Going for the Gold: Chad Hedrick

The "Going for the Gold" series kicks off our One-Year-Countdown to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. We will feature a different 2010 U.S. Olympic or Paralympic hopeful each week with a vodcast on Friday of every month.

 Long-track speedskater Chad Hedrick spent his childhood at a roller-skating rink because his parents owned one outside of Houston. At a year and a half, he was learning how to walk in skates. By the time he was 2, he was a better skater than kids years older than him.

Chad's father was the coach of the area's roller-skate racing team, so naturally Chad got involved. When he was 8, Chad earned his first national championship title. Inline skates soon replaced the four-wheel roller skates, but he had no problem adjusting to the change.

When he was 16, Hedrick became the youngest inline skater ever to be a member of the senior national team. It wasn't long after that that he secured his first world championship title. For the next eight years, he won almost every title that was available to win in the sport of inline skating. He was so successful that a brand of inline skating wheels were named after him.

Watching his friend Derek Parra, who used to be an inline skater, win an Olympic gold medal in ice speedskating at the 2002 Games, however, inspired Hedrick to make the switch. If Parra could make the transition from inline to ice, so could he.

So that's what Hedrick did.

And in February, he could be winning gold medals in his second trip to the Olympic Winter Games.

A mere 14 months after he ditched his inline skates for speed skates in 2004, Hedrick captured his first allround world championship title. That same year, Hedrick also earned the Oscar Mathisen Memorial Trophy. Eric Heiden and Bonnie Blair are the only American skaters to have been honored with this award, which is given to the best speedskater of the season.

At the Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games, Hedrick captured three medals: gold in the 5,000-meter, silver in the 10,000-meter and bronze in the 1,500-meter.

Since then he has struggled through a number of setbacks, including multiple coaching and management changes, and most recently, hip surgery that kept him from training for much of the summer leading into this event. Now Hedrick's coach is none other than Parra.

And so far, so good.

Off the ice, things are going for Hedrick too.

In 2008, Hedrick married Lynsey Adams, who is from his hometown of Spring, Texas. The planning of their wedding was featured on Style Network's "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?" The couple's first child, daughter Hadley, is seven months old.

Hedrick, 32, carried Hadley on the ice last weekend in Milwaukee, where the first phase of the U.S. Olympic Speedskating Trials were held. There, Hedrick showed he was back on track. He finished the 1,500 in a time of 1:44.47, edging rival Shani Davis and setting a track record at the Pettit National Ice Center.

The first Essent ISU World Cup Speed Skating event is Nov. 6-8 in Berlin. Hedrick will be seeking some strong performances as he's out to prove he will be a tough competitor at the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.