Skaters zipped around the perimeter of an ice rink in Walpole last weekend, gliding around turns with grace, but more importantly, speed.
It was a practice of the Bay State Speedskating Club, the club where Julie Letai of Medfield learned the sport. Starting this weekend in Italy, Letai will represent the U.S. in her second Winter Olympics.
For some of the younger skaters here, Letai is an inspiration to kids including 7-year-old Aria. “Because if someone else did it, then I think I can do it,” said Aria.
Letai started out figure skating as a child. But she wasn’t into wearing the dressy outfits, she said.
“At that time, I was a huge tomboy, and I was just like, 'There’s no way I’m putting one of those on,'” she said. “But I still really loved to just skate, and when they would tell us to go as fast as we could, I would just love that.”
So she and her mom joined the Bay State Speedskating Club.
“We started going there as kind of like a mother-daughter thing, starting when I was about 7,” Letai said. “And the older I got, the more intense I would get. It’s an all-volunteer run club, which is really amazing. And the people there were also super generous and giving me instruction.”
Even at a young age, Letai made an impression.
“I remember Julie as a little kid, like when she was eight years old, and my son was the same [age],” said Jen Kola, the club’s president. “And she would be blasting around the ice, passing everybody.”
Kola had a nickname for Letai. “I call her Julie 'La Tiger’ because she has the eye of the tiger,” she said. “She’s got a very competitive spirit and I think that’s what serves her so well, why she’s on the Olympic team right now — because she wants to win.”
Todd Zaorski coached Letai when she was still with the club, and says she had an ability to focus when needed, but to turn it off at other times.
“You see athletes that are so intense, and it’s just training all the time, and so serious, and you worry about burnout with people like that,” Zaorski said. “Julie’s intense when she needs to be intense, but then gets off the ice and is joking around.”
Letai claims she’s not someone with a lot of natural talent. What she does have, she told GBH News, is a hard-working attitude.
“I think I’m able to focus really well and when I kind of set my mind to being better at something, I’ll work as hard as my body lets me,” she said.
It’s taken a lot of work to get to her level.
“It’s a sport that a lot of people get into at a really young age, which I think makes a big difference because, it’s a lot of unnatural body positions and movements and like different forces pulling against you.”
Speedskates aren’t like hockey or figure skates in that there’s no edge to dig into the ice, Zaorski explained.
“You are on a smooth, polished surface that is pretty happy to just slide out from you kind of Bambi-like, right?” he said. “When Bambi steps on the ice and all four legs go shooting out — that happens with plenty of new skaters that come out.”
The polished blades reduce the friction so skaters can move faster, but it takes some getting used to in the beginning. The body stance is also unique.
“The bend is a lot like a downhill skier’s tuck,” Zaorski said. “And it’s excruciatingly painful in the thighs and your butt muscles and your ab muscles to hold that position and being able to skate in that position. So most people don’t when they first start. They try and skate straight-legged which doesn’t really work with the long blades that are on your feet.”
Coming out of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, Letai said she felt confident she’d be going back. But she wound up needing hip surgery, and had to take a few months off from training.
“Then I got a concussion in the summer,” she said. “And then a couple weeks after I came back from the concussion, I ended up having a stress injury in my femur as well as tears in my quad. That happened about a month out from our World Cup trials and the only way to make the Olympic team is to get on the World Cup team and qualify your spot that way.”
Suddenly, going to the Olympics didn’t seem like a sure thing. She took a few weeks off the ice, leading up to the World Cup trials. It worked.
“I was able to pull it off, which was a huge achievement for me,” she said. “That felt more like my ‘made it’ moment than actually knowing I was going to the games because I really felt really uncertain going into World Cup trials.”
This Olympic experience will be very different from her last, Letai said, because the 2022 Games were held during the pandemic. No family or fans were allowed to attend those games.
“I’m excited for the crowd,” she said. “I feel like I get energized by the crowd. I think it’s really nice knowing that there are people up there who are going to support you no matter what, and there’s also a lot of people up there who will be really excited for you if you do well.”
The crowd will make the experience more “impactful,” Letai said. “You’re sharing it with a lot more people, obviously. I think it’s going to feel a lot more real in the moment.”
Letai will compete in two individual Olympic events — the 500-meter and 1,000-meter races — as well as the women’s relay.
In short-track relays, skaters have to perfectly time their entrance, skating in front of the previous relay partner, who pushes them into the race.
“Relay is organized chaos,” Letai said. “You have to have trust in your team. You kind of have to trust in the other teams around you too … that they also know what they’re doing and you’re not all bumping into each other.”
It’s the relay team that she says has the best chance of making the medal podium this year.
“I think everyone is at the best of their game right now, and that’s super exciting,” Letai said. “Every practice is really inspiring, seeing how we’re improving. And yeah, my sights for a medal are set with the relay. Our team has been meshing super-well. We’re working really hard to perfect everything. I’m excited to see where that goes.”
