Her Confidence Is Back in Gear : Recovered From Trauma of Crash, Twigg Hopes to Regain Cycling Glory of ’84

Rebecca Twigg never saw it coming.

She was out of the bicycle seat, her long, strong legs pedaling feverishly, when her rear wheel suddenly came apart. She flipped over the bike, landed on her head, suffering a mild concussion and a broken thumb.

The accident during practice the day before the start of the 1987 season didn’t end her career as one of the greatest female bicycle racers, but it did leave an indelible mark.

Twigg was not wearing a helmet because practices before a race usually were easy rides. For some reason, though, her manager had asked the team to simulate races, and the competitor in her took over.

“I was sprinting really, really well,” she said.

Then, without the slightest warning, she was sprawled on the asphalt, dazed and confused. The moment was terrifying because elite cyclists expect their equipment to perform. A flat tire, perhaps, but not a loose wheel.

Because of the accident, Twigg lost her aggressiveness. When she returned from the injuries, she had no confidence in herself, her equipment and other riders. She became timid, which is a big negative in the cutthroat game of road racing.

Her hesitancy was understandable, considering it was Twigg’s second major crash of an 11-year career. The year before, she had fallen during the World Championships when she hit a pothole while shifting gears near the finish of the road race in Colorado Springs, Colo. That fall hurt more, because she was challenging France’s Jeannie Longo for the road race title at the time.

“It doesn’t take more than a couple of good crashes to make you wonder why you’re doing it,” said Connie Carpenter-Phinney, who edged Twigg for the 1984 Olympic gold medal.

Although the crashes had a profound effect on Twigg, she persevered for another year before realizing she had had enough. By 1988, Twigg, a multiple world champion and silver medalist in the 1984 Olympics, was suffering from illnesses and fatigue. She finished last at the 1988 U.S. Olympic trials and retired from cycling without fanfare.

As quietly as she had left, though, Twigg, 29, resurfaced on the roads near her home in San Diego County six months ago. She said the excitement of bicycle racing came back into her life like the return of an old friend.

Today she is preparing for her third U.S. Olympic trials--she will ride in the road race today at Altoona, Pa., and the 3,000-meter individual pursuit June 24 at Blaine, Minn.

Twigg is not the only star from her generation trying to reach Barcelona. France’s Longo, who became the world’s best road racer after the 1984 Games, has spent the last year training to make the Olympics. As does Twigg, she hopes to qualify for the road race and the 3,000-meter pursuit.

Unlike Twigg, however, Longo will not have to overcome the fear of falling.

“There was no way to anticipate it,” Twigg said of her 1987 spill. “Not even a split second beforehand. All of a sudden, one of the things you assume works, didn’t.”

Carpenter-Phinney, who retired in 1984 partly because of a serious crash in Santa Clarita that spring, thinks Twigg has a difficult challenge.

“Once that barrier is in place, that’s it,” she said.

Not from Twigg’s perspective.

“Crashing is no longer a factor,” she said. “I’m no more (afraid of riding with a group) now than when I was doing really well.”

Twigg has managed to sidestep the issue with competitive outings against the U.S. national team. Her major deficiency is an inability to ride as consistently well as she used to.

That takes time. But even if Twigg had started earlier, making the Olympic team would not be easy. Twigg’s specialty is the individual pursuit, a track race in which riders start on opposite sides of the track and try, for 3,000 meters, to catch one another. Only one cyclist from each country will be allowed to advance, which does not bode well for Twigg.

She must defeat Janie Eickhoff of Northridge, who won a silver medal at last year’s World Championships. Eickhoff, 22, who trains at the Encino velodrome’s 250-meter track, has suffered some minor injuries and only now is regaining her world-class form. She expects to be as fast as last year by the end of June, but she knows better than to discount Twigg.

“I came out of the woodwork two years ago,” Eickhoff said. “I’m concerned about everybody.”

No matter where she places, Twigg is sure that this year’s trials will be refreshing after her dismal performance four years ago. When Twigg retired after the 1988 trials, she said she was so tired she disliked racing. She said she wanted to explore other interests. She had earned a degree in biology from the University of Washington in 1985 after going to the school part-time since she was 14.

But instead of pursuing biology, she entered an eight-month program at a San Diego business school to earn a degree in computer programming.

Because she owned a house, she wanted a job that would pay enough for the upkeep. She worked for two years in computers, discovering such a routine existence was not for her.

“I went through quite a bit of wavering,” she said. “It wasn’t clear what my purpose in life was. Racing was something I was really good at, and I shouldn’t have taken it for granted.”

She awoke one morning with Eddie Borysewicz’s phone number going through her head. She was not sure why she was thinking about her old coach, but she did not act on the impulse. She thought it would pass.

When it didn’t, Twigg decided to ride a little before calling Borysewicz, coach of the Escondido-based Subaru-Montgomery team. She thought that perhaps she needed only to ride for a day to satisfy the yearnings to compete. So, she rode. And rode some more. For three days in a row, she returned to her old racing bicycle.

Before, riding for even an hour had been an ordeal. Now, the riding rejuvenated her. Twigg drove across the county to see her coach. She wanted to race again, she announced. Borysewicz told her the rest had been good for her, then prepared a strategy to help her start again.

“He told me I could be good,” Twigg said.

Twigg trains mostly on her own because Borysewicz is obligated to be with the Subaru-Montgomery team when it competes throughout Europe. She needed to find her pedaling rhythm again, anyway.

Although Twigg said her return has been like a rebirth, as with the crashes, she cannot ignore her past. Rejoining Borysewicz has brought questions about one of the biggest scandals in the aftermath of the 1984 Olympics--the blood-doping controversy of the U.S. cycling team.

At the request of coaches, Twigg and a handful of other American riders tried blood-boosting, the practice of transfusing blood to an individual in order to increase oxygen-rich red blood cells. The practice was not banned by the International Olympic Committee in 1984, but was shortly thereafter. Toxicologists still do not have a definitive test to determine whether an athlete has done it or not.

For most of the last eight years, Twigg has not talked publicly about her role in the controversy.

“Now I want people to know. . . . Maybe I am being more open,” she said. “I don’t want to have any regrets, any deep, dark secrets that I’m holding.”

Twigg said she tried blood-doping only once--shortly before her Olympic road race. She does not believe it helped her finish second because the race was held in Mission Viejo, not at high altitude, where athletes need more oxygen-rich blood to power muscles.

“All the other years I didn’t do that, and I did well,” she said. “It was not planned. This was something that I did not know was wrong. It shouldn’t have been done, but it was one of those things where this is what the coaches say what we should do, so we did it.”

Carpenter-Phinney, who was not part of Borysewicz’s group, said Twigg had the talent to achieve her results without the use of performance-enhancing drugs, or blood-doping.

But did she?

“I couldn’t tell you,” said Carpenter-Phinney, an outspoken critic of drugs in cycling. “It depends if she bought Eddie B.’s thing hook, line and sinker. I think this was just a talented group who had a coach who led them down a path.”

Twigg, who said she never used anabolic steroids, amphetamines or any performance-enhancing drug, has been touched by the reception she has received. Even serious competitors such as Eickhoff greet her warmly.

“It will be neat, actually competing against her,” Eickhoff said.

At a race in Visalia recently, an announcer introduced some of the riders as they gathered at the starting line. When Twigg’s name was announced, one of the competitors clapped.

Twigg felt giddy.

She was back.