In Holland I became friendly with a foreign ice speedskater who was struggling to survive on talent alone. He had come to Holland to compete in long-track ice speedskating events; while there, he saw an opportunity to make some money competing in pack-style marathons. His name is not important, but his story is worth looking into, for it made me think about the way we, as athletes, look at our relationships with sponsors and how those sponsors look at their relationships with us. If nothing else, his plight caused me to reassess how I view my relationships with my fellow human beings.

Athletes, being people, tend to cluster themselves into social groups. They identify with their sport as they would with a territory. Sport is their language and their culture, and it often goes hand in hand with their identity. Like members of academia, an athlete must either perform or perish. My friend (we'll call him X) existed on the brink within that world, living in poverty and suffering real performance-related stress. Life in a foreign country (with little hope of staying there) gave X an identity problem. He felt himself to be in between worlds.

TOUCHSTONE OF A SPORT

Handsome yet self-effacing, X bit his nails to the quick because of the anxiety inherent in his predicament as the invisible athlete. Nonetheless, he kept up a cheerful facade - a facade that only showed its cracks to his significant other or myself. Like many athletes whose livelihoods absolutely depend on their performance and appearance, X did a remarkable job of hiding his injuries, be they physical or mental.

X was a crackerjack ice speedskater who - a mere seven years ago - was the reigning 5,000M world record holder on long-track ice. He was third at the World Championships that same year, placing behind Dutch national idols Rolf Falk-Larssen and Tommy Gustafson. But these days - being a foreigner with a soon-to-be-expired visa - he's not even sure how much longer he can stay in the Netherlands. As old records fall by the wayside, past performances in the athletic world seem to garner increasingly scanty respect; too often they're forgotten in the excitement of new accomplishments.

PROMISED LAND

Uncertainty followed X like the plague in Holland, a land of seemingly unlimited potential for the professional skater. Constant self-doubt locked him into a vicious cycle of sub-par performances and self-reproach. He would say euphemistically how, in spite of a good performance or two, sponsors just weren't standing in line for him. He was in a sponsorship rut.

Without sponsors, he had no money. Without money, he was unable to deliver good performances. He exuded enthusiasm for the sport, but because he lacked the communication skills necessary to negotiate himself a solid deal, no one gave him a fair shake. X and his girlfriend had sat around the bargaining table with many companies, but they never landed anything solid.

Like a scrappy ballplayer sent back and forth from the majors to the minors, X clung to the hope that one day he would win a race, get a break, land a sponsor. In the meantime he stooped to pick up the meager scraps thrown in his direction.

MARIONETTE

I saw him used by a company in a three-day skating tournament; he was paid nothing for a halting but charming interview that aired on national television. When I asked X if he at least had gotten the togs as part of the deal, he lamented that he had been made to sign a contract to return them.

In this tournament, X created an electric atmosphere and was pushed to new limits by the crowd, winning the 10K race outright after an unanswered solo breakaway midway through the race. Common sense would dictate that such a performance was meritorious of some form of compensation. Not for X. Sometimes, one is forced to conclude that there's very little common sense in the business of athletics these days.

Manipulation of an athlete by commercial interests for their economic betterment, whether done blatantly or in a more insidious manner, is nothing new. For small-time athletes to be handled by their sponsors as a puppeteer handles a puppet is one thing, but for a proven and worthy professional to be devalued in the midst of other well-compensated athletes was a sad and glaring inconsistency that everyone knew about but no one addressed. His fellow athletes, especially, were aware of his mishandling, but too unorganized to do anything about it. They also feared reprisals from their sponsors should they take issue with someone else's treatment.

PAUPER

Back home, his fellow countrymen had grandiose delusions of his living as a millionaire skater. Truth was, he could have made more money teaching at a sports academy in Moscow. In Holland he shunned the cafe at the track for want of funds to buy even a single coffee. Were it not for his Dutch companion, sharing with him her 600-guilder-a-month academic scholarship (about $275 US), he would have had neither a roof over his head, nor would he have been able to be a contender on the marathon circuit.

Together they lived four stories high in a tiny flat. After they had paid the rent, gas and electricity, there were only 200 guilders left over for food, clothing and entertainment. How to survive on that? He caught rides with friends. He never threw any clothes away. He kept his eyes peeled for specials at the supermarket, and hoped that on his birthday he'd receive an envelope instead of a gift. A night out on the town was out of the question altogether.

SERVITUDE

My skater friend was no stranger to being a slave. Ten years ago he was a very promising skater who subsequently reached the top of it all with a world record that stood for two years, between 1983 and 1985 (6:56.66 in the 5,000m). Yes, those were the glory days. But he was on a short leash, so that any deviation from the program (perceived or otherwise) could cost him his privileged place on the team. Of course, should he have chosen to drop out, there were always a hundred rabid dogs willing to take his place.

It was hard to have fun skating. Everything was laid down by higher hands, and the individual athlete had to give way to the collective athlete. If X had failed to keep up with the training program, he might just as well have disappeared. And had he refused to take the "vitamins" prescribed to him, he would have been kicked off the team.

BODY LANGUAGE

This severe training program did my friend much more harm than good. X's constant subjugation at the hands of his coaches greatly shortened the height and breadth of his athletic career. The summer after his bronze in the World Championships in Oslo and his world record in Alma Ata he fell deathly ill. He had been training on his bicycle under the burning sun, and then had drunk an enormous amount of water on an empty stomach. For ten days he lay in hospital, losing 25 pounds.

After an episode like that, it's important to build up your fitness again very carefully, but X wasn't allowed the time to readjust. He had to either get with the program or ship out, no back talk allowed. Now X wishes he had only listened to his body - since then, he's always come up just a little short to be selected for the European Championships, the World Championships, or the Olympic Games.

TURNED TABLES

Irony of ironies, in this tumultuous year of 1992 he was selected to compete in the European Championships - practically against his will. With his native country so occupied with burying itself, it had no resources to send its skaters to Holland to compete for sports at the following year's World Championships. It beseeched its citizens already in the Netherlands to participate, a request that caused X to experience some severe bout of nervous anxiety.

Having renounced his regimented involvement in metric events in favor of citizenship in the more convivial marathon circuit, X was, in essence, an expatriate of long-track skating. He hadn't practiced a start in more than five years. His ragged nails showed it. Why embarrass himself and risk not even ducking under 40 seconds in the 500M, in a country where thousands could?

Imagine him - there he was, a fugitive form the system he was a product of, not even on good terms with that system, now being pleaded with to join the team. Perhaps the worst part of it was that they gave nary a thought to his personal honor - he was simply expected to report in uniform and contribute to the common good.

In the end he acquiesced, donning his country's colors at the urging of everyone and everything except the little voice inside of him that told him he no longer belonged. Ultimately, it wasn't his poor 500 that brought shame upon him, but his dubious interference (getting lapped) with a near world-record by a Dutchman skating the 5,000M that brought boos raining down upon him. This only aggravated X's identity crisis.

SIXTH WORLD CITIZEN

Cultural geographers study the earth, its people and the relationships of people to the earth and to their fellow human beings. After World War 2, they came up with new terms to describe the patterns humans make with their use of territory. They called these patterns worlds, to describe states and nations in groupings based on social, political and economic factors.

The "First World" is the free world, consisting of the industrialized, Western noncommunist countries. The "Second World" is geopolitically distinct from the First and was (is) comprised of the communist or socialist states. The 'Third World" referred to the countries that were nonaligned with the superpowers in the Cold War period; it has since changed from a term with political meaning to one with an economic meaning. The term 'Fourth World" applies to nonconsenting members of sovereign territories, natives not wishing to assimilate their culture into the mainstream. The term "Fifth World" describes people displaced by political and economic events - refugees.

But these cultural geographers neglected to define the "Sixth World", of which my skater friend is a member. He is outside his country but not a refugee. He is a consenting citizen of that country but doesn't wish to go back. Wanted neither by his native country nor by his adopted country for economic reasons, he is held captive by his own fears for the future as he tries to prolong his stay in a promised land for skaters. In every way, X is a Sixth World citizen, living by his wits, on the edge of his skate.