Photo by Patricia O’Blenes Andrew Astalos works on his form during a practice last week at Viking Ice Arena in Hazel Park. The Grosse Pointe Woods resident has aspirations of skating for the U.S. in the Winter Olympics someday.

The short track
to success

Since watching ’02 Olympics, local youngster has cherished and succeeded in speed skating

By Mike Moore
C & G Sports Writer

HAZEL PARK — When asked about his first speed skating race, Andrew Astalos could only smile.
The lighthearted smile seemed to tell the entire story.

But the 12-year-old Grosse Pointe Woods resident’s words made it even better.

“It was just my second time on the ice (as a speed skater), and I was wearing rental skates,” said Astalos after a recent morning practice at Viking Ice Arena. “They were big and bulky (skates). Horrible.”

The result was anything but.

Astalos, then 7, surprised just about everyone, including himself, as he cruised to a fourth-place finish at the 2002 Michigan State Championships at Viking Arena.

Quite an accomplishment given the skates he was wearing, but even more so considering the fact that he had been a speed skater for less than a week.

Watching Ohno                              
Tom Astalos, Andrew’s father, vividly remembers how captivated his son was by United States speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“He was just fixated with the way Ohno skated and performed,” Tom said.

So while Ohno went about winning a gold and a silver medal in speed skating, Tom went about researching a sport about which he had never known much.

Less than a week later, Astalos was on the ice at Viking and practicing with the Wolverine Sports Club, a group that works with athletes of all ages in cycling, skating and skiing.

That practice was Astalos’ first and only experience with the “different-looking skates,” as he called them, before his fourth-place finish.

The seed was planted, and his commitment to the sport was just beginning.

He had played travel hockey for a few seasons, a sport he said he loved and was pretty good at — but less than a year after beginning speed skating, hockey was a thing of the past.

“I really don’t miss it very much,” Astalos said. “This is such a different sport. It’s a lot faster.”

And, one he wasted very little time conquering.

Less than three years after starting, Astalos notched his most notable accomplishment, the championship in the pony class (ages 10-11) at the 2005 North American Short Track Championships in Milwaukee.

Since then, he has earned numerous national and international titles and honors, including a sixth-place ranking (based on a career-best time in a competition) entering the 2005 National Short Track Championships; being the No. 1-ranked American entering the 2005 North American Long Track Championships; and holding the title of No. 1-nationally ranked long track speed skater in 2006 and 2007.

“Andrew is a very strong, natural talent,” said Sue Ellis, a speed skating coach who works with Astalos out of Viking sporadically during the year. In her many years of coaching, she has guided skaters to more than 50 combined World Cup, Olympic, Goodwill Games and World Championship medals.

“He is very strong for his age,” she said. “He has great technique. He is a great student of the sport. Most importantly, though, he loves the sport. You have to love something like this to be successful at it.”

Following Ohno?
Astalos’ rise to the top of the youth speed skating mountain in America has been a very quick and direct one.

Just a seventh-grader at Our Lady Star of the Sea in Grosse Pointe Woods, Astalos, an honor-roll student, has aspirations of attending dental school at the University of Michigan.

That’s off the ice.

As for on the ice …

“I just want to keep working hard and keep having fun,” said Astalos, who, in his travels, has met many Olympic skaters, including Ohno. “If I can do that, I would love to represent the U.S. at the Olympics in either 2014 or 2018.”

“He definitely has the potential to do that,” Ellis said without hesitation. “If he continues to learn and continues to improve his technique, 2014 may be a year he makes it.”

While Astalos couldn’t hide his young age with his comments about enjoying the sport so much because — quite simply — it is fun, dad wasn’t far off with similar feelings.

“Since he started, everything has been such a blast for our family,” Tom said. “The friends he has made and the families involved with all this is what makes it so special. We don’t pressure him to become an Olympian or win every event. Our attitude is to just sit back and enjoy everything he does.”

If Astalos does one day become an Olympian and follow the strides of Ohno to ultimate glory, he admitted it would be a dream come true.

When asked if he would ever look back on where it all started — the humble beginnings with those “big and bulky” rentals — the smile returned to the pre-teen’s face.

“I’ll never forget,” he said.