Olympian Lin Lin Sun gives instructions to a group of speed skaters during a clinic at Hamilton Community Center and Ice Arena in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, June 22, 2023. The Full Throttle Speed Skating Team hosted a training clinic by Sun, who won a gold medal for China in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
Mike Wolanin | The Republic
When Taylor Burdekin was training with the US Speed Skating team in Salt Lake City nearly a decade ago, her coach was Lin Lin Sun.
Sun, who won a gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver as part of China’s women’s 3,000-meter relay team, was part of the US national team staff and worked as development director for US Speed Skating. Now, she travels around the country helping coach aspiring speed skaters.
This week, Sun was in Columbus to assist with the camp of Full Throttle Speed Skating, which is led by Taylor Burdekin and her husband Mikey.
“When Taylor reached out, I was really happy,” Sun said. “It’s just great to have these skaters give back to the public and still coaching. In the Midwest, we’re missing a lot of coaches. We have a lot of ice rinks. There’s a lot of hockey programs and figure skating, but we don’t have speed skating. So whenever there’s a chance I can go help out and get more people to know about the sport, I definitely want to help out.”
Sun started working camps in 2012 and formally began her coaching career in 2014 in New Jersey. She moved to Salt Lake City in 2015.
“The reason why I came back to coaching was, I was a former skater, high intensity for so many years,” Sun said. “So in 2009, I said no matter how I finish (at the 2010 Olympics), I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m going to stop. When I look back, I was mentally tired. I didn’t know how much I loved the sport.”
But after beginning her coaching career, she realized how much she really did love it.
“I saw the kids on the ice really enjoying it, and they love the sport,” Sun said. “I saw the parents drive them at 6 a.m. to come to practice. I didn’t realize how much I loved the sport. That’s why I was doing so many years of the high intensity. I just love to see kids be happy and enjoying it. They like the speed. They like the challenge.”
After being an assistant coach for the US in the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Sun moved back to China from 2019-21 to be a team leader and team manager for the Chinese national short track team. She returned to Salt Lake City in 2021 and now works for the Olympic Legacy Foundation and Olympic Oval.
Sun also works a lot of camps like the one Full Throttle hosted this week at Hamilton Community Center and Ice Arena.
“Having Lin Lin here, she’s an Olympian, so she has a certain level of experience that is invaluable to the kids, but she is also a tremendous coach,” Mikey Burdekin said. “Just because you’re an Olympian doesn’t make you a great teacher, and she’s one of the rare people that are able to do both. She’s in heavy demand throughout the country, so she does a lot of these camps. So we’re very lucky to have her here to share not just her professional accomplishments, but her teaching ability, as well, so that us as coaches can also learn and keep teaching the skills to our kids, even when she’s not here.”
This is Full Throttle’s fourth year hosting a summer camp. Last year, former US national team speed skater Andrew Heo was a guest leader.
This week’s camp featured about 20 kids and one adult. About half of the kids came from the Full Throttle program, while others came from Cleveland, St. Louis and Champaign, Illinois.
Sun put the campers through not only on-ice training, but also some off-ice games. Tuesday afternoon, they went outside to play soccer with their hands — their whole team had to do push-ups if they used their feet — to try to help simulate staying low to the ground, like they do on the ice while speed skating.
“It’s been really great to have a new perspective for the kids,” Taylor Burdekin said. “Also, she’s a pretty fun, positive and inspirational person. Having been to the Olympics herself and having a gold medal, that is always fun for the kids to see and ask questions to someone that’s been there.”
“One of the great things about speed skating is, because it’s a small sport, the barriers between a small town like Columbus and the access they have to meet Olympians or skate with the national team and have those high-level experiences, the gap is really small,” Mikey added. “When we go to competitions, there are Olympians walking around, and you would never know. That’s hard to find in other sports, and you get that in speed skating.”
