The Price of Gold

by Marty Nothstein

  Fiedler garners my apology by virtue of his status as the world’s best sprinter. But by not backing down en route to the finish line, I earn Fiedler’s respect.

  6

  ALPINE TRAINING

  IN THE WINTER of ’93, Gil and I escape the snow and ice and sleet that blanket the Lehigh Valley and travel to San Diego. During the off-season Ken Carpenter had back surgery. Doctors removed part of a disc in his spine. Now, he’s getting back into shape, and he asks me to come train with him for a couple of weeks.

  Ken treats bike racing as a profession. He goes to bed early and rises before the sun. Every morning, he punches the clock; his satellite offices include the Southern California roads, the weight room where he works out, and the blacktop velodrome in San Diego’s Balboa Park where he rides thousands of laps each season.

  Ken puts us up in his small, well-kept home. Gil sleeps on the couch. I find a spot on the floor. He turns the lights out at 9 p.m. My tutelage will start first thing the next morning.

  It’s still dark out when I’m abruptly woken by the sound of coffee beans grinding. I’m 22, and I don’t yet understand the drink’s magical benefits. The acrid smell nauseates me. Gil gets me out of bed with a kick to the side. “Get up,” he says, reminding me I’m still not royalty.

  Ken pulls out a giant box of national team cycling clothes from the Barcelona Olympics. He puts on a long-sleeve jersey emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes.

  I look at Ken’s uniform enviously. Many of the PA Dutch men I hunted with as a kid were veterans of war. Some were even POWs. Around the campfire they told stories about defending our country; they spoke not with bitterness, but with genuine pride. “Listen to and respect these men,” my father told me. “Serving your country is a great honor.”

  I’m no soldier. My country likely won’t call upon me to fight in any wars during my lifetime. But when I see Ken, dressed head to toe in the US colors, it reoccurs to me that I can serve and honor my country by representing the United States at the Olympics.

  I want to equal, and then surpass, what Ken has achieved. Amazingly, Ken wants to show me how to do just that. He wants me to expand upon what he built. But first I must prove I can do the job required—that I can punch the clock and work from sun up to sun down, every day.

  We ride up Highway 101 to Torrey Pines Park, where an abandoned portion of the old Highway 101 gradually winds up a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. “Put your bike in its hardest gear,” Ken says. I shift into my big chainring, and my smallest cog in the back, a gear ratio typically reserved for steep descents.

  We sprint up the gradual hill, again and again. The intense efforts mimic power lifting, but on a bicycle. For up to 3 minutes at a time, I push down on my crankarms with all of my might. I look as if I’m riding in slow motion. I feel every muscle in my legs, ass, and back straining to turn the pedals over, to summit the hill. I gasp for air after each interval.

  I’ve never ridden this hard, this early in the year. For ages, the mentality of many sprinters was to ride around lightly during the off-season, never taxing their legs. They let their big chainrings collect dust during the winter, and subsequently squandered the bulk of fitness they had built during the race season.

  Ken doesn’t buy into this mentality. “Why would I let myself go from sprinting a 10.5-second flying 200 meters in August to an 11.5 in March?” he asks. Work hard now, Ken says, and race strong all season long.

  So we work hard. In addition to the morning rides, we spend hours at the gym every afternoon. Ken is a masochist in the weight room. His daily lifting regimen opens my eyes to the number of plates you can physically stack on a bar before trying to pull it off the ground.

  The morning after our Torrey Pines workout (Coffee. Kick. “Get up.”) Ken and I ride down to the Fiesta Island training loop. A 4-mile-long, pancake-flat road rings the island, which sits in the middle of San Diego’s Mission Bay. Ken describes the morning’s workout, a series of 5-minute intervals at 90 percent of our maximum effort. Ramp up the pace until you feel as if you’re about to throw up, he says, then hold it.

  Ken is smooth and controlled as he flies along the shore of the bay. In comparison, I’m a caricature of pain. By the last minute of each interval, saliva drools from my mouth. Again, Ken says. Then, again.

  I’m a mess, but I never falter mentally. I never utter a word of dissent. These workouts got Ken fifth at the Olympics. I want to win the Olympics one day. No one will anoint me the king of sprinting. Ken won’t just hand me the crown. I’ll have to take it.

  The next morning (Coffee. Kick. “Get up.”) we go to the track. The velodrome sits within San Diego’s 1,200-acre Balboa Park. The park itself is an astonishing place with wide-open spaces, immaculately manicured gardens, and grand museums. But the velodrome, 333 meters long with shallow banking and a number of lumpy cracks, is a dump compared to the silky-smooth surface at T-Town.

  Ken tells me the big track is ideal for training, though, especially for building massive top-end power. Its long straightaways allow Ken to turn a bigger gear and reach higher speeds without having to fight the bike through steeply banked turns.

  On the Balboa track, my legs acclimate to big gears and high speeds. Ken and I take turns leading each other out for sprints on the long straightaways, one of us ramping up the speed to over 40 miles per hour and the other holding it for as long as he can. Ken developed a reputation for cracking his opponents by outlasting them in drawn-out sprints. I will too.

  After my performance at the Open des Nations the previous fall, the Feds declare me their guy for the Atlanta Olympics. They outfit me with top-of-the-line racing bikes and fly me to track events around the world. After the ’92 Games, the International Olympic Committee no longer requires racers to maintain their amateur status. I’m free to earn a living from racing my bike. But even for the top bike racers in the US, the term living takes on a very literal meaning. My first professional contract, with a team cosponsored by the Philadelphia Flyers, amounts to around $4,000.

  It’s just enough to pay for the tiny apartment I’m renting from my dad on Trexlertown’s sparse main drag, next to our family’s Dodge dealership. I put food in my mouth with a stipend from the national team, and one of my biggest motivators, prize winnings. The better I race, the better I eat. The team covers all my cycling-related expenses.

  Training, eating, sleeping, and racing are my primary concerns. Results define my success, not salary figures. And as the ’93 racing season progresses, my results accumulate.

  In March, I compete at the Copa International Championships in Cuba, setting the fastest qualifying time for the flying 200 meters, then going on to win the sprint tournament, as well as the miss-and-out (a mass start race where the last rider across the line each lap is eliminated). I’m named the best overall rider of the event.

  In May, I head down to Atlanta for a big-money track race called the First Union Grand Prix. I win and pocket a $1,000 check. Then I’m off to Europe with the national team to race on the prestigious European track circuit.

  Over the course a month, I race in Copenhagen, Berlin, and Frankfurt. I’m thrown into sprint tournaments with legendary German sprinters like Michael Hübner and hold my own. At the very first track-racing World Cup, in Copenhagen, I make the sprint finals. I end up with a silver medal after narrowly losing to Italian sprinter Roberto Chiappa.

  I return home to the Lehigh Valley just in time for the season opener of Friday night racing. Even though I’m the Feds’ best-supported sprinter, I must go through the same selection process as everyone else to earn a spot on the worlds team for the keirin.

  At the end of July, the Feds hold a keirin tournament in T-Town. The top eight riders in the US will compete in four keirin races, held over 2 days. The two racers with the most points at the end of the tournament will get selected for the keirin at worlds.

  In front of my hometown crowd, I win both keirin races on Thursday night, and then secure the first race of the ev
ening on Friday. Heading into the final race of the tournament, I have 12 points and am guaranteed a worlds spot. The four racers behind me, battling for the second selection spot, are all tied with two points each. Among those racers are Swift and Carpenter. Ken never fully recovered from his back injury, and he has struggled in the previous races, but he yearns for a final shot at world championship glory.

  I try to repay Carpenter by helping him out in the race. “Stay on my wheel,” I tell Carpenter as we start the last selection race. I shoot to the front of the group. But Carpenter lacks the power to stay with me. He gets boxed in and pushed back in the long line of racers. I win my fourth consecutive race. Swift takes second. Carpenter doesn’t make the worlds team.

  Based on his Olympic performance, Carpenter’s an automatic selection for the match sprint at worlds. But he declines the spot. “I have to be honest with myself,” he says.

  He doesn’t race in the United States again. I’ve earned his crown.

  We arrive in Norway for worlds. The races take place inside a giant sports arena built in advance of the ’94 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. The velodrome is wooden and 250 meters around. Though the smaller track is not necessarily ideal for big, powerful sprinters like me, the size and surface indicates a trend for international events. I’ll need to adapt if I want to remain competitive, long term.

  Though it’s only August, it’s already brisk in Norway. The weather reminds me of fall back home in the Lehigh Valley. I look forward to putting on leg warmers and a jacket for our light training rides through the Norwegian countryside. The cool air invigorates me. I’m confident in the form I displayed all season—undoubtedly the result of hill sprints up Torrey Pines and the vomit-inducing intervals around Fiesta Island.

  In the match-sprint tournament, I qualify sixth. I make it through the first two rounds and the quarterfinal relatively unchallenged. In the semifinal match, I meet Hübner, a giant of a man. He’s the reigning professional world champion in both the sprints and the keirin.

  The winner of our race goes for gold in the finals. In the first sprint, Hübner controls the front and beats me easily. In the second ride, he leads again. I make a run at him through the third and fourth turns, but he’s too powerful. I’m close, but he crosses the line half a wheel ahead me.

  In the bronze-medal round, I run into another German, Eyk Pokorny. I beat Pokorny in the first ride, but he comes back and wins two straight. He takes the bronze. I finish fourth in the match sprints. Hübner loses to the Australian Gary Neiwand in the gold-medal match.

  I finish one step off the podium in my first individual world championships as a senior, and I’m livid with myself. My competitors took advantage of my inexperience and exposed me tactically. I came to Norway hoping for a top-eight finish; now I’m determined to get a medal.

  My fourth-place finish doesn’t come without reward, though. Fifteen minutes after my bronze-medal race, I’m warming down on the rollers (a stationary trainer preferred by track cyclists) in the national team cabin, when a man in his mid-seventies approaches me. His tells me his name is Jan Derksen, he’s Dutch, and he won the sprint world championship in 1946.

  Now, he’s an agent for the European six-day circuit, a series of track races that take place every winter. The lineage of six-day racing dates back to the origin of the sport of cycling. It’s a unique honor to compete in a six-day race, I know. Derksen says the top four sprinters at worlds are offered a spot at the six-days every year. The pay is lucrative, the sprinting mostly for show.

  He offers me a contract on the spot. I flip through the document. It’s a mixture of languages including Dutch and German, most of which I can’t read. But I understand the section that says the contract will pay me $3,000 apiece for three different six-day races in Germany, plus expenses.

  I sign the contract.

  A couple of days later, the keirin tournament starts. In a keirin race, anywhere from five to nine riders race eight laps together around the track. A motorbike leads the group until there are two and a half laps to go. Once the bike pulls off, the racers rush to the finish line.

  To ride a keirin is to attempt to control chaos. In a match sprint, I only need to worry about my opponent and myself. But in the keirin, five other racers want me to lose. I’ve gone from first to fifth in a matter of meters during keirin races. Ride high in the final turn to block someone from passing, and three riders will drop underneath you. In the keirin, a little luck goes a long way.

  I plan on avoiding the inherently dangerous fight for position, and continuing to use my dominating long sprint to win races. In the first round, I go to the front as soon as the pace bike pulls off the track with 600 meters to go. I slowly raise the speed, fast enough so that no one is tempted to jump past me, but not so fast that I fizzle out before the final 50 meters. Race after race, no other rider can come around me. I win my way into the keirin finals determined to rectify my mistakes in the match sprint. I eye my competition. Hübner fell in the semifinal and broke his collarbone. He’s out. But Neiwand’s in the race. He’s the uncontested favorite. Two crafty Japanese riders toe the line. They’ll try to work together. The Frenchman Magné is a wild card and someone to watch for on the last lap.

  Gil isn’t in Norway, but I can hear him in my head as I line up. Battle for the front from the start. Get behind the pace bike. Stay out of the rough surf, the turbulence. “Rough surf” and “turbulence” are the terms Gil and I use to refer to the scrum of racers battling for position behind the leader, where it’s like riding in the choppy white water of a crashing wave, or the disturbed air on the trailing edge of an airplane wing.

  The race starts, and I surge off the line, beating every other rider to the front and taking first wheel behind the pace bike. The other riders try to push me out of position, but I fight them off. Just before the pace bike pulls off, a Japanese rider, Toshimasa Yoshioka, rides up beside me with his teammate in tow. I let Yoshioka in front of me and bump my way back onto his wheel, forcing his teammate out of position.

  The pace bike pulls off, and I’m second wheel. Perfect. Two laps to go. Yoshioka winds up his sprint. He gets low on his bike, maximizing his aerodynamic profile, hoping he can get going so fast that no one will come around him. The air buffets off my large frame behind the Japanese rider. I’m perfectly positioned to lead with a lap to go.

  The bell signaling the last lap rings as we cross the start-finish line. I sense the riders behind me jostling for position, preparing to pounce. We round the second turn, into the back straight. I jump beside Yoshioka. We’re nose to nose as we enter the third turn. Neiwand swings to my right, high up on the banking. He’s flying, but he’s also taking the longest route to the finish.

  We fling ourselves out of the final turn. Less than 75 meters to the line. Yoshioka leads, barely. Magné finds a hole along the inside. Neiwand surges. We’re four riders wide across the track as the line approaches. 30 meters…15…10. I pass Yoshioka. Neiwand nips me. Magné throws his hand in the air, unconvincingly.

  The replay confirms Magné passed Yoshioka on the blue apron, the equivalent of running out of bounds en route to a touchdown. The officials disqualify him. We’re still spinning around the track, cooling off from the dramatic finale, when Neiwand is announced as the winner. I move up to second. I’m a silver medalist at the world championships. A step away from number one.

  I break through at the world championships, but Erv regresses. After winning a bronze medal at the Barcelona Olympics, he finishes sixth in Norway. He’s disappointed in his performance and determined to regain his prominence among the top kilo riders in the world. He convinces the Feds to send him to Australia for the winter. There, he trains under the national team director Charlie Walsh, whose drill sergeant-style coaching put Australian cycling atop the world rankings.

  After his 3-month stint in the Southern Hemisphere, I reconnect with Erv at a US national team training camp in Alpine, California. We’re the only sprinters at the camp, which is
primarily for road racers and endurance track riders. We choose to ride in the mountains while the other sprinters on the national team stay at an oceanfront rental house in Huntington Beach.

  It’s only January and Erv is already riding stronger than anytime in his life. He tells me about excruciating days on the bike in Australia, under Walsh’s coaching. The atmosphere was akin to a cycling boot camp, Erv says. The Australians put in 600 miles a week, doing 180-mile road rides. Their uphill, big-gear intervals weren’t just a few minutes long, but a full 6 miles. They did weight work and super high-intensity sprints on indoor trainers that measured their power output. And since it was summer in Australia, they regularly competed in track races on the weekends as well.

  The workload took Erv to the brink and then well beyond what he thought he could endure. He says it’s no secret why nearly all of the Australian cyclists he trained with were world champions: hard work and tons of it. We thought we worked just as hard as everyone else in the world. We were wrong.

  If we want to beat the Australians and the Germans and the French, we need to work harder. Miles, we need miles. Fitness is like a pyramid with aerobic endurance at the base, Erv explains. The bigger the base, the higher the peak. To sprint faster as the season progresses, we need volume now.

  With that mentality, we go full-throttle at the Alpine training camp. The endurance riders are the Indy cars of the bike racing world, made to go 500 miles at a time. We’re the dragsters, built for a quarter mile, blazing fast. Everyone expects us to roll over at the feet of the endurance riders, who possess double our aerobic ability. But instead, we terrorize them.

  We wake up every morning well before the sun crests the densely forested mountains surrounding Alpine, a little town just east of San Diego. It’s the height of the WWF craze and we get a kick out of imitating the wrestler Rick Flair’s trademark, “Woo!” Erv and I walk down the hall, knocking open the doors of the other riders and sticking our heads inside the dark rooms. “Woo!” we shout, rousing them from bed. We bang open door after door, shouting all the way down the hall, “Woo! Woo! Woo!” It’s a fine, positive start to the day.