“No!” Lucia insisted. “I'm just talking about the things that have already happened. He didn't deserve that.”
“You're right. He didn't. Your penance can be leaving us the fuck alone.”
“I plan to,” she swore. “I'm not staying, I'm headed to the airport now. I’m only still here because I read about these popular honeybu-”
“Yeah whatever, safe travels,” I told her, and then turned to keep walking towards my destination – home.
There was no further conversation she and I needed to have.
I didn't bother Raf with it.
There was entirely too much on his plate already, and I wasn’t about to be the one to add more. Not about that run-in with Lucia, and not about the run-in with my father.
It could wait.
Instead, I focused on keeping his spirits high, aside from a subtle check-in to make sure he still wanted to do this.
Of course, he did.
When it was time, we headed to the radio station. Upon arrival, I was relieved to see there wasn't a big entourage for Wil. Whenever I watched her do her show online, it always appeared that she took a minimalist approach for the comfort of her guests. I was glad to see that was actually the case, and not merely the magic of production.
I didn't go inside the recording booth with them, where Vaughn, Wil, and her lone cameraperson were waiting. I opted to stay in the production booth, where I always did when I stopped by the studio when there was a show going on.
I took a seat beside Leah, who gave me a smile. “I'm glad you got him to do this,” she said. “The show was going to go on either way, but Wil is really excited to have a guest like Raf.”
I waved her off. “I take no credit,” I said. “This is all him.”
While I wouldn't take any of the credit, I was undoubtedly absorbing some of the nerves. We’d purposely timed our arrival for there to be minimal downtime before the interview started. But it seemed like the countdown to live started damn near as soon as we sat down.
It was too late to back out now.
Full disclosure.
That was the answer Raf had given me last night, when I asked how much he planned to tell. It wasn't that he was itching for some sort of tell-all exposé, but he’d committed to giving the most truthful answer he could to every question he was asked.
Knowing what I did about Wil, he'd be telling a lot.
“This is Wil in the Field, with Wil Cunningham-Bishop, and I'm here in Mahogany Heights, one of my favorite places on this planet. If you've never heard of it, first of all, I need you to get familiar. The Heights is home to the very first Urban Grind, the flagship store. If you're a WAWG fan, I'm sure you've watched Charlie and Nixon and all those babies do their cooking, right? Well, their restaurant, Pot Liquor, was started here in the Heights as well. I won't give you a rundown of all the prominent people who have gotten their start here, but I just want to underscore my point - there's a lot of talent here in the Heights,” Wil opened the show, smiling at Raf. “Including our very special guest today, Mr. Rafael De Luca. He is one of the most titled Black cyclists – cyclists, period - ever. He has represented this country in the Olympic games, with some controversy there, since some say that his loyalty is split between two countries because of his mixed heritage. American mother, Italian father, and as I understand it… for most of your cycling career, you haven't lived in the United States?”
“That's correct,” Raf answered. “But all my formative years were spent here in the Heights. I have a deep love for both, for different reasons, so I hope you're not about to ask me to choose.”
Wil laughed. “Only because you asked me not to. So we've gotten the introductions done, and now I'm sure you know what the burning question is on everybody's mind, as it relates to you. But, before you answer that question, I have some more information I want to give, to provide some context for any of our viewers and listeners who might not be very familiar with you. Is that okay?”
Raf let out a nervous chuckle. “Uh… yeah, sure.”
“I’ll be gentle, I promise. You can correct me on any of the details I get wrong,” Wil started. “But about two years ago you were in Tangier, Morocco – which is the northern coast of Africa, if you didn’t know. This was not during a race, but on a training ride when you had a pretty major accident. You ended up falling off your bike, down a mountain, and you had a whole host of serious injuries as a result of this accident. Broken bones, what they call road rash, even though it's not a rash, your skin is just gone because the friction scraped it off. And, something I personally feel gets downplayed in general… you suffered a traumatic brain injury. I don't know if it's because people don't really understand what that means or what, but it was serious enough that you spent several weeks learning to speak again, correct?”
Raf looked a little distressed by this blow-by-blow recounting of the accident, but his head was high when he nodded. “Yes, that's correct. It hasn't been an easy road.”
“There's no way it could have been,” Wil agreed. “And I'm going to say something here, another thing I don't think people generally know. Cyclists and triathletes… when it comes to the amount of stress and exertion and just shit that you have to put your body through… you guys are some of the hardest working, most elite athletes in the world. I mean sure, football players are taking these high-speed tackles and all that, basketball is another high contact sport, rugby, all that. But you're doing that in fits and bursts, and with occasional breaks, for maybe two hours. These cycling races, and your training? Five and six hours, often more. You're keeping up twenty mile per hour speeds – conservatively - for hours. I don't think anyone who hasn't done that, can understand the constant toll it takes on your body. How far into your training ride were you when you had your accident?”
Raf blew out a sigh. “I was maybe halfway through what was supposed to be thirty miles. So maybe fourteen or fifteen miles into it when it happened.”
“Okay. So you’re, let's call it fifteen miles into this ride. You're going, you're working, you're sweating, you’re training… and suddenly the ground isn’t solid underneath you anymore. What goes through your mind? What were you thinking?”
“I thought I was about to die,” Raf chuckled. “I knew I was done. That was it, that was the end. Especially once I finally hit the bottom. I'm just laying there, with my mind running through everything that just happened. Can barely feel my… anything. And all I can think is… this is over. I'm done for. This is the end.”
“Wow,” Wil said, shaking her head. “And you were down there a while too.”
“Yeah it took a while for me to be found. It was pretty remote where I was, and I hadn't discussed my route with anyone. My GPS tracker malfunctioned that morning. I didn't think anything of all that though, because I thought I was invincible. Twenty-four years old, a superstar, all the girls want me. I'm making money, got Ase Garb in my DMs,” he laughed. “If you'd asked me back then, when I thought I might die? I would have said never. That's just how indestructible I thought I was.”
“That’s so common,” Wil laughed. “I experienced that too. We're young and fine, and everybody wants to talk to us, and be like us. We’re in our prime, and our bodies are in the best shape of our lives. We don't think anything can touch us. And then, very suddenly… you discover that's not the case at all.”
“A rude ass awakening,” Raf agreed. “But if I didn't get anything else from this whole experience, it drove home that tomorrow isn't promised. You might think you're going to live forever, you’ll do it next time, or you'll have another chance to say what you need to. But the reality is that you might not. Not that I caught that lesson immediately. I’ve only recently been adhering.”
“Oh really,” Wil grinned. “You’re being all cryptic right now…it wouldn’t have anything to do with the beautiful young lady you walked into the studio with, would it?”
I ducked my head before the camera could pan in my direction, just in case.
Wil giggled. “Oh, your best friend huh? That's another thing I know plenty about - look what my best friend did,” she said, gesturing towards her prominent pregnant belly as she laughed. “I'm not going to push too hard and get all in your business about that, since she is not the one being interviewed. But I do want to talk about your relationships. As we go through these significant shifts in who we are – and how we engage with our sport, or our passion, and as we grow up… our relationships with people change. Out of necessity a lot of times. So, how have your relationships been since this accident that was a major turning point in your life?”
Raf scrubbed a hand over his face. “Man… That's a tough one. Right now, my strongest relationship is the one I always expected to be that. Like I said, she's been my lifeline. I'm really not sure I would have survived recent events without her.”
I covered my face again to hide my blush as Leah nudged me and giggled.
“I'm thrilled to hear you say that, because it's necessary for professional athletes,” Wil said. “I mean everybody really, but especially people who are in this sort of national spotlight, to have someone you can count on. It's tough to know who your real friends are, who is really by your side. And from what I've seen and heard, talking to all these different people, is that the hardships are where it all comes out. That's how you discover who those real ones truly are.”
“Definitely,” Raf agreed. “And it's been funny to see the way things shift for you, once you stop doing the things everybody expects from you, and start to… I want to say, be selfish with your decision making. A lot of people don't like it when you start looking out for your own best interests. They want to be the ones to do it for you, because it's really not about your best interests. It's about theirs. But as long as they're in charge, as long as you're just going along with them, they can hide that. They can bury it under concern, and under the guise of them having the experience to know what's best. But when it really comes down to it, you have to be willing to let some people go, if it's between them or your sanity. And that's not just the people you’re close with, that’s the fans as well. You have these people all over your back - everybody knows what you should do. How to execute. What you’ve gotta do to stay on top. And don't you dare not be on top. That's a whole other animal.”
“Oooh, tag me in,” Wil said. “Because to me, that sounds like frustration with the pressures that come with being the child of two very prominent athletes. A thing that, surprise, I can relate to. My mother was an Olympic sprinter. My father a world-class boxer. So when it came to me, there was this insane pressure to live up to what they’d done. And not just live up to it - to surpass it, and if I couldn't do that, I was trash. That was the rhetoric around it.”
Raf gave her a deep nod. “That's exactly it. And … I think it's well-meaning, you know? We support our own, and it's a community, and they want us to succeed - they want somebody they can brag on. But the pressure? Can kill you. I've been living with that beating at me from all sides. Yeah, when I was young and cocky, before the accident, it didn't phase me as much. Doubts about my abilities? A record to beat? Hell yeah, pour that shit directly in my cup, let me show you what I can do. But… once you’re broken, when you're not at that level anymore, but you’ve still got the public in your ear, your parents in your ear, your team in your ear, pushing you to do more, to be more, when you… don’t know who you are anymore. It's…”
Raf trailed off, seemingly unable to find the right word to express what he was feeling from there. But words weren’t necessary, because from everything else that had come before, and the obvious sincerity in his eyes and his voice… we all understood.
“Which,” Wil said, “Brings me back to that burning question, the one I hate to ask, because I don't want to put more pressure on you. You went through this traumatic thing, that completely remapped your life, and of course things are different now for you. But people want to know. When will you race again?”
Raf shook his head, looking Wil right in the eyes when he said, “Never.”
For several seconds everything was quiet, until Wil repeated his answer back to him as a question. “Never?”
“Never,” he confirmed. “As passionate as I am about cycling, as much as I love it… That season is over for me.”
“Can we dig into that?” Wil asked. “Because… you know what I'm thinking, what everybody is thinking, right? He looks fine. He seems healthy. We all saw him dominate in that charity race. So what is it that makes you say you’re never going to race again?”
“I just don't have it in me anymore,” he answered. “After everything that's happened, everything it took to get me on the bike for that charity ride…” He shook his head. “I'm just not willing to do it.”
Wil nodded. “That's not completely surprising. Athletic training is already an intense undertaking. So I would imagine that taking you from this accident, to a place where you could ride again with even similar proficiency had to be hard. Talk to me about what it took to get you there.”
Raf sat there a moment, quiet and intense before he chuckled and shook his head. “Okay …so I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital a while, confined to the bed. And even with the exercises and stuff you're supposed to do to keep your muscles active, the massages and all that, I still had some muscle atrophy. I still had to learn how to say the word bike again. I still had the pain from broken ribs making it hard to breathe. All these things that were in direct opposition to what I was trying to do.”
“Sure.”
“So… as you know, when you’re a professional athlete at this level, you have a team – specific trainers, nutritionists, a weightlifting coach, all of that - all these people that work together to help you be the best you can. These people who you trust. By the time of my accident, I’d been working with them for years. I trusted them. So when my head trainer came to me and said, after I'd been struggling, frustrated, and completely ready to give up, “I've got you. I've got something for you.” I trusted that.”
Wil sat forward, listening. She said nothing though, simply letting Raf speak.
“Vitamin injections. A way to replace all the nutrients and stuff I wasn't getting any more from being outside on my bike for hours at a time, and being able to eat four thousand calories a day. I needed to be supplemented, and I didn't find anything suspicious about that. When it started… It was like night and day. I finally felt like myself again, like it was a fucking miracle. I wanted to tell everybody about it, you know, talk to my peers, share this with them. This is something that we can use to recover. To train harder, cycle better, to elevate the sport. Everybody was excited about my progress, especially after that charity race. That race was proof, and I wanted to shout it to the world. I brought it up to my trainer, like this is going to be great for you and your business. But… he said no. This is proprietary, just for you. That’s when I got suspicious.”
“They… weren't “vitamin” injections, were they?” Wil asked, shaking her head.
Raf scraped his teeth over his bottom lip. “No. They weren't. When I asked questions about it, he blew it off, tried to make me feel like I was… paranoid. So I got into his office. Found the bottles. Read the labels. Googled the names on them. And I just threw up. I was sick.”
“You had no idea?”
“I had no idea. But I should have. I should have known better. I should have looked into it myself. I should have demanded to see the studies, and looked at reports. I should have been proactive about it. But I wasn't. I trusted the people who claimed to be on my side to actually do that. And not just be on my side, but to do it with integrity. As cocky as I was before the accident, it was for a reason. I got where I was, got to that level because I put in the work. I didn't cheat. I worked at this every day, hours and hours. I followed the nutrition
plan, I lifted the weights, I got the rest, I didn't drink, didn't do drugs, wasn't out all night partying, none of that. I just wanted to race. I just wanted to win. The only advantages I had were genetics, and a willingness to work myself down to the bone. Not from a needle.”
“So you’d never done steroids before? Never considered it?”
“Never. Never. And not again since I found out the truth about what those “vitamin injections” were. I haven’t raced since then, not for my own gain. The charity race was before I knew the truth, and I am completely willing to repay those funds, and pay whatever fines come with that from my personal income to make that right.”
“So when you say you're not willing to race anymore,” Wil said, “that you don't have it in you anymore, that you're not willing to do what it takes… What does that mean in relation to what you just revealed to me?”
“It means that at this point, what's done is done. Steroids are something that… sure, you might stop doing it, but the benefits that you got from it aren't gone. In my case, it helped me to build muscle I wouldn't have been able to build that fast on my own, after that type of accident. It aided in workout recovery, so that I was able to train harder, train longer. I'm still carrying that gain with me. And so every time I get on the bike to engage another race, I’d have an advantage my opponents didn't. That taints it for me. I don't want any wins I didn't earn. There were some I could have taken. But I didn't, because that's not who I want to be.”
“And it's that, I think, that tells us exactly who you are,” Wil acknowledged with a smile. “So… where do you go from here?” she asked.
“I'm not totally sure,” Raf said, his voice sounding much lighter than it had before. “I'm still figuring that part out. But I bought a house here in the Heights. I'm going to spend some time demolishing and rebuilding there, and just figuring myself out. Reconnecting with friends, and exploring new avenues, and just…living. The rest will come.”
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