The phone call not only disrupted Raney's training plans, which include building toward her fourth Olympic Games, to be held in Vancouver in 2010. It also disrupted her personal life because she had just gotten a house in Calgary and enrolled in university classes for the fall.
Raney admits getting booted out of Calgary has been tough on her, but apparently she has at least gotten the speedskating portion of her life back on track. Raney won the women's championship of the 2006 Long Track Speedskating Championships on Wednesday at the Pettit Center.
Raney won both the 1,500- and 5,000-meter events Wednesday to capture her fifth women's overall title with a score of 169.588. Anna Ringsred of Duluth, Minn., was second with a score of 171.748, followed by Maria Lamb of River Falls, Wis., at 172.795.
On the men's side, Chicagoan Shani Davis won his fourth U.S. allround title with a score of 151.740, edging out his rival Chad Hedrick of Spring, Texas, at 153.684. Davis won the first three events of the competition, the 500-, 5,000-, and 1,500-meter events, but Hedrick won a measure of satisfaction in the final race of the day, winning the 10,000-meter event.
For Raney, 26, the satisfaction was that she could win the title without letting the Calgary disruption throw her off her game.
"It was the second week in August and they called me and said, 'Oh, by the way, you can't train with us anymore,' " Raney said. "It was a pretty hard blow to take because I love it up there and I've made it my home.
"Their new director of speedskating in Canada decided that international skaters would no longer be allowed to train with their national team. So it directly affected me and Shani and the Chinese skaters and a lot of other people.
"I guess their reasoning was that Vancouver 2010 was coming up and they didn't want to help anyone else's team. I understand that, but I don't understand why they waited so late into the summer to tell us. It was a very hard adjustment at that time of the year."
What made it so difficult is that Team USA is far from a cohesive unit. Team members train at various sites throughout the country, which makes it hard for the best skaters to push one another.
Raney trains with national coach Chris Shelly, along with Hedrick and John Loquai in Salt Lake City.
"There are only the three of us on the national team," she said. "That's not good. Everybody else is scattered around the country, finding different programs they wanted to get into.
"It's been a big setback for me because there are no skaters to train with. Chad is at a totally different level than I'm at, so he can't help me and I can't help him the way he needs to be helped. I mean he's a great teammate, but he's a guy and I'm a girl . . . that's the way it is."
Davis hasn't spoken to the media all week, but Hedrick was more than happy to talk about his victory in the 10,000-meters.
"It's about time (I won)," Hedrick said after winning in 13 minutes 38.22 seconds. He narrowly edged Davis, who checked in at 13:40.43.
"It's nice to win, but this is nothing more than our tryouts to go to the World Championships," he said. "You can write about it all day, but more or less the only thing that matters is what happens in February."
Hedrick says he is just now rounding into shape after taking five months off immediately after the 2006 Olympics.
"I went to Ireland for the Ryder Cup and went to Las Vegas to see some fights," he said. "I'm a big fan of Ultimate Fighting.
"I just hung out with friends, lived the life of a normal 29-year-old," he said. "I played golf five times a week for four months.
"My golf swing is great, but unfortunately my skating is a little rusty."
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