This Year, the Talented and Often-Injured Kristi Kidwell Is Into Cycling

Kristi Kidwell, who recently broke her back when she fell from her bicycle and landed on a concrete parking lot, will participate in the U.S. Olympic cycling trials in Spokane, Wash.

Kidwell, who recently passed out during a bicycle race in Idaho, qualified for the trials by placing third in the California regional, the nation’s largest.

Before turning to cycling, Kidwell, of Placentia, was a runner (knee, ankle and leg injuries), biathlete and triathlete (virus, loss of consciousness and coughing up of blood) . . .

As relationships go, the world of sports and Kristi Kidwell are drawn to each other like a hammer and anvil, with Kidwell on the receiving end.

The problem is, the woman loves sports a lot more than they seem to care for her. She has played a ton of them--gymnastics, Little League baseball, football, tennis, softball, track, cross-country--never sticking with anything very long because of boredom, but usually managing to hang on long enough to incur some sort of injury.

“It just seemed like one thing after another,” she said.

Seems might be a more appropriate word, because as she prepares for the Olympic trials beginning July 31, Kidwell is receiving treatment on her back three times a week.

She injured it in April while training in a parking lot with her coach, David Salisbury. Attempting to stick close to his back wheel, she swung wide and hit a concrete parking block, flying onto another one, back-first.

“We are talking serious pain,” she said. “I screamed like I was going to die.”

We’re also talking fractured second, fourth and fifth vertebrae of the lower back. Doctors told her to stay away from cycling for at least three months. Three and a half weeks later, she won the aptly named Devil’s Punch Bowl Hill Climb.

Kidwell is one of those people who excel at any sport.

She won the first cycling race she entered. She has been cycling for just two years, but her quick progress to the Olympic trials surprised no one who knows her.

“She’s a natural at anything she does,” said Tom Kidwell, her younger brother.

Tom was the pitcher on the Little League team on which Kristi played shortstop and catcher in practices and practice games. According to Tom, the two of them grew up “bouncing off the walls,” which included playing every sport in sight.

“She was a hell of a tailback,” he said.

She picked up track and cross-country as a junior at Corona del Mar High, running in “everything from the 880 up,” Tom said.

A few years later she had a track scholarship to Weber State. There, she met her husband, Steve Dick, a decathlete. After Weber State, she and Steve settled in Anaheim, where she realized she was pretty sick of running--big surprise--and the various leg and knee injuries that came with it.

She started training for triathlons, then biathlons. When she got sick of that--and by sick, we’re talking viruses that caused her to pass out during the bicycle portion of one race--she took up cycling. Last year she competed in 12 races and trained about 100 miles a week--not a heavy schedule.

“I have a friend that did 90 races in a year,” she said. “Some people race two, three times a week.”

This year, as a member of the Marishel Vite team, she has increased her races to 40. She has increased her training to about 225 miles a week.

Salisbury, among others, is convinced that if she sticks with the sport, she would have a realistic chance at making the Olympic team in 1992. Almost everyone, Kidwell included, knows that pure athleticism won’t be enough this year.

“There’s just too much for me to learn,” she said. “Athletically I think I can compete with anyone, but there’s a lot of things I still have to learn about racing. It’s like a chess game, and I’m just a beginner. Placing 15th in Spokane would be great for me.”

In fact, Salisbury thinks Kidwell could have won the California regional, but inexperience and being boxed in prevented that.

“She was fresher than anyone when the race ended,” he said. “She had enough strength to beat anyone there. But because of her inexperience, she got herself in a spot she shouldn’t have been.”

In four years, all that could change. But Salisbury doesn’t kid himself about coaching Kidwell four years from now.

“There’s no way she’ll stick with it,” he said. “She’s just too impatient. Kris is the kind of person who gets bored by listening to the same radio station for five minutes, even if it’s playing a song she likes.”

In fact, there is something in the works.

“Race walking,” she said.

Race walking. Now there’s a nice, easygoing sport. Kidwell already has tried the sport several times.

“I’m pretty good at it,” she said.

What a shock.

“But, I must admit, I’m feeling some pain in my hips after I walk.”

What a shock.