Though I’m not competing in the team sprint in Sydney, I offer to race the event at the Pan-Am Games and help the team earn another spot for the Games. I combine with Arrue and Johnny Bairos. We win handedly, beating Cuba by more than a second.
In the keirin, I take off from the front as soon as the pace bike pulls off the track. I sprint for two and a half laps, simply riding away from everyone else in the race. I’m the first athlete to ever win three gold medals at the Pan-Am Games.
My ticket to Sydney is punched.
I’ve accomplished my goal for the year, qualifying for the Olympics. I’m ready to end my season and start my final preparations for Sydney, the only race I care about. I plan on skipping worlds in September, but USA Cycling pressures me to compete. If I race, I can help the US team earn more spots for the Olympics, the Feds tell me.
I consider myself extremely loyal, and attending worlds will give me a chance to repay my teammates, my friends, who are instrumental as training partners. I agree to race, and travel to Berlin for worlds.
When the match-sprint tournament starts, I’m mentally unprepared. I’m fit physically, but in my head I’m ready for an off-season hunting trip. I struggle in the early rounds, then run into Fiedler in the quarterfinals. He dances around me on the track and convincingly beats me in two straight rides. Coming off the high of my Pan-Am performance, I don’t want to end my season this way.
I refocus for the keirin, and dominate the qualifying rounds. During the semifinal race, I start my sprint from the back of the group and blow by everyone on the last lap. I’m confident I can win in the finals. I just have to beat Fiedler.
Worlds are in Berlin, Fiedler’s home soil. He’s desperate for a world title after narrowly losing the gold-medal round of the match sprint. As we prepare to line up for the keirin finals, Gil comes over and whispers into my ear. “Fiedler wants to make a deal,” he says. I’ll get $8,000 if I lead Fiedler out in the sprint and help him win a gold medal on his home turf.
Though it may seem unsportsmanlike to outsiders, paying off competitors isn’t an uncommon practice in bike racing. Tour de France stages are often bought and sold on the run into the finish. With so many variables involved in a keirin, the top racers frequently try to limit the odds against them by forming combines. With his vast racing experience, Gil’s accustomed to working out these kinds of deals.
The prospect of cutting a deal tempts me. Eight thousand dollars is a good amount of money. I could still get second or third and triple that amount with the incentives from my sponsors for being on the podium at a world championship. But I still want to win this race. It’s not worth it.
Gil goes to back Fiedler’s people, then back to me. Now they’re offering $12,000, he tells me. I consider it. But I tell Gil, I still want to win. He tells Fiedler’s people and comes back to me again. By this point, I’m taking my position on the start line, plotting out my strategy. “Fifteen thousand to lead out,” Gil says.
I lean over my handlebars and close my eyes. I grip the drops of my bars and squeeze tight. The fall-out from EDS taught me the only certainty in professional cycling is uncertainty. Under my new contract, I’m making a quarter of what I’m accustomed to. Take your money while you can get it, part of me thinks. But opting for the quick, easy, and unethical payoff never leads to long-term success. Nick showed me that. My dad taught me that. “Do the right thing,” he told me, over and over. “It will always catch up with you if you don’t. Always.”
If I win, I’ll earn more from my sponsor incentives than Fiedler is offering. Plus, you cannot put a price tag on a world championship. It’s a gamble, but it won’t cost me my soul. I decide to bet on myself. “I’m going to go win this bike race,” I say to Gil. “Fuck them. No deal.”
The race starts. I’m third wheel as the pace bike trots around the track. Fiedler’s tucked in behind me, shadowing me. The pace bike pulls off. Two and a half laps to go. I move into the lead. Behind me, I sense chaos. I can hear the other racers flying up and down the banking, jostling for position. The boards ache and moan underneath their wheels. I don’t want to lead this race, but I don’t want to fight either. I stay out of the turbulence.
Then, to my sudden relief, Magné comes from last wheel, all the way over the top. He pulls in front of me with a lap and a half to go. I couldn’t buy a better position.
We come through for the bell lap at more than 40 miles per hour. I peek behind me. Fiedler rides inches off my rear wheel. But he must come around me, and Magné, to win. We exit the second corner and hit the back straight. Fiedler, Magné, and I pounce out of our saddles simultaneously. Magné’s at the bottom of the track, I’m at his shoulder, Fiedler’s at my hip. We are three wide across the steep banking as we whip off the back straight and fly through turns three and four.
As we exit the final turn, Magné tires. I pull into the lead, flying toward the line. Fiedler’s coming fast. He’s at my shoulder, he’s beside me. There’s the line. We throw our bikes. Arms forward, heads down, mirror images of each other.
It’s a dark, quiet plane ride back to the United States. I’m fuming. I raced the keirin clean, but Fiedler had home-field advantage—a joker in the deck. Before they even looked at the photo finish to definitively see who won, the German officiating staff disqualified me. It was bullshit. Even Fiedler said so. Andrzej appealed the official’s decision, but they didn’t reverse the call. Worst of all, my DQ was unnecessary. The finish-line shot clearly showed Fiedler nipping me on the line. He won by the width of a front tire.
After the race, my terrible temper got the best of me. I took out my frustration on the US team’s cabin, leaving a melee of broken furniture and bike parts in my wake.
We raced like champions—no deals—and he beat me outright. I can live with that. I can’t bear coming home empty-handed. No medal. No cash. Just my pride.
“I should’ve taken the deal and led Fiedler out,” I tell Gil. But I don’t really believe what I’m saying.
One year to Sydney, I think. One year until I’m number one.
Part 3
13
THE BLADE IS COMING
IN 1898 my great-grandfather competed in a road race in Egypt, Pennsylvania, near Allentown, near where I live now. At the time of his race, competitive cycling was booming in popularity across the United States.
Despite the unwieldy nature of the rudimentary bikes ridden at the time, hundreds of cycling competitions took place up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest. The events were held on roads composed of loose cobblestones and strewn with dirt, as well as on cinder tracks built for horse-and-buggy racing.
At the turn of the century, no sport drew spectators more rabid than bike-racing fans. In Egypt, hundreds of people flocked to the center of town an hour and a half before the start of the race, clamoring to see my great-grandfather take on the best cyclists in the area. When, after 52 minutes aboard his high-wheel bike, he broke the finishing tape, taking first place, the crowd roared and hoisted him up on their shoulders.
But my great-grandfather wasn’t just a champion bike racer. He was also a fighter and a showman. He traveled extensively, often securing his room and board by holding impromptu, bare-knuckle boxing matches. Directly after his victory in Egypt, he boxed against a friend of his to prove how little energy the race had cost him.
The citizens of Egypt celebrated my great-grandfather’s victory well into the evening. They placed a tall silk hat atop his head and paraded him through the streets in a carriage. My great-grandfather was given a brand-new bicycle as a prize.
I share my great-grandfather’s name, Martin Nothstein. I also, undoubtedly, share his athleticism and tenacity. Like him, I’m compelled not just to compete and win, but to assert my superiority. I don’t crave the adulation of others. I don’t care if I’m loved or despised. But I need to be the best, and I need everyone to know it.
Unlike during the era of my great-grandfather, more than a century later, on the cusp of the 20
00 Sydney Olympics, most Americans still know little about bike racing and even less about track cycling. The mainstream media pays attention to bike racing once a year, during the Tour de France. But track cycling lacks a Tour de France-type event to draw the eyes of the world every year. Prior to the Games, the sport’s most mainstream publication, Bicycling magazine, did a feature story about me titled, “Marty the Obscure.” The headline’s point: In track cycling, only the Olympics matter.
The Olympics are track cycling’s Tour de France. The Games are the only time the best in the world come together, and everyone in the world watches. In Sydney, I will make sure the entire world knows—I’m number one.
I fly into Australia a full month before the Games. I will train and acclimate to the Southern Hemisphere at a camp held by the national team on the Gold Coast, in Brisbane, about 500 miles north of Sydney.
Unlike in ’96, the US cycling team is not highly touted coming into the Sydney Olympics. After the collapse of EDS, USA Cycling’s focus, and most of their monetary investment, turned to the road. I’m the sole medal hope for the entire track team—and given my mixed results over the previous 4 years, I’m no longer considered the favorite. Sports Illustrated picks me for the bronze medal in 2000.
A year has gone by since my close loss, and disqualification, to Fiedler in the keirin at worlds. Though the previous 3 years passed in a blur of determined training, racing, and travel, the year preceding Sydney has been one of constant anticipation. I’ve purposely tried to stay off my competitors’ radar, racing very little, and mostly training alone with just Gil and Eddie at my side.
I started the 2000 season with a winter boot camp in Charleston, South Carolina. No family, no teammates, no national team coaches, no distractions. Just Gil, Eddie, and me—training every day for a month. A friend of Eddie’s, named Artur Pacult, who lives in Charleston, graciously hosted us. Artur is a neurosurgeon and a cycling aficionado. We share a deep appreciation of the sport’s history. He got us access to Charleston Southern University, where I lifted weights and could perform key, preseason physiological testing. The camp was the perfect way to start my run toward Sydney.
But now, in this final month before the Games, time creeps along. I’m focused so sharply on the Olympics that everything in my field of vision appears blurred, except for the gold medal.
My single-mindedness makes me intolerable to everyone around me. Gil lives in constant fear of messing something up and ruining my shot at Olympic glory. Christi is as much a member of my training staff as she is my wife. My son, Tyler, and my 2-year-old daughter, Devon, barely know me. After I snap at my mom during a family gathering, she resolves not to speak to me unless spoken to.
I’m not a good person—people outside my small circle don’t enjoy my company, and I don’t enjoy theirs, either—but I’m riding faster than at any time in my life. I competed in just one World Cup race the entire year—Cali, Colombia. I dominated the match sprint, then didn’t attend another international event all year. I let my competition stew on my forceful victory, while I tapered for Sydney.
As I drew down my training load and intensity, my body responded with a never-before-seen level of fitness. I’m more powerful, and quicker, than at any point in my life. Defeating my opponents is not enough. I aim to dominate them.
During the previous 3 years, my training left me in a fatigue-induced fog—never fully aware of my true capacity. But as Sydney approaches, and I reap the rewards of resting, I emerge from my haze.
Excess energy and adrenaline flow through me, making me twitchy and even more irritable. I’m a coiled snake, ready to strike.
A week before leaving for Australia, I tested my form at nationals in Colorado Springs. I won my 19th and 20th national titles in the keirin and match sprint, and set an American record for the 200 meters—10.092 seconds. In training, I regularly broke the 200-meter world record. The USA Cycling wanted me to go for the mark, officially. But I remembered my 500-meter world record and the disappointing ’98 worlds that followed. I stayed focused on Sydney.
“Forget it,” I told them, with a definitive snarl.
I’m riding faster than at any time in my life, but I’m downright mean. Gil says I’m in kill mode. During national team practices, I regularly hook and chop my teammates, just to remind them, and myself, that I’m number one.
I’ve become the worst, to become the best.
I can hear the roar of the motorcycle’s exhaust pipes miles before I even reach the Brisbane velodrome. Gil is warming up the engine for a motorpacing session on the outdoor track, and the sound of the muffler echoes off the concrete banking. The motorcycle burps and whines as Gil revs the engine and shifts gears.
Gil and I have settled into a routine during our stay in Brisbane. He drives to the velodrome with Eddie, my faithful soigneur, and sets up everything I’ll need for the day’s session—water, food, track bike, all perfectly organized and laid out. I ride my road bike the 15 miles to and from the track as a warm-up and cooldown.
My pre-Olympic training is exactingly measured. I don’t expend any energy without a clearly defined purpose. My workouts are like a switch, flipping on and off. Every effort on the bike is made at full throttle. I don’t touch weights or chance sparring with other riders. Properly preparing simply means maintaining my form and my patience. Waiting for the racing to start proves more difficult than any workout. I don’t sit still well, and my petulance makes everyone tense.
A couple of weeks before the opening ceremony, I fly to Sydney while Gil and Eddie make the 12-hour drive south with all of my equipment. I check into the Olympic Village with the rest of the cycling team, but after a couple of days, I’m done. Few competitors come to the Olympics actually intent on winning a gold medal. Most come for the Olympic experience, the congregation of the world’s greatest athletes, the opening ceremony and the chic apparel bearing the interlocking rings.
I’m in Sydney to win, and the lively atmosphere at the Olympic Village is not conducive to that objective. It’s past 10 p.m. on my second evening in the Village and the other athletes are up, socializing, making noise.
I call Gil. “I need to get the hell out of here,” I say. He’s outside the Village in 10 minutes. I move into the apartments the national team rented for the coaching staff, and impose my nightly curfew on everyone staying there—lights out by 9 p.m.
Christian Vande Velde, who’s on the pursuit team, is staying at the same apartments as me, and we regularly ride together. Three days before I’m set to compete, we’re returning from the velodrome on our road bikes. We’re chatting, and I take my hands off the bars to emphasize a point as we ride downhill and into a roundabout at well over 30 miles per hour.
It’s the same roundabout we’ve ridden through a dozen times, but in a momentary lapse of memory, Christian forgets which exit we take. He turns into me and swipes my front wheel. I instantly tumble to the ground. I slide through a traffic-filled intersection, but amazingly don’t get hit by a car. It’s chilly in Sydney, the start of spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and I’m wearing long leg warmers and a jacket. The excess clothing protects me from the worst of the road rash, but my left knee, the surgically repaired one, starts to swell.
Christian can’t believe what he’s done. He apologizes profusely. I accept his apology and get back on my bike. Control what you can control. When Gil hears about the accident, he goes nuts. He wants to kill Christian, or at the least, kick his ass. Christian hides out in a nearby room, his door shut tight.
“Don’t worry about Christian,” I tell Gil, a bag of ice on my knee. “Worry about doing your own job.”
In Sydney, Gil’s primary task is taking care of my bikes. He’s a master mechanic, and the only person I trust to work on my equipment. No one other than Gil touches my bikes. He knows how to give my bikes the Heinz treatment. He respects the sport, and he respects my equipment.
One night, Gil is wrenching on my track bike, a custom-built, carbon-fiber GT, which
I’ll use to compete in the match sprint. The bike is worth tens of thousands of dollars, and it’s painted to match the predominantly blue-and-silver US national team outfits.
Unbeknownst to me, in a brief moment of carelessness, Gil loses his grip on a wrench. It falls from his hand and nicks the bike at the bottom of the frame, near the crankarm. A flake of paint, no larger than the fingernail of a pinky finger, chips off. He freaks out. No racer would notice such a minuscule blemish. No racer except me. I would hang Gil by his ears. I’ve roughed up a national team mechanic in the past for scratching up one of my bikes.
So Gil gets down on his hands and knees. He scours the floor for the paint flake. Eventually he finds it. Thank God, he says. He superglues the paint chip back into place on the bike, making the accident hardly discernable. Disaster averted. I don’t learn about the accident until after Sydney.
At the opening ceremony for the Sydney Olympics, 200 stockmen (Australia’s cowboy) perform to the theme music of The Man from Snowy River. Cliff Meidl, a flat-water kayaker with a severe lower-body disability, carries the flag for the US Olympic team. Cathy Freeman, a 400-meter runner of Aboriginal descent, lights the Olympic flame. By all accounts, it’s a touching event.
But I wouldn’t know. I’m asleep. I didn’t attend the opening and closing ceremonies in Atlanta, and I don’t attend the opening ceremony in Sydney. I’m not here to take in the Olympic experience. I’m here to compete against the best in the world, at their best, and beat them.
When the match-sprint tournament finally starts, I exhibit a steely gaze and firmly set jaw, but I’m about to crawl out of my skin with excitement. As the race grew closer and closer, I spent less and less time on the track. I purposefully made myself crave the rush of riding down the banking and hearing the boards hum beneath my wheels.
The Price of Gold Page 16