Tustin’s Jill Koval Has Pedaled to Place in County History : Ready for Her Tour de Force

Jill Koval was once of the opinion that riding a bicycle was something you did to get from Point A to Point B when there were no alternatives. If there was any racing to be done, she preferred to do it on foot.

At Foothill High School, Koval competed in cross-county and track and field for four years, and she considered the bicycle a means of transportation, not a mode of competition.

“I thought you only rode your bike to school and back,” she said, “and in high school, that wasn’t cool. You got a ride from somebody or you drove yourself.”

But when long-distance running began leaving her with stress fractures and tender tendons, she began looking for some other way of getting the exercise she desired and the competition she craved. She found it--quite by accident--in the summer of 1984, when she tagged along with some friends to Mission Viejo, where the streets had been transformed into the course for the Olympic cycling road racing events. This is where Koval discovered that cycling was cool.

Later, she found out just how far she could go if she pedaled hard enough. Which brings us to today, when Jill Koval the cyclist will arrive in Paris and become Orange County’s first entrant in the Tour de France. She also hopes to finish among the top three women in cycling’s most prestigious event.

Koval, 23, of Tustin, figures that the female version of the Tour plays to her strength, particularly when it takes riders through four days of demanding terrain in the Pyrenees and Alps. “My specialty is long, long climbs,” she said. “I just get in a mode and keep going and going and going. And that’s what the France climbs are like. They’re long and steep.”

The Tour de France Feminin begins with a prologue time trial Wednesday and ends July 26, when riders will wheel along the Champs-Elysees on their way to the finish line. Before they get there, they will have covered approximately 583 miles in 15 stages, with only three days set aside for rest. The men’s race is 2,521 miles and 25 stages.

Koval, competing for the Peugeot/Winning Club team, will have little time to brake for sightseeing during her first visit to Europe, but she’s hardly complaining. She has stumbled upon a talent that, a few years ago, she didn’t know she had.

“Fifty miles is nothing to me now,” she said. “It’s just another ride. But when I was growing up . . . I think I rode to the Orange Mall once, and I had a hard time getting back. That just seemed so far. I felt every mile.”

Koval took up cycling after being enthralled by what she saw at the ’84 Olympics. But she didn’t begin to take the sport seriously until Robert Kahler, now her coach, happened upon her on a routine ride down Pacific Coast Highway. Kahler, coach of the Long Beach Velo Club and a member of the U.S. national team’s coaching staff since 1983, remembers the day Koval pedaled into his life.

“We had a tail wind and we were going at least 30 miles an hour down the coast,” Kahler said. “We had passed her and a guy she was riding with. We pass people all the time. But awhile later, I looked back and there she was in line with us. She rode all the way to Long Beach with us, about seven or eight miles, just motoring. I said, ‘Who is this?’ ”

At the end of the ride, Kahler asked Koval to stop by his Long Beach bike shop and talk to him about joining the Velo Club. A career was launched. A romance followed.

Koval said she has reached the elite level of cycling by following a strict training program outlined by Kahler. Not that the coach has to constantly urge the athlete to do more. Quite the opposite, actually. Kahler calls his star pupil and girlfriend a “chronic overtrainer,” and Koval agrees.

“The thing Robert always has to do is hold me back,” she said. “I mean, I’d love to go out every day and ride 60 or 70 miles. It’s kind of like trying to cool down a horse. I just want to go out and do it. That’s been his biggest struggle with me.”

A week in the life of a world-class cyclist:

Koval calls Monday her easy day. “It’s usually just a 20-mile spin,” she said.

Tuesday is usually reserved for speed work, about 30 miles with sprint intervals.

Wednesday is a moderate distance ride, usually 40 to 50 miles.

Thursday is about a 60-mile ride that emphasizes hill climbing. “We usually have to ride 15 miles to the hills, do the hills, then ride back,” Koval said. “So it’s about 30 miles of climbing.”

Friday is a sprint workout covering 25 to 30 miles.

Saturday is a “recovery day,” a 25-mile spin in preparation for Sunday, which is no day of rest. “Sunday is long and hard,” Koval said. “Usually 60 to 70 miles, sometimes 80 or 90. But it’s hard . . . the intensity’s really high.”

Kahler makes minor adjustments in this program depending on Koval’s race schedule, but it all adds up to an average of 250 to 300 miles per week. This routine is followed from March through September, and a lighter schedule is followed during the winter months.

For the past 18 months, Koval has traveled this path, which she hopes will lead her to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

But she already has encountered a few roadblocks. She broke her collarbone in a fall in the Coors International Bicycle Classic last August in Colorado. The injury was followed by a virus that prompted the 7-Eleven team to release her from a two-year sponsorship contract after only six months. 7-Eleven is the same team that is sponsoring American Andy Hampsten, one of the favorites to win the men’s Tour de France this year. Koval considered signing with 7-Eleven a big career break, and she was disappointed when her association with the team ended prematurely.

“They were just real short-term,” Koval said. “They wanted results. Obviously, when you’re off your bike for two months and you’re sick, it’s hard to give results immediately.”

Said Kahler: “I think 7-Eleven will suffer in the long run because they released Jill. They were very shortsighted. When someone’s ill who has the potential Jill has, you try to work with them and get them back on their feet. There’s a reason why they signed her in the first place. Everybody could see that she was one of the top women riders in the country. You just don’t let someone like that go because they’re ill for a couple months.”

Perhaps it was fate. Had Koval stayed with 7-Eleven, she wouldn’t have had the chance to be Orange County’s first representative in the Tour de France, because 7-Eleven later decided not to send a women’s team. But she’ll be there in Paris, ready to race in the showcase event of the sport she has embraced, despite its potential for pain.

“I’ve had two broken collarbones and a lot of road rash,” she said. “I’ve broken my helmet twice, and if I hadn’t been wearing it, I probably wouldn’t have much of a head left. But that sort of comes with the sport. There’s a lot of risk involved, but it’s exciting.”