Injured Cyclist Has Waited 4 Years to Try for Olympic Gold

World-class cyclist Betsy Davis has been waiting through four painful years for Sunday.

It was 1984 when Davis, of Hermosa Beach, was struck by a hit-and-run motorist in New Jersey as she pedaled in practice for the U.S. Olympic trials. She was injured severely and couldn’t make the team.

Her injuries--internal bleeding, a torn groin, a bruised shoulder and a chronic back problem--made it impossible to represent the nation in Los Angeles.

The 1988 Games offer a second chance.

“When I was hit, I wanted to kill the driver, but at the same time I wanted to make the Olympic team,” Davis recalled recently from her ocean-view apartment. “I wouldn’t have gotten on the plane to go to the trials had I not thought I had a chance. But I wanted to kill the creep, and I still do.”

Four years later, Davis, 31, cannot forgive or forget, especially since her back still bothers her.

Three women will be chosen for the team after the 3-race trials Sunday in Spokane. The first race, the annual National Road Race, is hilly. The remaining two are just flat enough for a sprinter like Davis to flourish with a late-race flurry.

Should she make the team, there won’t be time to ponder her hatred of the driver who struck her and fled.

Pondering in her behalf, though, will be the Bergen County, N.J., district attorney’s office, which recently reopened Davis’ case after closing it due to minimal evidence. Davis’ former coach received an anonymous letter last year that mentioned a party where someone was bragging about a friend who had run down an Olympic cyclist. Another letter with more details arrived a month later, prompting the district attorney to look into the case again.

Davis’ former coach, Vic Fraysse, subsequently died. But his son, Mike, has as much interest in the case. Mike Fraysse, Davis’ personal coach and also competition chairman for the U.S. Cycling Federation, was riding alongside Davis the day she was hit. His leg was cut badly, and he also wants revenge.

“I think differently of Betsy than other people,” said Fraysse, a national intercollegiate cycling champion at Fairleigh Dickinson in 1963 and ’64 who won 15 national medals. “I’ve seen her do some incredible things. She can race the men and still do well. She doesn’t know how good she is.”

Fraysse met Davis when she was heavily into sailing and speed skating as a teen-ager in Montclair, N.J. Davis, now 5-foot-10 and 145 pounds, weighed 210 then. A few years later Vic Fraysse persuaded the 19-year-old Davis to start cycling. She dropped 40 pounds.

A year earlier, Davis had participated in the world championships of sailing, her family’s sport. And, though she began to like cycling more and more, she continued speed skating until she won a national championship in 1978, the year she also started cycling for the national team.

It took her only three weeks on speed skates in 1986 to become national champion again, but by then she had become a partner in a cycling pro shop, immersed herself in the bicycle industry and cycled full time for seven years. Speed skating had become a hobby.

Davis was a consistent world-class cyclist from 1978 through the early ‘80s, when she learned that her sport would become an Olympic event at the ’84 Games.

During the Olympics, she hung up her bicycle. Her wounds from the hit-and-run had healed, but emotional scars remained. She didn’t watch the Olympic races or intend to ride again seriously.

A lucrative sponsorship package, however, lured her back in March of 1985, and she again cycled full time with success through 1986.

A lack of fun caught up with her in July of the following year. “I wasn’t enjoying the sport and I wasn’t happy, so I quit,” she explained. “I had great years in ’85 and ’86 but a crummy one last year. Once you don’t enjoy the sport, it is not worth it.”

Managing the women’s Olympic Festival team and coaching a U.S. men’s team in Barbados became Davis’ preoccupations. Her bike business and experience in the industry had made her a top-flight mechanic and acquainted her with a new boyfriend, who wanted her to move to Los Angeles.

She did, and forgot about competing until last fall when a member of the men’s national team who had ridden the Olympic course in Seoul talked Davis back into competitive cycling.

The flat course in Seoul is tailored for sprinters. So with a supportive boyfriend, she began training for Seoul last fall and has not stopped.

Davis is the oldest of those expected to finish well at the trials. “But I am still smarter than 99% of them,” she said. “I beat a lot of people on tactics.” And some say age is not an issue.

“If I had any doubts about women racing after 30,” said Susan Elias, 25, a member of Davis’ Team Tissot who hopes to make the Olympic team, “I realized that was nonsense in 1986 at the Tour de France. A 37-year-old mother won there using her ability, and since then there is no way I could be aged-prejudiced.”

Elias began racing three years ago. Like Davis, her specialty is sprinting. At 5-foot-4 and 127 pounds, however, she knows her frame lacks Davis’ power.

Deborah Shumway, a former Tissot member now racing mountain bikes for the Diamond Back team, said Davis’ experience makes her physical tools more effective.

“Betsy is so good at reading a race,” said the 33-year-old Shumway, who lives in Long Beach. “She has so much experience, she is almost like a computer, analyzing the situation and the other riders.”

Said Davis: “I have a sense of knowing where I am and knowing where I have to be and knowing who to be with when it comes down to the final sprint.”

Humility is also in her favor. But sometimes it prevents her from winning.

Cycling demands teamwork. One rider must rush in front to block the wind for another. Ideally, the give-and-take will allow all team members to win some of the time. “You take turns sacrificing and going for the glory,” Elias said.

Davis’ team splits prize money evenly, and Davis blocks for a teammate as much as she wins. “We don’t care who wins just as long as we win,” she said.

The result is that when Davis the individual wants to win, it is not guaranteed.

She always wanted to win a particular race in her home state of New Jersey and finished second several times. This year, Elias won the race with Davis’ help. “It was great teamwork,” Elias said. “Betsy was so happy. That made me feel good.”

Davis expects to race at least through next year. And cycling won’t be far away once she stops competing. She says she’ll be happy caring for bikes and coaching juniors.

More than 15 bicycles of all kinds adorn the apartment she shares with her boyfriend and his roommate. A few take up space on the floor. Others line the walls. And above the couch is a dart board featuring a pierced picture of 1984 U.S. Olympic medalist Connie Carpenter, who retired after the Games.

It’s a picture Davis wants to be in.

Recently, she could be found pedaling the Pacific Coast Highway. To prepare for the Olympic road race, she has to train on the road. With the sweat, however, come flashbacks of the day that driver hit her and ran.

The memories were fresh the day a reporter caught up with her: “Today I felt like there was a full moon. I was in Long Beach and these jerks were trying to hit me. I’m like, ‘God, don’t let it happen again.’ There was just one car on the road and he had to come right next to me. There was just no reason for it.

“But what can you do? I have to train, so it’s something you have to live with.”