It’s never good when an athlete maintains a “surgical timeline.”

Speed skater Sarah Warren, a Willowbrook native and 2014 Hinsdale South High School graduate, keeps such a journal.

It documents the trials she’s overcome to make her Olympic debut at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games. Warren, 29, will compete in the women’s long-track 500-meter final on Sunday.

“A lot of work for one race,” said her mother, Cathy Warren, who a few years ago moved to Salt Lake City, where her daughter lives and trains.

An incredible amount of work, rehab and recovery, rinse and repeat, for one race. Sarah Warren was inspired by Olympic teammate Lindsey Vonn’s comeback, but any athlete could admire Warren’s determination.

Her surgical timeline starts with arthroscopic surgeries on each knee within a month in late 2009 when she was 13, the same year she began speed skating.

She needed anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction of both knees due to injuries playing soccer at the University of Illinois.

Skating on ruptured ankle ligaments during a silver medal team sprint with Olympians Brittany Bowe and Erin Jackson at the 2024 International Skating Union World Championships, Warren went under the knife as recently as that October.

“This process involved relearning how to skate,” Warren wrote in her surgery log.

Add cartilage and meniscus cleanups and it’s no wonder that after 10 procedures she questioned her ability to land a top-two finish at the 2026 U.S. Olympic Trials to reach the Milan Cortina Games.

“You get four surgeries in the pre-Olympic season, you’re hoping history’s not written, but you know it’s going to be a fight and a clawback situation. I knew I needed every last moment,” Warren said.

“There were a lot of down days where you’re like, wow, can I get there? But then you see some light. The good days kind of started to outweigh the bad and you started to see this progress. I always believed.”

Crossing the line at the Trials on Jan. 4 in 38.67 seconds at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, .22 seconds faster than third-place finisher McKenzie Browne, it felt like an out-of-body experience.

“The only way I can describe it, as cliché as it sounds, it’s almost like everything flashed before my eyes, the idea of what I went through, what it took to get there,” Warren said.

“All the good, all the bad, in a millisecond.”

Circling the rink after her time came up, first she saw her coach, Ryan Shimabukuro. Then her mother, and her brother, John, and his wife, Chrissy. Her father, Morrison Warren, also was in the Pettit Center, somewhere pacing nervously, Sarah suspected.

“That’s when all the feelings rushed back,” she said. “That was just thankfulness, I would say, being grateful. It hit me in that moment. It took a village, and I keep saying that, but I can’t underplay it enough, the village it took.”

Counting among her mentors her great uncle, Chicago Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren, at around 7 she followed her older brother onto a hockey rink.

Sarah Warren played several years on boys teams, concurrently with soccer, until the checking got heavy and locker rooms more untenable, Cathy Warren said.

“We were still always at the rink and she was running around like a maniac all the time. We saw speed skating on the other sheet of ice when John was practicing one day, and we just threw her out there to see if she liked it. And it stuck,” Cathy Warren said.

Coached at the Glen Ellyn Speedskating club first by Carl Cepuran and then by his son, Eric (youngest son Ethan Cepuran will compete in team pursuit and mass start events in Milan), Sarah Warren began competing in short track racing at 15. She later converted to the 400-meter long track to take advantage of her athleticism.

Despite her injuries, playing defense on the University of Illinois women’s soccer team, and rigorous studies — Warren has a dual degree in biomedical engineering and chemistry, and a master’s from Johns Hopkins University in biomedical engineering — she rose through the speed skating ranks.

Starting with the 2012 Youth Winter Olympics, according to Team USA, and including U.S. Olympic Trials bids in 2014 and 2022, by 2022 Warren made the U.S. National Team. That led to world cups in 2023 and 2024 and the 2024 World Championships.

On Sunday Warren hopes to “skate my cleanest race possible” and eclipse her 500-meter personal best of 38.10.

It’s been a rough road to the Milan Speed Skating Stadium — and an opportunity.

“I think it’s a living test that you kind of get this platform and this spotlight right now, and it can show someone else maybe going through it, like, you can get through it,” Warren said.

“Even on the day where the light in the tunnel is as dim as it ever could be, there’s still a light. And then continue to work and realize it still could happen. Believe in your dreams — it absolutely can happen.”

https://www.dailyherald.com/20260213/olympics/i-always-believed-despite-a-string-of-injuries-warren-never-quit-on-her-olympic-dream/