She Is Fighting Uphill Battle

When Ildiko Strehli marches in the Opening Ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City on Feb. 8, she plans to carry in her pocket a list of friends and family members who have supported her.

When the Hungarian makes her first bobsled run 11 days later, she’ll push a used sled she calls the “sled full of hope” with a pink ribbon--the symbol of breast cancer survivors--painted on the side.

A ski instructor, marathon runner, elite sky diver, former collegiate swimmer and brown belt in judo, Strehli, 36, is a relentlessly positive thinker who earned the last Olympic qualifying slot in women’s bobsled just five years after taking up the sport, and two years after having a double mastectomy in her second bout with breast cancer.

She received word of her qualification three weeks ago while dining at a restaurant in Park City, Utah, via a cell phone call from her husband, Bob Shell. At first disbelieving, Strehli finally exchanged joyous high-fives and hugs with her dinner companions, brake woman Eva Kurti and sprint coach Donald Chu.

“This is why I would like to keep the pink ribbon on the sled,” said Strehli, who moved to the United States after marrying Shell in 1994. “To demonstrate to people not to give up their dreams. I feel lucky, fortunate, blessed to have come this far.”

Two years, six months ago, Strehli noticed a lump on her breast while on a hike not far from her home in Park City. Days later, in what provided a devastating flashback to a doctor’s visit in 1995, Strehli learned the lump was malignant. The shock spread slowly. How could this be happening again? Strehli, who had undergone radiation, chemotherapy and a lumpectomy after the first appearance of cancer, this time had both breasts removed.

When women’s bobsled was accepted on the Winter Games program in fall 1999, Strehli was recovering from the surgery. She could not lift her arms and still had stitches on her chest. Even so, if women’s bobsled had made the Games, Strehli recalled thinking, she, too, had to make the Games. A month later, still unable to lift her arms above her head, Strehli re-entered competition on the World Cup circuit.

“She’s stubborn in a very good way,” said Shell, who met Strehli during her four-month trip to the United States in 1993. “She doesn’t know what no means. Ildiko wasn’t going to quit. As soon as they said it was in the Olympics, it was: ‘We’re going.’ She wanted it badly, and I wanted to help her get it.”

Strehli was born in Dorog, a mining town near Budapest, to a coal-miner father and a hairdresser mother. As a young girl, she skied on planks of hickory her father cut for her, with attached rubber straps for her shoes. By age 14, she had been identified as a prospective talent in athletics by Hungary’s then-communist government. She moved away from her parents’ home to attend a special physical education school in Budapest.

In college, she learned judo and competed in relay events for the swim team. Introduced to members of Hungary’s national sky-diving team, she was invited to join the squad. She also went to a ski instructors’ camp and earned certification.

A motorcycle accident in 1989 left her with a serious knee injury and ruined her hopes of making the ’92 Olympic team in judo. Strehli gave up competitive sports and became a high school teacher. In 1993, eager to improve her English-speaking skills, she traveled to the U.S., choosing the Washington area because a Hungarian friend had work there as a baby sitter.

That’s when she met Shell, a carpenter and ski instructor, at a volleyball game. They fell in love. She continued to visit Shell in Manassas, Va., and eventually moved to join him. Soon after their marriage in fall 1994, they attended a job fair in Seven Springs, Pa., and landed positions at a ski resort there.

About six months later, Strehli noticed a pea-sized lump in her right breast. She ignored it. But by fall 1995, the lump had not disappeared. Strehli finally saw a doctor, who relayed the bad news: The lump was malignant. Strehli knew of no history of cancer in her family. Confused and distressed, she couldn’t bear to tell her parents. Meantime, she continued working full time as a ski instructor.

As time went on, she lost weight and grew pallid. Her hair fell out. Certainly, people knew.

“I tried to keep my attitude as positive as possible,” Strehli said. “I was looking for jokes, reading success stories, stories of survival. [But] even if you tried to joke about it, you have to look in the mirror every day.”

Still, the treatment seemed to work. In 1997, she and her husband moved to Park City, eager to teach skiing on bigger mountains. That year, she ran a marathon.

“I thought, if I can do this, I have nothing to worry about,” Strehli said. “My body is back to normal.”

She and Shell settled happily into life in Park City. One day, Shell noticed an advertisement in the local paper that sought foreign-born women to learn the sport of bobsled. Shell urged his wife to attend the driving school at the new Olympic track nearby.

Strehli went and fell in love with the sport. Those who successfully completed the program were urged to enter a World Cup event that was coming to Park City about a month later.

“She said, ‘We’ve got to do this,’” Shell said. “She had no sled, no runners, no equipment, not much chance of practicing, and, most of all, no Hungarian brake woman. But that didn’t matter. She was going to enter the race.”

Strehli contacted a Hungarian ski instructor she had known for years, and who lived in the state of Washington, to be her brake woman for the race. The ski instructor, Judit Haverty, had never seen a bobsled and never participated in a sliding sport of any sort.

“I was scared for me,” Haverty said. “But I said, ‘I will do it for Hungary and for you.’ But I told her I am not the athletic type.”

Meantime, Strehli and Shell found an old, ramshackle bobsled “in somebody’s backyard,” Shell said. They stayed up until 3 a.m. before the race, trying to make it safe for the journey down the icy track.

The team finished 13th out of 15 sleds. Haverty hated it; Strehli was hooked.

“I wanted to slide as much as possible,” Strehli said, “but at the same time, I already saw the hardship of this sport.”

New sleds cost around $40,000 and sponsorships are rare, Strehli realized she would have to compete without the benefit of the highest-caliber equipment. During her first year of competition, sympathetic members of the U.S. team loaned her sleds and runners. Even so, Strehli and Shell, who continued to work full time as ski instructors, found themselves deep in debt.

“She’s gotten by on borrowed everything,” said Chu, the sprint coach. “I’m surprised she even has her own helmet.”

The next summer, Strehli spent $5,000 on a used sled, and $2,500 on old runners. Things were getting serious. But in August 1999, she found the second lump. This time, she wasted no time in getting to a doctor. The surgery proved a quicker remedy than chemotherapy and radiation, but it had other costs.

“It was shorter, but emotionally, it was harder,” she said.

Haverty worried about her friend, but she sensed another comeback underway when the International Olympic Committee announced that women’s bobsled would be in the Winter Games.

“You could tell how scared she was, and upset,” Haverty said. “Bobsled was really good for her. She could put all her energy into that, and keep going.”

Soon after the surgery, Strehli returned to the World Cup circuit, where she continued to hover at the bottom of the standings. A year later, she secured sponsorship from Anaheim businessman Patrick Powers, who already was funding U.S. athletes Todd Hays and Bonny Warner.

Last summer, Strehli had shoulder and back surgery but geared up for the fall season. She knew she had to finish in the top 15 in the World Cup standings to win a qualifying spot in the Olympic Games. She and Shell quit their jobs to devote themselves fully to their Olympic quest.

After an intense season that included crashing during a race in Germany, Strehli wound up 18th overall in the World Cup standings.

That wasn’t good enough. Or was it?

Three U.S. teams finished in the top 15, but the United States had only two Olympic slots. That pushed Strehli to 17th. Germany also had three top-15 placements, but it could send only two teams. Strehli was now up to the 16th position. Then, Canada decided to hold good on its promise not to send a team to Salt Lake City that had failed to achieve a top-six finish in any World Cup event. That eliminated Canada’s eighth-place team.

Strehli was in the Olympic Games.

Strehli’s goal for the Feb. 19 competition is to put forth the best race of her life in a sled that is both a vehicle and symbol.

She realizes she is lucky to have made it so far. She was, though, absolutely determined to be this lucky.

“Everybody kind of looks at me as an adopted child,” Strehli said. “They say: ‘She’s still around. She’s been too stubborn to give up.’”