Smyers Battling for More

Karen Smyers waited 15 years for the triathlon to finally make its debut as an Olympic sport. But Smyers, one of the most decorated athletes in the sport, won’t be in Sydney next week for the first Olympic triathlon. Instead, she’ll compete in Sunday’s inaugural Los Angeles Triathlon, and make yet another comeback.

“It feels like I wasn’t invited to the sport’s biggest party, after having been a part of it for so long,” Smyers said.

After years of success, Smyers appeared to be a favorite to earn one of three spots on the U.S. Olympic triathlon team, but a series of accidents beginning three years ago followed by a cancer diagnosis hindered her chances of becoming an Olympian.

This weekend’s race, her first since the Olympic trials May 27 in Dallas, is not about breaking records but about making a comeback from cancer.

“It’s a therapeutic race for me. I have set some personal goals and I’m trying not to be worried about my [time] relative to other people,” she said.

Smyers’ “bad-luck flukes” began in 1997. She was changing a storm window when the glass shattered, severing her hamstring. The next year she was sideswiped by an 18-wheeler while riding a bike. Smyers broke six ribs and separated her shoulder after crashing into a ditch when the truck swerved into her path.

Fortunate to be alive, she resumed competition eight months later, winning in her first race back. But during a checkup last September, tests revealed she had thyroid cancer.

She thought it was a mistake, until she broke her collarbone in November after crashing her bike over a fallen competitor during a race in Ixtapa, Mexico, and further tests confirmed the cancer. A month later, doctors removed a cancerous thyroid gland and two lymph nodes.

“I really had a good scare,” Smyers said.

Her quest to make the Olympic team might have been over, but she decided to postpone fatiguing radioactive iodine treatment until after the Olympic trials on advice from her doctor, who assured her that thyroid cancer grows slowly.

Smyers continued to train, but her seventh-place finish in Dallas was not good enough to make the Olympic team.

“Sure, I was sad I didn’t make the team,” she said. “But it would’ve affected me more if I became a triathlete in order to make the Olympics. I got into the sport because I loved it.”

Some marvel at Smyers’ ability to bounce back from adversity, her gutsy come-from-behind wins and her joy of life.

“I’m not a ‘Why me?’ kind of person,” she said.

She finds inspiration from cancer survivor and two-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and Scott Carlson, a friend and Smyers’ former training partner who has Lou Gehrig’s disease (a degenerative muscular disorder).

“Other than what’s happened, I’ve had a charmed career,” she said. “This is the hand I was dealt, and I’m going to do everything I can with that hand.”

Smyers will race even though she’s still recovering from the radioactive iodine treatment she received less than two weeks ago and from going off her thyroid-hormone medication. The side effects include fatigue and a swollen neck.

This weekend someone else may win the triathlon, and next week another will win the triathlon gold medal in Sydney, but Smyers is overcoming the more grueling event called life.

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L.A. Triathlon

* What: Competitors swim for ninth-tenths of a mile, cycle for 24.8 and run for 6.2.

* When: Sunday, with amateurs starting at 6:30 a.m., relay at 7:30, professionals at 9.

* Where: Swimming leg starts at Venice Beach, cycling leg to Hollywood, running leg to downtown Los Angeles.

* Major street closures: Venice Boulevard on the south side, Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Vermont and downtown L.A.-area streets.

* Who: 85 professionals, 2,100 amateurs.

* On the Web: www.latriathlon.com. For complete description of the course and road closures: www.cityofla.org.