Skeleton is a singles event, but Jim Shea Jr. did not travel alone when he made his run for a gold medal Wednesday at Utah Olympic Park.
Before the competition, Shea Jr. tucked his grandfather’s funeral card inside his helmet and hung one of his grandfather’s speedskating medals around his neck.
Then the two crossed the finish line together.
The card showed Jack Shea, smiling and ready to race at the 1932 Winter Games in his hometown of Lake Placid, N.Y. Jack won two speedskating gold medals at those Games and developed an incurable case of the Olympic ideal.
He passed it on to his son, Jim Sr., who competed in the nordic events in the 1964 Games in Innsbruck, Austria, and to Jim Jr., who made him swell with pride when he qualified for the Salt Lake Games in December. That made the Sheas the first family to produce three generations of U.S. Olympians.
“As long as he lives, he will be known as an Olympian,” Jack told a TV interviewer.
That’s all Jack cared about–being an Olympian, using the Games to promote friendship and world peace. Winning was OK, but not that big a deal.
But darned if Jim Jr. didn’t go ahead and win anyway in the first men’s Olympic skeleton event in 54 years. As a light snow coated the surrounding Wasatch Mountains, he had the fastest time in the first of two heats and then held off Martin Rettl of Austria to win by just .05 of a second in a total time of 1 minute 41.96 seconds. Gregor Staehli of Switzerland, the prerace favorite, was third in 1:42.15.
Shea’s victory touched off a wild celebration. After hugging coaches and competitors, he dug the funeral card from his helmet and held it aloft for the flag-waving crowd of spectators to see.
Chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” filled the snowy air, which surely would have been music to Jack Shea’s ears. He was 91 when he died Jan. 22 from injuries sustained in an auto accident, but an awful lot of people believe he still saw and heard it all.
“He’s here in spirit,” an emotional Jim Shea Sr. said. “I can see him clapping his hands and cheering.”
Jack no doubt would have cheered his grandson again when Shea showed up at a news conference, American flag bandana around his neck, and acted as if he would have liked to divide his medal among his pursuers.
“Now that I have a gold medal, I can honestly say friendship is a lot more important to me than medals,” he said. “It’s about friendship and it’s about competition.
“It’s about the world coming together in a great and peaceful way.”
As if to prove it, Shea spent much of the news conference with an arm around Rettl, who sported a red, blue, blond, and black hairstyle, with the five Olympic rings imprinted in a shaved area on the back of his head.
Shea’s peace and friendship talk might sound like so much malarkey if it didn’t span three generations and if he weren’t so insistently sincere about it. It’s an attitude that made him the natural choice of his U.S. Olympic teammates to give the Athletes’ Oath at the Opening Ceremony.
His grandfather performed the same duty at the Lake Placid Games 70 years ago.
A long course
Shea, 33, moved with his family to Lake Placid in 1988, and after a flirtation with bobsled, he settled into skeleton. By 1997 he was competing in World Cup events in Europe with the U.S. national team.
The team was struggling that season, and a coach decided it should return home. Shea, determined to develop into a successful slider, stayed behind.
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He spent two years hitchhiking to events, sleeping in bobsled sheds and living off his credit card. But in 1999 he became the first U.S. world skeleton champion, and that helped get the event into the 2002 Games.
Shea was considered a medal favorite, but a circulatory problem in a toe flared up recently, making even walking difficult. A doctor suggested surgery two weeks ago, but Shea said no.
“I just said, `If I go to the Olympics, will I lose the toe?'” he said, propping his bare foot on a table for all to see. “[The doctor] said, `Probably not.’
“Then I said, `I’m going to the Olympics.'”
Once there, Shea handled the flood of attention his family’s story produced without letting it become a distraction. As a result the Sheas are the second family to produce two generations of Winter Olympics gold-medal winners. Bill Christian (1960) and his son Dave (1980) played on the U.S. championship hockey teams.
“My heart soars like an eagle,” Jim Shea Sr. said of his son’s triumph. “It has been a very difficult last few weeks for my family, but Jimmy has handled it well.”
His grandfather was there every step of the way.
“I definitely felt him here today,” Jim Shea Jr. said. “I definitely felt him at the Opening Ceremony.
“I think he had some unfinished business before he went up to heaven. I think now he can go.”