't know what was possible," especially with new tools, such as fast-acting insulin produced by Eli Lilly, a medical company that now sponsors Freeman.
Freeman was determined to make it all work. And he did, creating his own strict regimen that involves constant monitoring of his blood levels to accommodate the ups and downs of training and racing.
In spite of another setback, a painful operation on both legs in 2000, Freeman went on to compete in Salt Lake, placing 15th in the pursuit race. And in the years since, he has risen to the top of his sport.
When the U.S. cross country championships get under way at Soldier Hollow, Utah, on Jan. 3, Freeman's World Cup performance already has prequalified him for the Turin Olympic team. His older brother, Justin, will be there vying for a spot at his side.
Having diabetes is a hassle during race preparation, Kris admits. When most skiers get up on race day, they eat breakfast and start futzing with their skis and mentally preparing. Freeman gets up, eats a carefully measured meal, tests his blood, injects insulin, tests it again, eats more food or a sports drink, tests again — and so on, until his blood sugar is at a level he has learned will sustain him.
This is even trickier at high altitudes, which create additional stress on the body, which in turn throws blood chemistry out of whack.
"It's a definite balancing act," he says.
As a backup, ski-team personnel are stationed around race courses with high-glucose energy drinks, should Freeman's blood-sugar level crash.
"Once the starting gun fires, I don't think about it," he says. On those long, grueling courses, he's able to shut most of it out and just become a racer — one with a burning desire to win.
His best bet to do that in Turin, on a hilly course that Freeman has skied twice before, and likes, is the 15K time trial or the 30K pursuit, he believes.
For him, those Olympic races will be just like any other elite-level race. Because of his diabetic monitoring, they have to be.
"I have a routine," he says. It's tried, tested and successful, and he's sticking with it. It even accounts for spikes of adrenaline, which also affect blood chemistry. Freeman has learned to control those, too, so they're roughly the same in every race.
For Freeman, an Olympic medal would be a triple victory. One for him, and what he's overcome. One for U.S. cross-country skiing, which he knows will never approach the level of popularity it briefly enjoyed here in the '70s — or has now in Europe — without an American medal in the Olympics. And one, he hopes, for young athletes all over the world who get the same bad news Freeman got at age 19.
"I'm not the only diabetic out there doing things like this," says Freeman, who's an ambassador for the "Lilly for Life" diabetes program. "I want to put the message out to people with diabetes that they can do whatever they want to do."
Diabetes, he insists, is a roadblock, not a stop sign, even for athletes, no matter what cautious parents, coaches and even doctors sometimes say.
He knows the place to prove it once and for all is the biggest stage in sport — an Olympic medals stand. He's young enough to try again at Whistler in 2010. But Turin calls, and Freeman believes he — and his nation — have waited long enough.
"It's been awhile," he says. "The time has come."
Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com (rjudd@seattletimes.com).
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
Kris Freeman, who has type 1 diabetes, has come up with his own routine to constantly monitor his blood levels to adjust to cross-country training.
ANDREW CARDIFF /
Kris Freeman competes in a World Cup cross-country ski race. Freeman is America's first solid hope for an Olympic cross-country ski medal in more than two decades, in spite of an ongoing battle with type 1 diabetes.
Go ahead, tell him it's impossible. Kris Freeman got used to it a long time ago.
When the Winter Olympics begin in Italy in February, Freeman, 25, will be the latest in a long line of U.S. cross-country skiers who, you could argue, should be happy just to be there.
That's usually the case with American skinny-ski racers, who through most of modern history have been whipping boys and girls for the Europeans who dominate what clearly qualifies as one of the world's more grueling sports.
The Americans, whose lone medal in the sport came in 1976, a 30K silver courtesy of Bill Koch, normally are ecstatic with a top-30 finish in races that last an hour and a half and usually come down to a sprint between two guys named Sven and Olaf.
Which is why some people will smile politely when they hear Freeman, of Andover, N.H., tell the world this:
"I'm going to the Olympics to win a medal."
The thing is, Freeman is the only American in an entire generation with the snow cred to back it up. You may not have heard of him. But the rest of planet Nordic certainly has.
The Kris Freeman file
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_grey808080.gif
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gif
Age: 25.
Lives: Andover, N.H.
Trains: New Hampshire and Park City, Utah.
Height: 5 feet 10.
Weight: 170 pounds.
Body fat index: 4 percent.
Career highlights: Fourth place, 2003 World Championships 15k classic; Fifth- and sixth-place finishes in 2004 World Cup races; 15th in Olympic pursuit, Salt Lake City, 2002; member of fifth-place 2002 U.S. Olympic relay team.
Freeman turned Europe on its ear in 2003 when he handily won the 30K race in the world under-23 championships — and a week later finished fourth in the 15K classical race at the Nordic World Championships. He is unquestionably the best American Nordic skier since Vermont's Koch, who won the World Cup title in 1982.
That's impressive on its own. But it borders on amazing when you put down Freeman's stat sheet and pick up his medical chart.
In 2000, in the midst of training for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics, one of Freeman's routine U.S. Ski Team blood tests showed an alarmingly high blood-sugar level.
A follow-up test confirmed it, and a doctor didn't hesitate.
"It took him about five minutes to make the diagnosis — 'You're a type 1 diabetic,' " says Freeman, who was 19 at the time.
With no family history of a disease often passed down from parents, Freeman was stunned. Then he heard the doctors' decidedly non-pep talk about his future.
"They told me straight out that my career as an elite skier was over," he says.
His response that day set in motion the next five years of his life.
"I wasn't going to hear that," he says. "I went out and trained that same afternoon."
Olympic calendar
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_grey808080.gif
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gif
...
Jan. 3-10: U.S. cross-country championships Soldier Hollow, Utah.
Freeman began researching his disease, searching for elite-level athletes who had stayed in the game in spite of diabetes, which by outward appearance, seems to make competing in an endurance sport at any level unlikely.
For any diabetic, maintaining proper blood levels is a full-time balancing act, with as many as half a dozen daily insulin injections needed to offset additional blood sugar created by eating carbohydrates. At the same time, extreme physical exertion reduces blood sugar levels quickly, which can lead to weakness, shaky muscles, and in extreme cases, unconsciousness and even death.
A few elite athletes in other sports, notably U.S. sprint-swimming gold medalist Gary Hall Jr., have defied the odds and stayed on top in spite of complications from diabetes. But Freeman stood alone among elite endurance athletes.
"They told me I would have low blood sugar, I'd pass out, I'd never feel 100 percent," he recalls.
But his doctors, he insisted, "didn't know what was possible," especially with new tools, such as fast-acting insulin produced by Eli Lilly, a medical company that now sponsors Freeman.
Freeman was determined to make it all work. And he did, creating his own strict regimen that involves constant monitoring of his blood levels to accommodate the ups and downs of training and racing.
In spite of another setback, a painful operation on both legs in 2000, Freeman went on to compete in Salt Lake, placing 15th in the pursuit race. And in the years since, he has risen to the top of his sport.
When the U.S. cross country championships get under way at Soldier Hollow, Utah, on Jan. 3, Freeman's World Cup performance already has prequalified him for the Turin Olympic team. His older brother, Justin, will be there vying for a spot at his side.
Having diabetes is a hassle during race preparation, Kris admits. When most skiers get up on race day, they eat breakfast and start futzing with their skis and mentally preparing. Freeman gets up, eats a carefully measured meal, tests his blood, injects insulin, tests it again, eats more food or a sports drink, tests again — and so on, until his blood sugar is at a level he has learned will sustain him.
This is even trickier at high altitudes, which create additional stress on the body, which in turn throws blood chemistry out of whack.
"It's a definite balancing act," he says.
As a backup, ski-team personnel are stationed around race courses with high-glucose energy drinks, should Freeman's blood-sugar level crash.
"Once the starting gun fires, I don't think about it," he says. On those long, grueling courses, he's able to shut most of it out and just become a racer — one with a burning desire to win.
His best bet to do that in Turin, on a hilly course that Freeman has skied twice before, and likes, is the 15K time trial or the 30K pursuit, he believes.
For him, those Olympic races will be just like any other elite-level race. Because of his diabetic monitoring, they have to be.
"I have a routine," he says. It's tried, tested and successful, and he's sticking with it. It even accounts for spikes of adrenaline, which also affect blood chemistry. Freeman has learned to control those, too, so they're roughly the same in every race.
For Freeman, an Olympic medal would be a triple victory. One for him, and what he's overcome. One for U.S. cross-country skiing, which he knows will never approach the level of popularity it briefly enjoyed here in the '70s — or has now in Europe — without an American medal in the Olympics. And one, he hopes, for young athletes all over the world who get the same bad news Freeman got at age 19.
"I'm not the only diabetic out there doing things like this," says Freeman, who's an ambassador for the "Lilly for Life" diabetes program. "I want to put the message out to people with diabetes that they can do whatever they want to do."
Diabetes, he insists, is a roadblock, not a stop sign, even for athletes, no matter what cautious parents, coaches and even doctors sometimes say.
He knows the place to prove it once and for all is the biggest stage in sport — an Olympic medals stand. He's young enough to try again at Whistler in 2010. But Turin calls, and Freeman believes he — and his nation — have waited long enough.
"It's been awhile," he says. "The time has come."
Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com (rjudd@seattletimes.com).
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company