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Hinxman: Reno woman left out in the cold when Deaflympics are canceled | rgj.com | The Reno Gazette-Journal
Alpine skier Nicole Brill should be swooshing in silence down a Slovakian slope today.
She knows it's loud when her skis get going fast. Deaf since she was about 1, hearing aids give her the ability to pick up sounds. She combines the aids and her partial ability to read lips to turn sounds into words. She asks only that you enunciate clearly.
But when she skis in the Deaflympics -- at speeds of more than 60 mph in the downhill -- she and her fellow competitors hear nothing. No wind, no skis grinding on ice. In competition, athletes are not allowed to wear hearing aids.
It's a sensory experience that able-hearing skiers can only imagine.
And in this quadrennial Deaflympics, it's something Brill can only imagine, too. On Feb. 11, three days before she was scheduled to fly to Slovakia, the 17th Deaflympics (formerly the World Games for the Deaf) were canceled.
Brill, a 35-year-old from Reno and the only U.S. woman scheduled to compete (along with three U.S. men), found out in an e-mail she received on her phone while training at Mt. Rose.
"I was totally shocked and numb," Brill wrote in an e-mail. ""» I just didn't know what to do. I stuck around at (Mt.) Rose doing gate trainings until I left earlier than usual to go home. It wasn't until that afternoon that I finally broke down."
It is unclear what caused the cancellation, the first since the games began in 1949.
"There may be some type of fraud going on," her husband, Tim Brill, said. "The rumors and the evidence seem to indicate it was canceled because the monies sent to the organizing committee in Slovakia never got to any of the venues and organizations. "» A week before, the head muckity-mucks show up and there's nothing there."
The International Committee of Sports for the Deaf is pursuing legal action.
Brill, who finished ninth in the downhill in her first Deaflympics, 2007 at Salt Lake City, was to compete in all five Alpine events. The downhill was scheduled for today.
She and Tim, who owns Aerobatic Company and Flight School (Nicole is a licensed pilot, too) have two sons -- and all have sacrificed a great deal for Nicole to have this opportunity. They live in Reno, and she works as a hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service at South Lake Tahoe.
She had to raise $2,500 to compete. She held a raffle -- her husband offered a flight and Mt. Rose kicked in with lift tickets. She trains with the Parisi Speed School inside the Double Diamond Athletic Club. Parisi also has helped sponsor her.
She spent about $1,000 of her own money, mostly to cover the cost of getting to Washington, D.C. The USA Deaf Sports Federation was to cover the flight from Washington to Slovakia.
Just a couple days after the news, Nicole's husband said she was handling it well. But that's not surprising for someone who has tackled more difficult hurdles as if they were bunny hills.
"I think she's pretty much over it," he said. "She's disappointed, but she's 35, she's a mother and a career woman. Things happen."
It's the kind of attitude one might expect from someone who has "deafskibum" as part of her e-mail address. Deaf? Yes. Limited? Yeah, right.
She got some of that chutzpah from her Swiss grandfather, who used to hike the Alps and then ski down.
"Would I do it again in 2015? Yes, I definitely would do it again," Nicole wrote. "Before the cancellation, I didn't think that far whether I would continue or not. I thought about becoming a coach for the young deaf athletes some day. I used to volunteer as a deaf ski instructor several years ago. Nevertheless, I will continue to play with the Reno coed soccer team and road cycling races in the summer and ski train with the Team Falcons in the winter for the next four years. The more the better."
They threw a surprise farewell party for her last week, the brainchild of her son, Alex, and a couple close family friends. Some in attendance were friends she hadn't seen in four years because she's been so busy with work and training. An ice cream cake with a white-frosting hill -- a snow-covered mountain -- was a hit.
"They couldn't find a skier to put on the cake, so I climbed onto the table posing as a downhill skier on the cake," said Brill, who learned to ski as a child in Aspen, Colo., and then also skied while attending college in Alaska. "It was a really neat cake. "» We talked a lot about what happened and why. Then the conversation turned to other topics. It was a nice surprise and they made my day."
The party was a trial run "» four years before the starting gates silently slam open again.
Alpine skier Nicole Brill should be swooshing in silence down a Slovakian slope today.
She knows it's loud when her skis get going fast. Deaf since she was about 1, hearing aids give her the ability to pick up sounds. She combines the aids and her partial ability to read lips to turn sounds into words. She asks only that you enunciate clearly.
But when she skis in the Deaflympics -- at speeds of more than 60 mph in the downhill -- she and her fellow competitors hear nothing. No wind, no skis grinding on ice. In competition, athletes are not allowed to wear hearing aids.
It's a sensory experience that able-hearing skiers can only imagine.
And in this quadrennial Deaflympics, it's something Brill can only imagine, too. On Feb. 11, three days before she was scheduled to fly to Slovakia, the 17th Deaflympics (formerly the World Games for the Deaf) were canceled.
Brill, a 35-year-old from Reno and the only U.S. woman scheduled to compete (along with three U.S. men), found out in an e-mail she received on her phone while training at Mt. Rose.
"I was totally shocked and numb," Brill wrote in an e-mail. ""» I just didn't know what to do. I stuck around at (Mt.) Rose doing gate trainings until I left earlier than usual to go home. It wasn't until that afternoon that I finally broke down."
It is unclear what caused the cancellation, the first since the games began in 1949.
"There may be some type of fraud going on," her husband, Tim Brill, said. "The rumors and the evidence seem to indicate it was canceled because the monies sent to the organizing committee in Slovakia never got to any of the venues and organizations. "» A week before, the head muckity-mucks show up and there's nothing there."
The International Committee of Sports for the Deaf is pursuing legal action.
Brill, who finished ninth in the downhill in her first Deaflympics, 2007 at Salt Lake City, was to compete in all five Alpine events. The downhill was scheduled for today.
She and Tim, who owns Aerobatic Company and Flight School (Nicole is a licensed pilot, too) have two sons -- and all have sacrificed a great deal for Nicole to have this opportunity. They live in Reno, and she works as a hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service at South Lake Tahoe.
She had to raise $2,500 to compete. She held a raffle -- her husband offered a flight and Mt. Rose kicked in with lift tickets. She trains with the Parisi Speed School inside the Double Diamond Athletic Club. Parisi also has helped sponsor her.
She spent about $1,000 of her own money, mostly to cover the cost of getting to Washington, D.C. The USA Deaf Sports Federation was to cover the flight from Washington to Slovakia.
Just a couple days after the news, Nicole's husband said she was handling it well. But that's not surprising for someone who has tackled more difficult hurdles as if they were bunny hills.
"I think she's pretty much over it," he said. "She's disappointed, but she's 35, she's a mother and a career woman. Things happen."
It's the kind of attitude one might expect from someone who has "deafskibum" as part of her e-mail address. Deaf? Yes. Limited? Yeah, right.
She got some of that chutzpah from her Swiss grandfather, who used to hike the Alps and then ski down.
"Would I do it again in 2015? Yes, I definitely would do it again," Nicole wrote. "Before the cancellation, I didn't think that far whether I would continue or not. I thought about becoming a coach for the young deaf athletes some day. I used to volunteer as a deaf ski instructor several years ago. Nevertheless, I will continue to play with the Reno coed soccer team and road cycling races in the summer and ski train with the Team Falcons in the winter for the next four years. The more the better."
They threw a surprise farewell party for her last week, the brainchild of her son, Alex, and a couple close family friends. Some in attendance were friends she hadn't seen in four years because she's been so busy with work and training. An ice cream cake with a white-frosting hill -- a snow-covered mountain -- was a hit.
"They couldn't find a skier to put on the cake, so I climbed onto the table posing as a downhill skier on the cake," said Brill, who learned to ski as a child in Aspen, Colo., and then also skied while attending college in Alaska. "It was a really neat cake. "» We talked a lot about what happened and why. Then the conversation turned to other topics. It was a nice surprise and they made my day."
The party was a trial run "» four years before the starting gates silently slam open again.