In the ’80s, Eddie raced professionally and coached a top cycling club in Warsaw. He came to the United States in ’85 and worked for 7-Eleven, the first American pro team to ride the Tour de France. Now he’s helping me attempt to win another world championship.
Eddie’s massages are the best part of my day. I feel as if I’m getting worked over with a meat tenderizer. He’s built like a bull, thick and round with massive shoulders. The fingers on his hands look like Polish sausages but are composed entirely of muscle. He pummels the knots in my thighs as if they insulted his mother. We don’t talk when I’m on the massage table. I just lie there and enjoy the good hurt.
In the downtime between training sessions at the Manchester velodrome, I keep things light by messing with Eddie. One day while he’s taking a nap, Gil and I sneak into his room and turn the heat all the way up. Sweat starts beading on Eddie’s forehead and dark stains appear in his pits. I stifle my laugh in the next room. “NOTE-STINE!” Eddie bellows when he finally wakes up, a wet mess, and figures out what the hell is going on. He jumps out of bed and starts chasing me. I scamper down the hall before he can grab me. If Eddie gets a hand on you, you’re dead.
On Wednesday, we stop messing around and get to work. The Manchester track is the jewel of British cycling. Just 2 years old, the sleek, modern-looking building houses an indoor 250-meter wooden velodrome, as well as the offices for the UK’s national cycling federation. The track has a reputation for insanely fast times.
My first event is the keirin. To make the finals, I must place at the front end of two qualifying rounds. In the first qualifying round, I ride as if I just lost Olympic gold. I’m pissed. I punish my opponents and easily qualify for the semifinal. In the semis, I meet Fiedler.
But Fiedler owns two Olympic gold medals. He’s not concerned with a rematch. He rides as if he doesn’t care about another world championship medal, too. In the closing laps of our race, he leans his shoulder into an opponent whose spot in line he wants, and gives him a headbutt with that little white cap. Fiedler finishes in the top three and qualifies for the finals, but the officials disqualify him.
I move on to the medal race. Fiedler goes home.
The lineup for the finals reads like an all-star roster of keirin racers: There’s the defending world champ, France’s Frédéric Magné, and his teammate, Laurent Gané, a pair that will work together to beat me; the 1993 keirin world champion, Australian Gary Neiwand, who desperately wants his title back; a feisty wild card, Pavel Buran from the Czech Republic; and the giant from Germany, Michael Hübner. Hübner owns three keirin world titles—the most of all time. I won the world title in the keirin in ’94. I want one more.
We line up. I plan to race the keirin just as I race the match sprint. I want the early lead. Of course, everyone else will too. The first sprint comes off the start line. The official blows his whistle. The motorbike takes off. Andrzej shoves me as if he’s pushing a piano up a flight of stairs. My single giant gear is made for sprinting from a full gallop, not a dead stop. I hump my bike, throwing my weight forward and in front of the pedals. Neiwand’s next to me, doing the same. I stomp on the pedals and surge ahead of the group. I slip in as first wheel behind the motorbike, and Neiwand takes the position behind me.
The laps tick by. Warm fumes from the motorbike’s exhaust blow across my shins. I look back over my left shoulder. Buran sits behind Neiwand, then Magné, Hübner, and Gané. Andrzej and I develop two game plans before every keirin, depending on the opponents and my position behind the motorbike. Because I captured the lead off the start line, I don’t need to worry about getting to the front once the motorbike pulls off the track and the real racing starts. I will defend my position at the front until the last lap, then I’ll unleash my full sprint. I figure Hübner and Magné will make an early charge to the front. The big German, Hübner, is a drag racer, like me. He’ll want a long sprint. Magné is a tactician. If I make any mistakes, he’ll capitalize.
The motorbike gradually picks up speed as the finish approaches. Five laps to go. Four. Three. Twenty-five miles per hour. Twenty-eight. Thirty. The motorbike accelerates and peels off the track. Race on. Neiwand jumps out of the saddle. I feel him moving up on my left. But I won’t let anyone pass without a fight. I start my own charge to hold him off. Then Magné makes his move over the top of the group as expected. Hübner follows, tight on Magné’s wheel.
Two laps to go. I hold Magné at my shoulder through the first turn. He’s the crest of a wave of racers. Behind him is the white water. If I get trapped back there, I’ll wash right out of this race. Magné pulls in front of me on the back straight and through the third turn. I grab his rear wheel. I ride the crest of the wave, in front of the white water. Then, inexplicably, Magné slows. He tries to force someone else to the front before the last lap sprint. But we’re going damn near 40 miles per hour now. No time to hit the breaks.
The white water starts to envelop me. Neiwand slides up on my inside and Gané sprints from the back, inching up on my left. I whip my bike, first down the banking to fend off Neiwand, then to my right stalling Gané. The bell rings. One lap to go. Magné leads. I’m right behind him. One rider separates me from another keirin world title.
Magné leaps out of the saddle. We fly through the first turn. I draw beside him on the back straight. Gané makes another charge on my right. I’m in a French sprinter sandwich. We round the final turn and I beat back Gané with a hook up the banking. We exit the final turn and I’m even with Magné. I unleash my six hardest pedal strokes over the last 50 meters. I fly past Magné. Neiwand makes a late charge on my inside. He throws his bike—but he’s too late. I’m world keirin champ.
Gil stands on the track apron as I spin past. He pumps his fist high in the air.
We get one day to rest before the match-sprint tournament starts. My body’s a mess. I lie in bed with a giant bag of ice on my left knee and give the requisite interviews to local papers and cycling publications back in the United States. Something’s not right with it, I can tell.
“Just one more event,” Gil and Andrzej tell me. If I win the match sprint, I’m double world champion for the second time in my career.
On day one of the match-sprint tournament, I tell myself I just need to sprint four times. Once each in the first and second rounds, which are single elimination, and two more times in the best-of-three, quarterfinal match. I win my first-round and second-round races riding away from my opponents. Then, in the quarters, I meet the Czech, Buran. He finished sixth in the Olympic match sprint just a month earlier.
I beat Buran outright in the first sprint. One more sprint and I’m done for the day. I can go ice my knee and dream about winning a gold medal tomorrow. But Buran fights me in the second sprint. He makes a good run on me along the back straight, so I throw him a nasty hook. Only, Buran doesn’t react as quickly as I think he will. I knock his front wheel out from under him and put him on the ground. Amazingly, instead of disqualifying me, the officials order a reride. Buran gets up. We sprint again.
This time he tries to pass me in the final turn. I hook him again but obviously come out of the sprinter’s lane. I’m relegated. The officials give Buran the win. The winner of the next ride wins the round and will race for medals tomorrow.
My left knee throbs. One more sprint.
The three previous sprints, and the crash, catch up with Buran on the final ride. I win cleanly and move on to the semifinals. That evening Eddie rubs my legs. I ice my knee. The patella is thick and red. The joint creaks when I bend my leg. Tendonitis, Eddie says. Something’s not right.
I’m paired against Darryn Hill in the semis. Hill smells blood when we line up. He’s a shark. A killer, like me. I lead off the line. Hill stalks me. With a lap and a half to go he comes through underneath me and whips his back wheel across the front of my bike. Intimidation. I’m not scared.
We start the sprint with a lap to go. He’s flying. I can’t get past him in the final turn. He wins easily and
throws his hand up in the air as if he won the round. Every part of me wants to jump off my bike and beat him into the ground, but I just spin past him.
“Put your arm down, you fucking stink,” I say.
“Fuck you,” he barks back.
We line up for the second sprint. Despite his bluster, Hill looks tired. I’m going to make this sprint long, I decide. Let’s see how he holds that top-end speed. Hill leads off the line. I start ramping up my sprint with two laps to go. He’s determined not to let me pass, and matches my pace from the front. Every time he looks back I’m coming faster, faster. Hill puts his head down and pedals harder. By the time we hit the line for one lap to go, we’re near an all-out sprint. Hill can’t hold me off anymore.
I charge directly at his rear wheel in the first turn. If Hill tries to hook me high, I’ll come underneath. If he guards the inside, I’ll sprint over the top. Hill lowers his head and looks under his left armpit. I’m a red-white-and-blue behemoth bearing down on his right side. As I draw near, Hill moves up the banking. I dive for his inside just as he whips the rear end of his bike. His back wheel moves like the tail of a snake. Inches separate my front tire from his rear wheel as it flicks down the track. I immediately adjust and steer back to his right, but now Hill’s rear wheel is moving in the opposite direction. The wheel zings up the track’s banking. I back off my pedals and lean to my right, just in time to avoid a collision.
We keep sprinting down the back straight. Hill beats me to the finish. The officials review the tape. I head back to the national team’s cabin to warm down. I know this isn’t over. I see Hill in the Australian cabin. He’s lying down. His stomach is still heaving. He’s out of shape. “Get up, you fat fuck,” I tell him. “We’re not done yet.”
Eventually, the officials decide Hill cheated. They relegate him and give me the win. Win one more sprint and I make the gold-medal match. Before our final match, Hill and I are called to the waiting area near the start line and seated in a row of four chairs—we sit with two empty chairs between us. We don’t talk or look at each other.
Then we line up for the final sprint. I lead. We round the turn coming into one lap to go. Hill ramps up his speed. I see him coming and start to kick. I keep him at my hip through the first turn and down the back straight. We enter the turn toward the finish and Hill fades.
I cross the line, uncontested. But I’ve wasted valuable energy locking antlers with Hill. I should have put him away earlier.
Except for me, the top four match sprinters from the Olympics skipped the world championship tournament. The Canadian, Harnett, didn’t show at all. Neiwand took his keirin silver back to Australia. Fiedler’s already back in Germany.
I don’t blame any of them for not showing. I’m almost done, too. Two more sprints I tell myself. Two more sprints and my season ends. Two more sprints on my swollen knee. Win two more sprints, and I win worlds.
In the finals I meet Florian Rousseau—the man who beat Erv for Olympic gold in the kilo. He’s calm, quiet—a silent assassin. He likes long sprints, but he’s quick too. The National Institute for Sport, a school in France that churns out Olympic athletes, trained Rousseau well. He’s 22 and already owns four world titles.
On the start line Rousseau bulges out his eyes and bares his teeth before grabbing the handlebars. He doesn’t appear to know, or even care, if I’m on the track. He leads off the line. Unlike Fiedler, Rousseau doesn’t try to keep me from reaching my top speed. He’s a kilo rider. He bets his top speed is faster than mine, and that he can hold it longer.
We wind up our gears with a little more than a lap to go. Rousseau leads out the sprint, daring me to get past him. He doesn’t swerve, or try to disrupt my momentum. We just put our heads down and sprint to the line, side by side. I’m at his shoulder exiting the final turn, but I can’t get any closer. He wins by half a wheel, and hardly looks winded.
In the second ride I don’t even get past Rousseau’s rear wheel. He’s going too fast and I’m out of gas. He wins the world championships. I lose. After Atlanta, after the tandem crash, after the keirin win, and after all the early-round sprints on a jacked knee, I’m out of gas. It’s time to go home to the Lehigh Valley, and rest.
I’ve had the best season of my career. I finish 1996 the number one-ranked track sprinter in the world. But despite the success, I can’t escape the thought of losing gold.
9
WORLD CUP, CALI, COLUMBIA
WHEN I get home from Manchester, I go see Dr. Meade at Allentown Sports Medicine. Meade knows me and my injuries well by this point. He’s also one of the nation’s top sports orthopedists. He’s worked with pro ball players from the Phillies and the Eagles, but says nothing trumps teaming up with an Olympian. His own competitive feats include qualifying for an Ironman triathlon during his medical residency and setting world records as part of a masters swimming club. He intimately understands my mind-set. He knows what it means to push the body to its physical limits—to the point where it breaks down.
An MRI ordered by Dr. Meade confirms my suspicions: something’s not right. He points to a split in the meniscus, the squishy cartilage cushioning the joint, and says that this is the source of my pain. I likely ripped the cartilage when I crashed with Nick on the tandem. Dr. Meade says he can fix the meniscus arthroscopically, by sticking a small camera and other surgical instruments into my knee capsule. He also says that if he sees more damage inside the knee than just the meniscal tear, he’ll need to perform an open surgery, slicing the knee wide open.
The recovery from the tiny incision required for an arthroscopic procedure pales in comparison to the recovery from an open surgery. Athletes often return to training a week or so after getting scoped. Dr. Meade says an open surgery may need up to 3 months to heal.
I don’t want surgery at all. I’ve seen too many athletes go under the knife and never return to their previous form. But if I must get surgery, I want the scope, and a quicker return to top form. After my medal performance in Atlanta, I stand to make thousands of dollars in bonuses from every race I win.
But Meade doesn’t make any promises. “I’ll do what’s right for the knee in the long run,” he says. If he sees damage that he can’t repair arthroscopically, he won’t hesitate to slice me open. The Sydney Olympics are 4 years away, Meade reminds me.
That October, I go under. Meade calls working on me his own orthopedic Olympics. The pressure’s immense. If he flubs a diagnosis or makes an erroneous cut, my career may end and possibly his, too. My meniscal tear sits at the front of the knee; this is different from nearly 90 percent of meniscal tears, which occur at the back of the knee capsule. In the tandem crash, I likely hyperextended my knee, clipping the meniscus at the front.
Meade trims the cartilage around the tear, making it smooth so it won’t catch on the joint and cause irritation. But the frontal meniscal tear causes a second problem—one that a simple scope can’t fix. The tear allowed joint fluid to sneak out from the knee capsule and form a grapelike cyst behind my patellar tendon. Meade decides to open up the knee and take out the cyst. If he doesn’t, it will continue to grow, thickening beneath the patella tendon and causing chronic knee pain.
The moment Meade makes a 4-inch slice down the middle of my knee, I’m looking at 3 months of recovery, instead of 3 weeks. But Meade’s determined to do what’s right for my knee. The cyst looks like a small grape, but with a neck like a water balloon. He saws off the neck of the cyst, so it won’t come back. Because he’s got my knee open, he also adds a couple stitches to strengthen the meniscal repair.
Meade says the pain in my patella isn’t tendonitis, which corresponds to an inflammatory issue, but tendinosis—microtears running longitudinally along the tendon. He makes an elliptical incision in the patella and removes a dead and withered piece of the tendon tissue. Meade theorizes the added trauma will increase blood flow to the tendon, aiding its recovery as the rest of the knee heals.
When I wake up, Meade tells me that, other than
the meniscal tear, cyst, and patella tendinosis, my knee is in great condition. I should recover just fine, he says.
Turns out, the surgery and subsequent extended recovery are exactly the forced break I need. My body demands rest and my mind wants time away from bike racing. The disappointment of silver in Atlanta continues to haunt me, every day.
Fall in the Lehigh Valley is my favorite season. The wind blows across the valley floor with a brisk, refreshing bite. The hills turn bright amber and red. It’s archery season for deer hunting. My left knee is immobilized by a bulky brace and I’m bound to a pair of crutches, but I’ve never missed deer season and I won’t start now. For me, there is no better therapy, physical or mental.
I grab my bow and convince Gil to drive me into the woods. I spot a large tree with big stable branches—the perfect stand. Gil helps me as I clamber up into the tree with my one good leg. I pull an arrow from the quiver. The fall breeze flicks the leaves off the trees. They flutter to the ground like colored snowflakes sifting through a kaleidoscope. I wait in silence for the soft crackling of hooves on the bed of leaves below.
For those few hours in the woods, bow in hand, I forget about Atlanta and losing gold. I find solace. I feel restored.
I spend the winter recovering in the home I built before the Olympics. The house sits on 22 acres in the hills north of T-Town. Though I didn’t win gold in Atlanta, the house gives me an amazing sense of accomplishment. I’ve provided a home for my family. I’ve also begun reclaiming the land of my ancestors, the original settlers of Pennsylvania. Land is the greatest treasure a PA Dutchman can own.
In December, Christi and I get married. It’s a small wedding at our new home with a few dozen close friends and family. I realize December isn’t the ideal time for a wedding in the Northeast, but again, my training and racing comes first. Christi understands. She always does. A spring wedding would never work with my racing schedule.
The Price of Gold Page 12