When we roll out with the endurance team for rides, Erv and I start in an all-out sprint, right from the parking lot, even though our legs ache from the previous day’s workouts. The groggy endurance riders scramble to catch up with us. When they do, they look at us with sneers, annoyed we made them suffer so early in the ride. But we’re determined to get in our licks while we can. We sprint away from them at stop lights, too, trying to make the skinny endurance riders suffer before the road points upward, and we start to fall to the back of the group.
On the climbs, we heave as the endurance team chats casually. Erv and I just aren’t designed to go uphill. Not only are we carrying 50-plus more pounds than the scrawny pursuiters and roadies, but our fast-twitch muscles crave short, rapid-fire bursts, not the slow burn that the prolonged mountain roads surrounding Alpine dish up. But we never give up on a climb. To stay with the group we claw and scrape and suffer until our eyes start to roll back in our heads.
Other US sprinters think we’re nuts for riding this much, this hard. But road rides aren’t all we do. In the afternoons we regularly hit the weight room, lifting until we feel queasy with exhaustion.
Each day, when we get back from the 100-plus-mile rides, the terrorization continues. We strip off our cycling clothes and launch into the hotel Jacuzzi buck naked. We organize impromptu games of tackle football and pull all sorts of hijinks.
“Stop talking about bikes,” Erv says one day to a rider who’s fretting about the next day’s 7-hour ride. “You’re stressing me out. It’s going to be 7 hours tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. Accept it and move on.” Control what you can control, Erv says.
No one works harder than Erv on the bike or in the gym. But when he’s not training, Erv makes a point of enjoying himself. We’re each given a reasonable stipend during the camp, and Erv blows through his money in just a few days, spending it on gourmet meals, expensive drinks, and an array of newspapers. I’m more fiscally prudent than Erv, but I share his mentality. Training is deadly serious. Everything else should be fun. Let’s laugh. We’re still kids.
On one of the final days of the camp, we roll out into drizzling rain and 50°F temps. We ride and ride and ride. The road snakes up through a mountain valley and over a giant pass between two snow-capped mountain peaks. Eventually I tail off the back of the group. The other riders prance up the mountain in front of me as I struggle to keep them in sight. The US national team coach, Danny Van Haute, pulls his follow car beside me.
“How much longer to the top?” I ask.
“An hour,” he says.
I dig in. As the summit nears, I start to pass some of the roadies who cracked and gave up. I crawl over the crest of the mountaintop and reintegrate with the group on the descent. Always sprint through the line, I think.
The final climb of the day comes in the last few miles, winding up a hill to our hotel in Alpine. I ride next to Erv as we lug our way up the last long climb. We’re cold and exhausted. Our sopping wet clothes hang from our limbs.
We take pride in the way we suffered, in how we’re suffering right now. The tenacity we put into every bike ride. Every pedal stroke, we turned with purpose. I look over at Erv. Water streams off the tip of his nose. His eyelids appear blue. He looks back at me. We grin at each other. Shit, ’94 is going to be a good year.
During the camp in Alpine, the Feds hire a new national team coach for the sprint program. When the Feds had asked me earlier who I wanted as my coach, I had suggested Andrzej Bek, who came highly recommended by Ken Carpenter. Bek is also a friend of Eddie Borysewicz (Eddie B, for the tongue-tied), a fellow Polish immigrant who transformed the US cycling team into a dominant world power during the ’80s. Andrzej’s Eastern European mentality doesn’t tolerate weakness. He only comprehends hard work and results. He commands respect and reciprocates it to those who are deserving.
Under Andrzej, the team’s workload doubles. He combines a huge volume of time on our road bikes with brutally intense workouts on the track. Many of the national team riders fall by the wayside. Some can’t mentally handle the training and quit. Others simply break down physically, succumbing to fatigue or suffering debilitating overuse injuries. But Andrzej doesn’t flinch.
The training is necessary to create a team of Olympic-caliber athletes. But it’s also his way of cleaning house, weeding out the weak, and leaving him with a group blessed with both the mental will and athletic potential to succeed. I never flinch or waver. I gobble up the training Andrzej dishes out, and remain hungry for more.
Andrzej recognizes this, and we develop a deep bond based on mutual respect. This is the man who will take me to the Olympics. I am the athlete who will validate his career as a coach. He tells me I can win the Olympics, but I will have to work harder than anyone in the world.
In the spring of ’94, I return to T-Town and continue training under Andrzej’s direction. Everything is going according to plan. I’m faster and more focused than anytime in my life. Then, one day, Christi calls me. “We need to talk,” she says. It’s unlike her to be so serious. I’m concerned.
We sit down, face to face. She gulps. Her eyes are glossed with tears.
“Guess what?” she says with a somewhat forced chirpiness. “I’m pregnant!”
She’s 21. I’m 23. We’ve mentioned marriage offhand. Kids? Never.
She’s scared—more scared than at any time in her life. She took the pregnancy test four times. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s definitely wrong, she thought. But each time the test came back positive. Then she went to the doctor for a blood test. The test is right, the doctor says. This can’t be happening.
But Christi’s happy, too—happier than she could ever imagine. She loves me. She wants this child. She wants a child with me.
“What do you think?” Christi asks me, biting her lip.
“Okay…okay,” I say. Okay, I can do this, I think. “Okay, we can do this,” I say.
Despite the pregnancy, we decide to stick to our plan. The goal is the Atlanta Olympics. We decide to postpone getting married until after the Games—until I accomplish the goal. Christi knows how she feels. She wants to be with me. I love her. I want to be with her. We don’t need a ceremony to prove that.
But we do need money. My priorities remain training, eating, sleeping, and racing—but now, supporting a family as well. My current salary won’t cover diapers and formula. To keep my Olympic dream alive, I need to win.
At a Friday night race in June, T-Town hosts the International Madison. The Madison is one of track racing’s oldest endurance events. The name comes from the race’s best-known venue, Madison Square Garden in New York City. Europeans simply call the race, the American.
In a Madison race, teams consist of two racers who take turns competing. While one racer competes, the teammate recovers by circling the top of the track. The teammates switch off every lap or two. The one who’s racing will grab the other’s hand and then sling the teammate up to speed, into the action of the race.
The Madison is an exciting but sometimes dangerous event. Teams win by accruing points at the finish of designated laps. The point system makes for constant action within the race, with riders jockeying for each upcoming sprint, or trying to break away from the pack and lap the field. And because the relief system lets the racers rest between their sprint efforts, the speeds stay consistently high throughout the race.
But the regular and unscripted exchanges between teammates make for a chaotic pack of riders. Throughout the event, racers must navigate a minefield of relief riders traveling a fraction of the pack’s speed. Additionally, muffed hand slings between teammates often end with both racers sprawled out across the track, along with anyone unlucky enough to come up behind them.
Even though I’m considered a sprinter, and technically not suited for the 80-lap Madison races, the high speeds and handling skills required in the event make it my type of race.
But Gil disapproves of me racing any eve
nts other than the match sprints and keirin.
“Why risk it?” Gil says of the oft-sketchy Madison races.
“Because I’m going to win, and I need the prize money,” I respond.
Thanks to the hard work I put in over the winter and spring, I’m experiencing my best season yet. I’ve backed up my breakout keirin medal at the ’93 worlds with impressive performances on the World Cup circuit, and I’m currently the third-ranked track sprinter internationally. In the US, I’ve regularly been competing in, and winning, a variety of endurance races on the track.
For T-Town’s International Madison, featuring teams from around the world, I partner with a rider a couple of years younger than me, Ryan Oelkers. Ryan is the nephew of T-Town’s first director, Jack Simes. He comes from a lineage of top professional bike racers on his uncle’s side. In fact, Ryan’s grandfather, Jack’s dad, actually competed at Madison Square Garden during the golden era of track racing in the 1920s and ’30s.
Though he’s small, red-headed, and freckly, Ryan’s New Jersey upbringing gave him a quick tongue and instilled in him a take-no-shit attitude. I like his toughness. Though he wasn’t officially invited to the Alpine training camp, Ryan showed up anyway and slept on the floor in a hotel room the national team used for equipment storage. He’s one of my best training partners, always game for a long winter ride in subfreezing temperatures. And while he might not possess world-class talent, Ryan’s a tenacious competitor, willing to dig deeper and suffer more than most racers. We’re great friends.
Ryan and I warm up for the Madison by practicing a few hand slings on the track. I fly up on Ryan’s inside and reach for his outstretched left hand. His fingers are turned toward me, ready to clasp my own. I grab Ryan’s hand and hold on tight as I continue forward, sailing in front of him. My momentum slows as he builds up speed. I fling my right arm forward, shooting Ryan in front of me.
But as Ryan comes past me, the curve of his handlebars tangles with mine. We’re grasping our bikes with just one hand each and can’t keep them stable. Ryan’s front wheel veers in front of my bike. He slams into the track surface and I’m thrown into the air, performing an uncontrolled front flip up and over him.
My lower back hits first as I come crashing to the ground, followed by my ass, and then my legs. The momentum of my fall causes my left heel to whiplash into the track, hitting the concrete with an audible smack. Pain shoots through my heel and radiates up my Achilles. It feels as if someone drove an ice pick through the sole of my shoe. Instantly, I know something’s broken.
I try to stand up, but I can’t put any weight on my left foot. I’m carried to the medical tent, where the T-Town EMTs put ice packs on my heel and tell me it’s just bruised. No, it’s broken, I tell them. I broke my heel. That’s impossible, they reply. Construction workers who fall off 50-foot buildings and Indy car drivers who slam into the wall at 200 miles per hour break their heels, but not cyclists.
My old friend, Tim Quigley, who’s now an intern at the T-Town velodrome, appears at my side. Tim and his brother carry me to Tim’s car and take me to the hospital. An x-ray reveals I split my calcaneus, the squash-shaped bone that composes the heel. The bone is the support structure of my entire foot and lower leg. The break looks as if someone took an ax to the fat end of the squash, nearly shearing it in half.
A local orthopedist who was the US national team physician at the ’84 Olympics, Dr. Tom Dickson, is on call at the ER and treats me. Dr. Dickson says orthopedists refer to such injuries as an aviator’s fracture. The term comes from the 20th century, when crash landings could crack a pilot’s heels as the heels were driven into the airplane rudder. That’s the type of force it typically takes to cause this kind of injury, Dr. Dickson says.
Doctors frequently refer to a calcaneus fracture as one of the most painful breaks a human can suffer. Any impact hard enough to break the bone must first get through an inch-thick layer of soft tissue that encapsulates and protects the heel. The traumatic hemorrhaging of this tissue causes the majority of the pain.
Before placing me in a cast, Dr. Dickson packs chewing tobacco against my skin. He tells me it will draw out the blood and alleviate bruising and swelling in my heel. Then he wraps plaster around my foot and lower leg. The cast rises from my foot to just below my knee. The tobacco stings where it presses against the fresh road rash on my leg, and a smelly fluid oozes out from the cast.
I’m told that when my cast comes off in 4 weeks, my heel will still hurt. But as long as I can endure the pain, I can ride. I’m not so sure, though. My heel is swollen up like softball. I can’t walk. How will I even fit it into a cycling shoe? How will I sprint?
Later, I air my frustrations to Tim. Worlds is just 6 weeks away. I was flying, in the best form of my life, and now I’m done. I’ll never recover in time to compete, to prove I’m number one. But Tim won’t hear it.
He dreamed of riding in the Olympics one day, of winning a world championship. But no matter how hard he worked, and he worked harder than any of us kids, he just wasn’t good enough. Tim didn’t achieve his dream, but he won’t let me lose sight of mine.
“If it’s a matter of enduring pain, if anyone can endure it, you will,” Tim says.
7
THE FASTEST CYCLIST IN THE WORLD
FOR TWO WEEKS after the crash, all I can do is upper-body work in the gym and aerobic exercise on a handcycle. I try to maintain my strength, but I can feel the fitness draining out of my body. My left leg starts to atrophy. My muscles wither away before my eyes. I worry that all of the fitness I worked so hard to build up over the winter and spring will disappear.
When the cast finally comes off, I start rehab. My physical therapist, Randy Neri, makes me climb into an arctic-cold ice tub up to my chest. He uses ultrasound to stimulate the bone and tissue and speed up the healing process. Then he has me flex my foot in a series of exercises aimed at increasing my range of motion. I grimace. It kills me. But Neri assures me that the painful therapy will get me back on my bike quicker.
After less than a week of therapy, I start riding again, even though I’m never officially given the go-ahead by my doctor. Through trial and error, we develop a system of taping my foot that causes the least amount of pain when I sprint. The athletic tape completely immobilizes my ankle. I wear a shoe one size larger to accommodate the wrapped ankle, and a horseshoe-shaped pad in the sole that alleviates the pressure on my broken heel.
After a few days, I try an all-out flying 200-meter sprint to test myself. I finish the effort in 10.8 seconds, 0.2 seconds off the time I set before the injury. A significant drop in performance. It’s evident that I need more time to recover. An x-ray still shows a large split in my heel, and I can’t put any weight on my left foot. Neri has me perform an isokinetic strength test, which reveals my left leg is operating with 30 percent less power than my right.
But if I want to go to the Atlanta Olympics, I don’t have a choice. I have to race injured. The national championships, just a week away, will serve as the qualifying race for the ’95 Pan-Am Games. And the Pan-Am Games are a qualifying race for the ’96 Olympics. Only the top two riders from nationals will go to the Pan-Am Games. The current rules don’t allow for a selection at the coaches’ discretion.
I petition USA Cycling to change their selection process. The Pan-Am Games are 8 months after nationals. It doesn’t make any sense to select riders so far out. But the Feds tell me my request is blocked by the objections of one competitor, Paul Swift. Swift knows if I can’t race nationals, he has a better shot at making the Olympics. To appeal Swift’s objection, the Feds tell me I must go through the elected rider representative to USA Cycling. And oh, by the way, the current rider representative is Paul Swift.
With changing the Pan-Am selection rules no longer a possibility, I must decide between two career-threatening options. The straightest path to the Atlanta Olympics is through nationals and the Pan-Am Games. If I don’t race nationals, I narrow my options for getting to Atlanta
. But Dr. Dickson warns that my immobilized ankle puts immense strain on my Achilles tendon. If I race, it could completely rip away from the bone during a sprint. I’d never be the same athlete again.
I ask Gil what he thinks. “Let’s go kick Swift’s ass with one leg,” he says.
I head to nationals.
I show up in Indianapolis on crutches, and I’m still receiving therapeutic treatments from Neri as often as three times a day. The other racers think I’m faking the injury. You can’t even walk, no way you can sprint, they tell me. But before each race, Neri tapes my ankle, immobilizing it. Then I hobble up to the start line, hand Gil my crutches, and climb onto my bike.
By now, I’m accustomed to the pain in my heel. It’s as if the pain is a part of me—indistinguishable from the anaerobic suffering I endure in a race. But because rocking back and forth on my injured left foot hurts too much, I can’t play tactical games in the match sprints. I lead out every sprint, using my long-range power to beat opponents. The tactic works through the early rounds.
I advance to the semifinal round, where I meet Paul Swift. The winner makes the gold-medal match and earns a spot on the Pan-Am Games team. Swift wins the first sprint. I take the second. Then, as we prepare for the match that will decide our fate, a clap of thunder sounds in the distance. Lightning flashes. Rain pours down onto the track. The officials delay our race.
The longer we wait, the more mad and determined I get. I’m going to throttle Swift. I only came to Indianapolis because of him, and now I can knock him off the Pan-Am team while securing my own spot. I’ll win this race even if my Achilles ruptures in two. At midnight, we’re finally cleared to line up for the final match.
The Price of Gold Page 9