I take my typical fall break, which includes plenty of peaceful time in the outdoors hunting, and then get back to work. By February, I’m deep into my preseason routine of exhausting road rides, debilitating gym workouts, and early bedtimes. Then, on the night of February 26 Christi rolls over in the bed and shoves me.
“What?” I moan.
“My water just broke,” she says.
A part of me doesn’t realize the seriousness of what’s happening. My child is preparing to emerge, and I’m thinking, it’s early, I can still make my workout in the morning. A big snowstorm is coming, and I’m anxious to get to the gym before the roads shut down. But upon arriving at the hospital, I quickly understand the gravity of the situation.
As the evening progresses, Christi’s contractions become more frequent, and more violent. It’s well after midnight when the doctors tell Christi there’s a problem. Her contraction won’t release, and it’s suffocating the baby. In a hurried moment of panic, a half dozen nurses rush into the room. They pull her out of the hospital bed and hold her up in the air. The doctors push on her stomach, trying to get the muscles to relax, but the contraction still won’t release. So they start pushing even harder. I’m used to experiencing pain myself, but I can’t bear to see her hurt.
Christi looks beyond the scrum of people and catches a glance of my face. She knows I’m impervious to nerves. I’m calm under pressure. I don’t get scared. But when Christi sees my expression, she sees fear in my eyes for the first time. I fear we’re going to lose this child—that I’m going to lose Christi.
Then, the contraction releases, and the doctors decide to perform an emergency C-section. One of the doctors recommends that I don’t look, I might faint, but I tell him I’m accustomed to seeing blood. I watch as the doctors strap Christi down and slice open her stomach. They set her insides on a tray to one side of her, and pull the baby out from the other side.
Just as quickly as the panic started, it abates. Tyler Nothstein, 9 pounds, 4 ounces, enters the world. Christi and I had declined to find out the sex of the baby. (There aren’t many actual surprises in life, let this be one, I’d said.) So when I discover it’s a boy, I’m overjoyed. Though it might be politically incorrect to say so, I believe every man wants a son.
Once Christi is recovered from the surgery, Tyler is swaddled and placed in her arms. I sit beside her bed. The doctors and the nurses leave briefly. For a minute, it’s just the three of us, Christi, Tyler, and me. We’re a family. The feeling is a million times better than winning any bike race.
I was so wrong. This is the happiest day of my life.
Though my home life is warm, the winter of 1995 is one of the cruelest in Lehigh Valley history for training. Months pass and the temperature rarely rises above freezing, even during the warmest part of the day. Snow comes down in droves.
My training routes remain wet, icy, and littered with salt even after the plows come through and pile the snow in towering banks along the curb. I’m trapped, training indoors for almost 100 consecutive days.
Of course, I could escape. I could go to San Diego, or Texas, or any assortment of warm locales where I could train under a bright sun instead of fluorescent lights. But I don’t. I take pride in toughing out the miserable eastern Pennsylvania winters. The Lehigh Valley is my home. I want to remain with my family. I refused to risk missing the birth of my first child. My forebears overcame freezing sleet and howling northern winds to succeed, and so will I.
Thanks to Andrzej, I’m able to simulate my punishing track workouts inside. Upon joining the national team as the sprint coach, Andrzej commissioned the national team’s go-to frame builder, Koichi Yamaguchi, to construct a machine we simply call, the Ergo. The name is short for Ergometer and the machine is a custom-made stationary bike dreamed up and designed by Andrzej.
Both Andrzej and Gil possess the minds of mechanical mad scientists. They’re constantly trying to build a better mousetrap. They tinker with my race bike’s hubs and bottom bracket until the bearings spin without an iota of resistance. But the Ergo is likely Andrzej’s greatest creation.
To the unacquainted, the Ergo looks like a torture device. A 3-foot-wide base of thick steel tubes keeps the bike from swaying during all-out sprint efforts. Instead of running to the rear wheel, the Ergo’s chain is attached to a flywheel at the front. To create resistance, Andrzej bolted wind-grabbing metal blades to the flywheel.
The Ergo’s resistance is adjustable by moving the blades closer to, or farther away from, the flywheel. During the first iterations of the Ergo, the force of my pedaling sometimes throws the chain off the gears on the flywheel. The chain hits the metal blades and flings them across the room like throwing knives. Everyone ducks for cover. But over time, Andrzej dialed in the Ergo, even adding a rudimentary power meter made by the German company SRM that measures the watts I produce while pedaling. During workouts on the Ergo, I frequently max out at more than 2,300 watts.
By the winter of ’95, I own three Ergos, all constructed by Yamaguchi to fit me exactly the same as my race bikes. One Ergo stays at the USA Cycling headquarters in Colorado Springs, one travels with me to major competitions, and one stays at my home in the Lehigh Valley. I spend hundreds of hours on the Ergo over the course of the 1995 winter, listening to heavy-metal music full blast and cranking out as many as a dozen full-tilt sprints during a training session.
The Ergo’s flywheel makes a distinct, loud hum. When I work out with other national team members, the sound of multiple Ergos fills the room like a roaring jet engine. At the end of each interval, I always make sure my Ergo is the last one humming. Even though we’re not moving, I need to feel as if I’m the strongest, as if I won, as if I’m number one.
A week after Tyler is born, I fly to Mar del Plata, Argentina, for the Pan-Am Games, a qualifier for the Atlanta Olympics. The Pan-Ams are inexplicably held early in the year and serve as my first major test of the season. I’m told there are rumors among the national team members that I’m unprepared, that the birth of my son diverted my focus and the indomitable Lehigh Valley winter sapped my form. I pledge to prove the rumors wrong and secure my place on the Olympic team.
I sharpen my form with a week on the track in Argentina prior to the Pan Ams, then enter the match-sprint tournament. Before the qualifying time trial I grab a thick Sharpie and write “TYLER” on the wrists of my white leather gloves. I know exactly whom I’m riding for in Argentina—the newest member of my team.
The ideal conditions for riding a fast time trial deteriorate precipitously as I line up for my flying 200 meters. A fierce wind swirls around the velodrome and whips across the concrete track surface. I sprint down the back straight and through the final turn, battling gusts that catch my rear disc wheel and push me up the track’s banking. I cross the line at 10.5 seconds, a new Pan-Am Games record.
I go on to dominate every round of the match-sprint tournament, winning the gold medal. I secure my spot for the Atlanta Olympics.
On Labor Day, I’m sparring with another sprinter during a training camp, preparing for the ’95 worlds. I whip my bike down the banking to start a sprint and the force of my pedaling causes the rear wheel of my bike to suddenly fold in half. I slam into the concrete and slide for 20 feet, my skin tearing away from my body, before I finally come to a stop.
Another crash. My third bad fall of the year. In May I suffered a concussion at a World Cup in Greece, and in August I dislocated my shoulder at track nationals. I lift myself up and begin to assess the damage. I look at my right knee. Just minutes after the crash, it’s swollen to double the size of my left. “It’s broken,” I say.
“You broke your kneecap,” my doctor, Thomas Meade, tells me. But you’re lucky, he says. It’s not cracked in half, only broken on the side. He says the long-term prognosis is good. I should recover in 4 to 6 weeks. I tell him I intend to race at worlds in 3 weeks. To compete at 100 percent, you’ll need a miracle, Dr. Meade says.
He drains 80 ccs of bl
ood from my knee and then puts the joint in a brace, immobilizing it. After a few days, the brace comes off, and Randi Neri makes magic happen, again. My knee heals more quickly than anyone could’ve imagined. Though I’m still nowhere near 100 percent, I’m riding 200-meter times close to national-record pace just a week before heading off to worlds.
I fly to Bogota, Colombia, for worlds and decide to focus on the team sprint, my best chance for a medal on the injured knee. I join forces with a fellow sprinter, Bill Clay, and Erv, the kilo specialist. All of us are among the best in the world at our individual events. We make it to the bronze-medal match, where we face Spain. Each of us will ride a lap at the front of our three-man group, then peel off the track. The Spanish team lines up on the opposite side of the track.
Clay starts us off, and it’s a good start. We’re two-tenths of a second up on the Spaniards after one lap. Then I take over, with Erv tightly tucked in my slipstream. At the end of my turn, we’re ahead by a full half second. On the last lap, Erv goes to work. He settles into his aero bars and rips the final lap, adding another tenth of a second to our lead over Spain. We win the bronze. It’s the only medal I will take home from the ’95 world championships.
Fall is in full swing when I return to the Lehigh Valley. I spend my brief off-season hunting in the woods. I allow my knee to fully recover. Then, I get back to work. Fewer than 300 days remain until the Atlanta Olympics. I know I’ll be ready. I’m certain I’ll win.
Wheels were always part of my life—bikes, motorcycles, go-Karts, cars, and trucks. My father, Wayne, owned Ford and Dodge dealerships as well as ran the family trucking company with his brother. That’s me as a toddler, my dad, and brother Tim in the dune buggy.
Growing up, I was taken by anything competitive. My fighting spirit made me good at sports: football, baseball, basketball, wresting, BMX, and even throwing rocks. I won a couple of home run derbies when I played Little League baseball for the East Penn Youth Association. I’d swing the bat as if I was trying to decapitate someone.
Photographs courtesy of the Nothstein family
Me and my brother Jay (rear) and our friend Chris Roberts (left) started weight lifting to shape up for sports in middle school. As you can see, we were huge!
I started riding competitively as part of the Air Products Development program in 1986 and won my first medals. I was hooked. I remember riding so much I wore out my cycling clothes that first year.
Later, I was helped by guys like Mark Whitehead (shown with me here in 1988). Whitehead, nicknamed the Outlaw, was a pro racer who I used to watch ride at T-Town even before I started racing.
Photographs courtesy of the Nothstein family
Robert “Bob” Rodale fires the starting gun one evening at the Trexlertown, PA, velodrome in this archive photo from the 1970s. The late CEO of Rodale Inc., publisher of this book, always had a fondness for bicycling and he envisioned a velodrome in the Lehigh Valley for recreational and competitive cycling. In 1974, he donated 25 acres of farmland and oversaw construction of a park that would contain the nation’s premier bike-racing track. (Photographs courtesy of Rodale Inc.)
Here’s a view of the Valley Preferred Cycling Center, of which I am executive director, as it looks today. This is the same track on which I first learned to ride a track bike and cut my teeth in racing.
I owe much of my racing success to the coaxing, pushing, and strategizing of my “team”: (from left to right) my soigneur Eddie Balcerzak, and coaches Gil “Gibby” Hatton (in cap) and Andrzej Bek.
Gil, “the man behind the man,” gives me a push onto the track at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Photographs courtesy of the Nothstein family
“Campione del mondo!” I’m 23 and I’m the fastest cyclist in the world. I wear the rainbow jersey signifying a world champion, having defeated the Australian sprinter Darryn Hill (left) and German Michael Hübner (right) in Palermo, Italy, in 1994. (Photograph courtesy of the Nothstein family)
This is a nice whitetail buck I shot on a hunting trip in Montana. I’ve loved the outdoors and hunting all my life. I’ve been a bowhunter since I was 11 years old. In fact, I lied about my age just to get my license a year early. (Photograph courtesy of Macon Cherp)
I am an Olympic champion finally. Here, I’m celebrating with some of my family—from left, my mother Gail, daughter Devon, wife Christi, and son Tyler. (Photograph courtesy of Mike Powell/Getty Images Sport)
Match sprint is an intimate event—the riders nudge, jostle, even headbutt for position. Here, Jens Fiedler, the German Olympic and world champion sprinter, and I battle for the lead in the final round of the World Cup in British Columbia. (Photograph courtesy of Casey B. Gibson)
Train, eat, sleep…dream about the Olympics. That was my life. But it was all worth it for the life that cycling has given to me and my family, culminating in a special final moment on the track in Australia with my son. “Look at all the people!” I tell Tyler on our victory lap. (Photograph courtesy of Cox Enterprises)
Part 2
8
THE DEMONS OF ATLANTA
I DIDN’T go to Atlanta for the silver.
I get home and am single-minded about getting back on track, back to number one. I immediately start preparing for the 1996 world championships in England. At worlds I hope to get my rematch with Fiedler. The directors of the T-Town velodrome invited Fiedler to come race me here, at home, after the Olympics. But he declined.
So instead of racing Fiedler on a Friday night at T-town, 2 weeks before worlds, I reluctantly agree to race the tandem with Nick Chenowth. Nick is my boss. He’s a masters racer who also manages EDS, the multimillion-dollar team I ride for.
I’m no tandem-racing rookie. But after too many close calls—and after seeing a competitor nearly die while riding against Erv and me at the Olympic Trials in ’92—I swore off tandems.
It’s not just me, either. Because of the danger, tandem racing fell out of favor internationally during the ’90s, and is no longer an Olympic or world championship event. T-Town is the only track in the States that still sanctions the discipline. Every August the track turns a normal Friday night into Tandemonium. The event doubles as the tandem national championships, and Nick is keen on winning a title with me as his driver. Nick lives to race tandems. Even though I know the risks of tandem racing, Nick signs my checks, so I agree to do it.
In the first sprint of our first-round match, I’m piloting the tandem to a win down the track’s back straight.
As the banking steepens in the third turn, I feel the tire go soft. “Easy, easy, easy,” I shout back to Nick. Then I hear the tire explode. It’s the sound of a shotgun during dove season, a car backfiring, a balloon exploding. Boom! The rear tire of the tandem disintegrates, peeling off of the wheel. The 6-foot-long carbon-fiber bike fishtails beneath our combined 400 pounds of body weight.
Don’t tense up, Nick. Don’t tense up, I think.
But he does. He tries to correct us, and his movement on the back of the bike sends us further out of control. I feel the back of the bike sliding up the track, so I countersteer into the banking—just as Nick leans left. With a violent thud, we topple over. My helmet cracks as my head smacks against the concrete track. I hemorrhage skin from the entire left side of my body. As we skid back down the banking toward the apron, I leave behind a trail of blood and tissue on the light gray track surface.
The audience ringing the track gasps. People cover their mouths in horror.
Finally, we stop sliding. I begin to regain clarity. A huddle of coaches, officials, and medical personnel gather around me. They unstrap my feet from the pedals and pull the tandem off me. This is my third tire blowout with Nick, and my second hard crash.
Skip Cutting, an EDS coach and former three-time Olympian, walks into the medical room where I’m assessing my skin loss. Since our tire blew out in the first round, the officials offer us a reride. “The bike’s ready to go,” Skip says.
“Fuck that,” I te
ll him. “I’m never getting on that thing again.”
But I’m not done competing. A full schedule of racing remains on the evening’s schedule, and the stands are packed with fans, most of them here to welcome me home after the Olympics. I won’t let them down. After I finish dressing my wounds, I grab my silver GT track bike and a new helmet. I hobble over the top rail of the track, and the crowd collectively quiets. Unbelievable. He’s back. I race nearly everything remaining on the evening’s schedule, from the points race to the sprints. I win all my heats in the sprint tournament and the final, then I’m off to worlds.
A week after my crash, Andrzej, Gil, and I arrive in Manchester, England, for worlds. I’m stiff and sore. My wounds ooze and stick to the sheets at night. My left knee throbs and clicks when I bend it. After a round of 500-meter sprints on Tuesday, my brain started pounding. Those headaches, they should subside, the doctors tell me.
Not only am I physically banged up heading into the race, I’m mentally scarred, too. The Olympics gnaw at me every day. I lost gold. I think about the Atlanta Olympics a thousand times per day. The loss haunts me in my sleep. I will redeem myself at worlds.
Andrzej knows the dangers of tandem racing well. I’ve rubbed the dent in Andrzej’s skull from his own horrific tandem crash. But he’s not upset I raced nationals with Nick. “You must accept sprinting is dangerous. There is no place for fear,” he tells me.
Luckily Andrzej brought along my favorite soigneur, Eddie Balcerzak, to work out my aches and pains. A good soigneur means as much to my team as a coach or mechanic, and Eddie is one of the best. I tried out a couple of guys between Eddie and my previous great soigneur, Waldek Stepniowski, but none of them worked out. Then Andrzej introduced me to Eddie, a fellow Pole, and we clicked. He understands cycling, and he understands me.
The Price of Gold Page 11