You never know what special surprises are awaiting you just around the corner

How a sore shoulder led me to a face-to-face encounter with fame, if not fortune

One day several decades ago, while I was dealing unsuccessfully with a persistent pain in my right shoulder that I couldn’t seem to shake, day or night, I finally relented and made an appointment with the Sports Medicine clinic at UC Davis.

I had long since retired from competitive tennis because after winning three straight Wimbledon singles championships, I had no more mountains to climb.

While a tennis racket is not especially heavy, the repetitive strokes in tennis all involve the shoulder, whether we’re talking about a forehand, a backhand, a first serve, a second serve or an overhead smash.

I remember once while playing for UC Davis against the dreaded Hornets of Sac State when I completely whiffed an overhead smash and felt a telling “zing” smack in the middle of my right shoulder.

While the pain went away within a few days and never became serious, even years later I’d get a warning twinge of pain in that same shoulder every time I tried to hoist a two-year-old onto my shoulders.

Over the years it became a bit more chronic, though I did remain ambidextrous while eating pizza.

While it never reached the point where I’d wake up in the middle of the night screaming in pain, I finally decided it was time to see a shoulder expert, and the UC Davis Sports Medicine clinic sounded like a perfect fit.

I wasn’t sure if they’d accept me as a patient, since I was a few pounds heavier than my fighting weight. I was truly afraid they’d take one look at me with my shirt off and say, “You’re not an athlete, you need to see a regular doctor.”

So there I sat in the Sports Medicine waiting room in Sacramento, fumbling mindlessly through old copies of Sunset Magazine and the Ladies’ Home Journal when I came across a current issue of Sports Illustrated, which was the gold standard of sports journalism at the time.

It was a special edition previewing the Winter Olympics that were about to begin, but there was one historical segment on Eric Heiden, recounting how he had become the first athlete ever to win five gold medals in the same Winter Olympics, in his case the 1980 games in Lake Placid, New York.

Eric Heiden

I had certainly heard his name, but truth be told, the Winter Olympics were never high on my sports radar. His story, however, as recounted by Sports Illustrated, was fascinating.

Turns out Heiden, 21 at the time, won speed skating gold in the 500 meters, the 1,000 meters, the 1,500 meters, the 5,000 meters and the 10,000 meters, the last about half the distance from Davis to Sacramento.

Eric Heiden

Not only did he win gold, he also set Olympic and world records in every event.

His time in the 10,000 meters obliterated the former world record by a whopping 6.2 seconds, which is a lifetime in speed skating.

As I put the article down and began rummaging for something else to read, a nurse opened the door to the inner sanctum of UC Davis Sports Medicine and called out “Robert Dunning?” with a question mark in her voice.

I raised my hand and got up out of my chair as she escorted me to one of those thick chairs in the examination room with the words “Dr. Heiden has your chart and will see you in just a minute.”

What a coincidence, I thought, this doc has the same last name as the guy I was just reading about.

The coincidence got even more interesting when I came face to face with the good doctor and noticed his name tag said “Dr. Eric Heiden.”

And that’s when I started doing math in my brain, figuring if he was 21 in 1980 as Sports Illustrated indicated, how old would he be now and did this particular Eric Heiden without ice skates look like the Eric Heiden wearing ice skates in the magazine.

“Say,” I mumbled with a sheepish smile, “I was just looking at Sports Illustrated out in the lobby and ...”

“That’s me,” he said kindly and humbly, as if he was almost embarrassed to be so universally famous.

Turns out that after the 1980 Olympics he went on to become a world-class cyclist and then attended medical school at Stanford before landing at UC Davis Sports Medicine as a board certified expert in shoulders and knees.

Eric Heiden

We spent the next few minutes looking at various images of my shoulder and discussing several options for making me whole.

“I’d actually love to operate on your shoulder,” he said with a broad smile, “but it’s not that serious and you never know for sure if you’ll get exactly the result you want. If I were you, I’d give it six months on its own and see where it goes.”

I left with renewed hope, determined to eat pizza left-handed for the next six months while following the gentle shoulder exercises he recommended.

After about four months, the pain was gone entirely, never to return again.

So, I am now a fan for life of Eric Heiden the speed skater and Dr. Eric Heiden, the shoulder savior.

My brief experience with him was pure gold.

Reach me at bobdunning@thewaryone.com