‘I Was Blown Away . . . I Didn’t Even Know What Was Going On, But I Was So Into It’ : ‘I Wanted to Race Bikes’

The colors seized him. Splashes of reds, yellows, blues, greens. They poured past the ever-widening eyes of John Williams so swiftly he could hardly distinguish where one hue started and the next began.

His expression was that of a youthful Norman Rockwell subject staring into a kaleidoscope for the first time. He leaned closer, squinted, then pulled back, trying to focus on the array of darting figures before him.

“I was blown away,” said Williams, still fascinated by the vision four years later. “Just the colors, there was so much accent. I didn’t even know what was going on, but I was so into it.”

Williams, 25, known as Scooter since childhood, was hooked.

He had experienced more than a roadside view of his first cycling race. The Mountain View Criterium, which the small town just south of Palo Alto no longer plays host to, served as Williams’ direction.

“Sitting there watching that race, I decided I wanted to race bikes,” Williams recalled.

This April, Williams received a tattered envelope. Several forwarding addresses were scribbled over the face of the letter, which eventually landed in the mailbox at his parents’ home in Agoura Hills. In the upper-left corner was the emblem of the U.S. CyclingFederation.

The note inside, signed by USCF Executive Director Mark Hodges, asked Williams to race for Team USA, the Olympic development program based in Colorado Springs. Williams treated the correspondence as if it had Ed McMahon’s picture on it.

Am I the John Williams whose life is about to change?

“It was a total shock to me,” he said. “I got this letter and thought it was a mistake. I called Mark Hodges to say, ‘This is John Williams. I received a letter. Are you sure I’m the right person?’ ”

Hodges, who had heard reviews of Williams’ racing through a track manager at a San Jose velodrome, assured him he was.

“John’s going to be quite an asset to Team USA in the future,” Hodges said. “He’s really, really fast. I see him challenging some of the guys in ’92.”

That’s 1992, as in the Year of the Olympics .

Yet the trail from criterium clod to Olympic hopeful can be considered smooth only if one takes into account the preceding trials.

Scooter Williams was first and foremost a basketball player.

At 6-foot-2, he was an All-Camino Real League guard at Serra High, a private, all-boys school in Gardena. Before graduating in 1982, Scooter three times led the Cavaliers as far as the playoff quarterfinals.

Scooter , of course, is a basketball player’s nickname. Cyclists are called Ulf or Franz or Alexi and are not given nicknames because their names are so colorful anyway.

In fact, when Hodges received a recent inquiry about “this Scooter Williams kid,” he asked, “Scooter who ? You mean John Williams?”

Uh, right.

Williams was raised a mere double-dribble from the Forum. He mixed it up on the playgrounds of Inglewood with Laker Byron Scott, former UCLA and Boston Celtics swingman Kenny Fields and Milwaukee Bucks guard Jay Humphries.

He was going to be a basketball player and in 1982 headed off to Stanford with a full scholarship and a world of expectations packed in his duffel bag. What he found instead was a new coach--Tom Davis--new rules and, finally, a situation that became demoralizing.

In three seasons at Stanford, Williams scored 49 points and had 22 rebounds. He played in just 16 games. In 1984, at the start of his junior season, he suffered a stress fracture in his right foot.

Still not healed, Williams red-shirted the season with the intention of returning. He never played for the Cardinal again.

When healthy, he got little playing time. When injured, little encouragement. So Scooter Williams began his arduous transition to John Williams.

At the time, he placed much of the blame on Davis, whose first season at Stanford coincided with Williams’ arrival.

“When I was there, it got to the point I wanted to leave,” Williams said. “I thought of transferring. Several times, I’d sit in my room and cry.

“I took myself away from the players, the involvement, the people. People I loved. Friendships I had formed that are, now, still really good friendships. It was quite an emotional time for me. I hated him.

“I didn’t like to come home to see my high school friends, because I was embarrassed that I didn’t play. I was supposed to play.”

Davis, who now coaches at the University of Iowa, remembers Williams as a “unique” and “lively” personality and recalls his emotional difficulties as relatively typical.

“What he was going through was normal,” Davis said. “I think any time you’re looking at players who are not in the starting lineup or the starting rotation, it’s always a difficult relationship. It’s just a matter of trying to accept that role and not being broken by it. I thought Scooter was handling it well.”

On the exterior, perhaps. But Novian Whitsitt, a friend and fellow guard at Stanford, saw a hurt in Williams’ eyes that far exceeded the hurt in his right foot.

“Scoot usually didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve,” said Whitsitt, who works for the Pacific 10 Conference in Walnut Creek. “But if you knew him, you knew he was in a lot of pain.

“There were conflicts with the coaches. He felt he should be playing more. And then the injuries came. Scoot was a talent in basketball that really went untapped.”

Williams, attempting to draw one more basketball season from what was once a wellspring of promise, spent several hours a day in the training room during the latter part of his junior year. The recovery process included tedious sessions on a stationary bike, when he stared at the same concrete wall day after day, rigorously pumping to the beat of his own rehabilitation.

Eager to break away from the training room, Williams bought his first racing bike--a secondhand, $650 Italian Somec. The original owner threw in a pair of tattered cleats. Whitsitt, who set up the transaction, took Williams on his first ride through the hills of Palo Alto the same day.

“I was worn out,” Williams said. “I think it was about a 20-mile ride. And what seemed like really large hills were just rollers.”

Not long after that, on a warm Sunday afternoon, Williams and his girlfriend, Alicia Costantino, mounted their bikes for a lazy ride through Stanford’s surrounding communities. They happened upon Mountain View and the rainbow of racers.

“I stayed there the whole day,” Williams said. “On the way home, I remember having a real good ride because I was so hyper about it. I went home and shaved my legs. I was going to look the part.”

All that was left was to become the part.

When his training regimen reached what he considered a competitive level, Williams registered for a race in San Jose on Memorial Day weekend, 1986. He bought his first hard-shell helmet the night before. As it turned out, he never really got going fast enough to use it.

Four miles into the race, he was dead tired. Six miles in, 36 miles from the finish line, he was lucky. The rear tire of his Somec found a piece of glass and blew out. Williams was done--and somewhat wiser for the experience.

“I was glad,” he admitted with a typically wide smile. “I got off, picked up my tire and went back. I was really kinda happy.

“I knew after that I would have to start working.”

Williams became a regular on the hills and paths in and around Palo Alto. He joined the Stanford Cycling Club and enlisted the help of experienced cyclists in the Bay Area. Upon graduation from Stanford in January, 1988, Williams put his degree in economics to good use by manning the cash register at a local bike shop.

Then, another race, this one at UC Irvine. And, another disaster.

With his friends and family in the crowd, Williams was buried again.

“I got dropped,” he said flatly. “No flats, no excuses. I just got dropped. I was so embarrassed. I was coughing after the race. It was so hot and I was just winded. I vowed to myself at that point that I would never be that embarrassed again.”

John Williams was obsessed.

A breakthrough came in the second race of the 1988 season. The evidence hangs over the Williams’ family Mercedes in their two-car garage. The old Somec is suspended on two nails. Along the head tube, just above the front fork, a serpent-like gouge rakes to the underlying metal. Williams pointed to the scar and recalled a day in Sonoma.

“I was training hard, getting stronger,” he said. “In that race I crashed, got up and finished 12th.

“Then I knew I could compete. I knew I could finish a race.”

Top 10 finishes started to come, including a fifth in the California road racing championships in Lancaster in early June.

He had come a long way from the day he cheered a blown tire. The tears he shed in his Stanford bedroom were all but forgotten.

“John is real, real intense,” Hodges said. “Almost too intense sometimes. It’s sometimes like he’s striving to be perfect.

“It usually takes quite a bit of time to develop these skills, but we’ll have him for at least the next three years. I know he’s a heck of a rider.”

Williams said that he would officially sign with Team USA after this year’s USCF Senior National and Road Criterium, held July 11-20 in Park City, Utah. Team USA provides a monthly stipend, coaching, mechanical support, equipment and clothing. His goal is a top 10 finish.

“I kind of thrive on the pain of it now,” he said. “When I first started it, I quit when I hurt. I like the pain of it now. I like climbing and hurting. I enjoy hearing people suffering behind me. I enjoy that feeling.”