With her mom gone, speedskater Jennifer Rodriguez stays determined

By Linda Robertson
lrobertson@MiamiHerald.com
Throughout her skating career, Jennifer Rodriguez has had one indefatigable source of inspiration: her mother.
Barbara Rodriguez was like a stopwatch from afar, providing the push Rodriguez needed in the demanding sport of long-track speedskating, which is as much about beating agony as beating your opponent.
Barbara fought cancer for 16 years. ''If Mom can stand the pain, I can stand the pain,'' was Rodriguez's mantra on the hardest laps.
She, in turn, motivated her mother. ''If Jen can do it, I can do it,'' Barbara would say.
On parallel paths, they tried to steal time.
Barbara succumbed June 15. She was 59. The cancer that started in a breast had spread to her nervous system.
She was at every one of Rodriguez's Olympic races -- 1998 in Nagano, Japan; 2002 in Salt Lake City; 2006 in Turin, Italy. Her first trip to the Winter Games came after a double mastectomy. Her third came after a recurrence of cancer, in her liver, and she learned to give herself injections so she could travel to Italy. There, inside the Lingotto Oval, she wore a blue Team USA beret to hide ''my bad, three-inch hairdo,'' and cheered with husband Joe.
Now Rodriguez faces the prospect of going to her fourth Olympics without her mother. She's entering the second year of a comeback at age 33 with the goal of competing in the 2010 Vancouver Games. Rodriguez, a Miami native and Palmetto High graduate, is the only Cuban-American to win medals at the Winter Olympics -- two bronzes in 2002 in the 1,000 and 1,500 meters. She's our J-Rod, a former roller skater nicknamed ''Miami Ice,'' and she wants to win another medal.
But she is weary from ''the worst year of my life,'' she said. ''I've been an emotional wreck.'' Divorce from skater KC Boutiette, who got her into the sport. Financial problems that have mired her in debt and forced her to sell her car, her training bicycle, her old skinsuits and maybe even her engagement ring. And now the death of her mother.
Rodriguez contemplated quitting, leaving the ice once and for all. That's not what Barbara would want.
''At first my mom thought the comeback was crazy, but she supported my decisions,'' said Rodriguez, who left Miami and the bike shop she and Boutiette owned together to move back to U.S. team headquarters in Utah. 'She said, `OK, you're going to do it and you're going to do it 100 percent.' ''
J-Rod's return was erratic: a few top 10 finishes, a World Cup victory in Nagano, a broken skate blade. Yet, she felt the old rhythm coming around, and the desire.
''I know my body is capable, I know it's in there,'' she said.
`HARD TO WATCH'
After the season, her mother became ill, afflicted with double vision, nausea and unbearable headaches. Barbara was set up in hospice at home. Rodriguez spent the past five weeks of her mother's life at her bedside, rubbing her head, holding her hand, talking as Barbara slipped from lucid reminiscences into hallucinations. The last couple weeks, Barbara couldn't tolerate medication and couldn't eat.
''It was really hard to watch her deteriorate and suffer so horribly,'' Rodriguez said of her father, Joe, and brother, Eric. ``In the past, she had always bounced back.''
Barbara's 10 cats knew she was dying. Her favorite, Bella, licked her face. On what turned out to be Barbara's last day, her family played her favorite music -- Christmas music.
'We hated it, but we said, `Here, Mom, we're playing this nonstop,' '' Rodriguez said.
Barbara was buried wearing her daughter's leather Team USA jacket from 1998. After the funeral, Rodriguez debated whether to continue skating. Did it make sense or was it a mistake, borne out of her frustration from 2006, when she overtrained and didn't win a medal?
She had poured all her savings into the Elite Cycling and Fitness shop, which Boutiette continues to run, and now she's nearly broke. Speedskating doesn't pay the bills. Unless you're Apolo Anton Ohno, the short-track skater who won Dancing With The Stars, you're stuck in obscurity until the comet-like illumination of the Olympics. Rodriguez receives $1,750 per month from U.S. Speedskating and the U.S. Olympic Committee, but like many Olympic athletes in fringe sports, she has no sponsors or endorsements. It's regrettable to see her and her peers struggle when it was revealed in the recent USOC shake-up that more than a dozen executives were earning outlandish six-figure salaries.
''If your sport is not on TV, your chances of sponsorship are slim,'' she said. ``There are only five speedskating tracks in the U.S. Americans don't have access to our sport, even though we have one of the best teams in the world.''
DONATIONS NEEDED
Rodriguez got financial aid from her mother, who worked for Junior Achievement of Miami, but her father, who owns a graphics business, can't afford to send checks. Rodriguez is hoping that even in these tough times, donors will step forward. One way to contribute is through the website Americaforgold.org.
She just wants to get to February. She has to. Her mother is gone, but her message of determination lives on. Rodriguez hopes to skate in tribute to Barbara in Vancouver.
''It's strange but sometimes it feels like she's still here,'' Rodriguez said. ``I feel her presence. She gives me strength.''