U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES 1991 : Taking a Crash Course : No Love Is Lost When Push Comes to Shove at Top Level of Women’s Sprint Cycling

Connie Paraskevin-Young kept running into her sister-in-law, Sheila Young, at the most inopportune times. At the end of races. On a velodrome track. In a heap of tangled bodies and featherweight racing bicycles.

In 1982, the two had a propensity for crashing when competing. The Olympic speedskaters-turned-track cyclists tumbled four times in one season, including the national championships and the world championships at Liester, England.

Cycling observers began to wonder. Family relations--Connie is married to Sheila’s brother Roger--go only so far.

Not to worry. Connie Young, the 1990 world match sprint champion and 1988 Olympic gold medalist, said they always walked away laughing.

“Friends of ours would go, ‘I can’t believe you two still talk to each other after you knock each down,’ ” Connie said last February in Newport Beach, where she spends the winter. “We both like to move around on the track and have fun.”

Fun?

No one seemed to be joking in May of 1989 in the San Diego Velodrome when Connie Young had her first and only crash with Renee Duprel of La Mesa.

“She took me straight up the rail and we both crashed really hard,” said Duprel, who won a gold medal in the match sprint Saturday night at the U.S. Olympic Festival.

“It really made me angry, she caused it, she took me down. And she wasn’t willing to take a bit of the blame. . . . She was covering her butt so big-time. ‘No, no, Renee took me down.’

“I couldn’t get up to finish the race. I hit my head. I was OK, but not to race within a half hour. The crowd was chanting . . . (a vulgarity). That’s how blatant it was.”

These are the world’s two best female match sprinters. Last year at the world championships in Japan, Young finished first and Duprel second.

Young, 31, has a cheerful personality to the point of sugar-coated enthusiasm. She sees herself as a spokeswoman for women’s cycling. A couple of crashes with Sheila in major events was not going to alter that.

But Young changes when the subject is Duprel.

“The second best sprinter in the U.S. has to turn her opponents into enemies,” Young said. “She has to turn our competition into a rivalry, saying nasty things.”

Duprel: “I don’t go around saying nasty things. Not blatantly.”

Young shakes her head and squints as if to say she does not understand what the Duprel’s problem is.

Merely another episode of Young and the restless.

“We don’t really antagonize each other, we just ignore each other,” Duprel said. “I don’t enjoy her company, she doesn’t enjoy mine. No big deal. I go to the track and warm up. She goes to the track and warms up. I sit over there. She sits over here. And it’s just great.”

But do they talk?

“Sometimes we’re civil, does that count?”

Young describes Duprel as a cyclist who needs to hate the opponent she competes against.

Duprel: “I don’t think that’s true. I don’t dislike anybody else.”

Duprel, who trains at Trexlertown, Pa., in the summer, is a feisty competitor who used to fight with her brother at the start of track races when they were teen-agers. They were almost banned from a Seattle velodrome because of pre-race squabbles.

But she was 15 then and the only girl competitor on the narrow oval in Washington. Now 25, Duprel has matured into the United States’ next sprint star.

The rivalry of the world’s best women sprinters was sorely missed at the Cal State Dominguez Hills Velodrome, where the U.S. Olympic Festival racing ended Saturday night. Young also skipped last week’s national championships at Redmond, Wash. Without the competition, Duprel won easily.

“I really was ready to race Connie last week,” Duprel said. “I would have changed my training if I had know she would do that.”

This is one sport that could use the spice.

Track racing often is dramatic and exciting, but misunderstood. Competitors have little in common with road racers such as those in the Tour de France.

The match sprint is a 1,000-meter, three-lap best-of-three event. To qualify for a match sprint, two or three riders race three laps. The final 200 meters are timed, and the winners who advance are seeded according to their sprint speed.

Usually, 800 meters of the match sprints are ridden with tactical skill. The riders try to position themselves for an all-out 200-meter sprint. Because the riders are free to use any part of the track, the final sprint is when accidents happen.

Now, it would be an accident if Young and Duprel met before the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany on Aug. 13-15.

That postponed the long-anticipated confrontation, which was expected at the Festival. Is Young ducking the inevitable? The passing by Duprel?

Duprel defeated Young for the first time in a series last May in an invitational on the Stuttgart track. But the event was nothing more than a practice run.

“I’m sure she is trying to (play games),” Duprel said of Young’s race selection. “I really have no idea. I don’t know what makes her tick. Last year, she left the nationals right before the finals because it was raining. What kind of excuse is that? To leave the national championships? Who knows?”

The night of this year’s nationals, Duprel said she was watching television before leaving for the track. Merely changing channels to kill some time. Suddenly there was a sports show.

“There’s Connie at Universal Studios,” Duprel said. “What’s she doing there? I can’t believe this. Then I packed up my bike and rode to the track for the national championships.”

Why was Young not present?

“You ask her, she won’t tell me.”

Actually, Young’s television appearance was taped. It occurred two weeks before the nationals. She reportedly is nursing a leg injury, and is training strictly for the World Championships.

But she was rollerblading on television when Duprel tuned in.

“She blew it off,” said Duprel, who nonetheless raced.

Young, who is coached by her husband, Roger, said she is using 1991 as a base for next year. These domestic events are fine, but to her the Olympics is everything.

In the Olympics, only one competitor per country is allowed in the match sprint, so the Youngs are carefully crafting a plan to get them to Barcelona for the 1992 Summer Games. In 1988, Duprel had to pay her way to Seoul to watch the events as an alternate. This time, she wants to be on the U.S. team.

It seemingly is unfair, but that is how the event is organized.

Still, based on Young’s complaints, Duprel thought she might enjoy a challenge in the United States.

Young told Times reporter Jerry Crowe in 1988 that she was so bored with the lack of American competition that she petitioned to race against men at the national championships.

“I just wanted good competition,” Young said. “It was like I didn’t have a challenge. There was nothing to motivate me. By the time the world championships came around, I was physically capable, I think, but mentally I wasn’t. I was dull.”

Since then, Duprel, who models her training after that of her boyfriend, Olympian Ken Carpenter, has emerged. Young no longer needs to look to the men for a challenge. All she has to do is look over her shoulder.

“Here I am,” Duprel said. “I’m getting better and better. (Our) times are getting real close.

“So, come on out.”

Tale of the Tape

A look at rivals Renee Duprel and Connie Young

RENEE DUPREL

Age: 25

Height: 5-5

Weight: 135

Residence: La Mesa

Awards: World match sprint silver medalist 1990; bronze medalist, Goodwill Games, 1990; national match sprint champion (1990,’91); Pan American Games silver medalist.

CONNIE YOUNG

Age: 31

Height: 5-3

Weight: 120

Residence: Indianapolis

Awards: World match sprint champion--1982-84, ‘90; Olympic gold medalist 1988; national match sprint champion (1982-83, ‘85, ‘87-90); Olympian in speedskating (1980 and 1984).