Switching Gears

Erin Mirabella didn’t sleep much Friday night after she finished 13th in the women’s point race at the Track Cycling World Championships. After all, the La Habra resident had won a bronze medal at the Athens Olympics in that event and added a World Cup title last December at the ADT Event Center in Carson, where the world championships conclude today.

And she was philosophical about her ninth-place finish Saturday in the women’s 3-kilometer individual pursuit, acknowledging it’s not her best event and that Friday’s race had depleted her physically and emotionally.

“It was a decent ride, but not my fastest time,” she said of her pursuit time of 3 minutes 49.157 seconds. “I definitely could feel [Friday] night in my legs. I was disappointed and I lay awake, rerunning the race.”

But the wonder isn’t that Mirabella finished so far out of the medals, but that she and her U.S. teammates are able to compete here at all.

The U.S. track cycling program has been in a decline, getting little financial support and functioning without a full-time endurance coach, and that has been reflected in U.S. athletes’ results at recent major international competitions. Mirabella’s medal at Athens was the lone U.S. Olympic track cycling medal, and at the 2004 world championships a bronze by Jennie Reed in the women’s keirin was the only top-three result. Mirabella’s pursuit finish was the best by a U.S. athlete in the first three days of this year’s world championships.

However, a turning point may have arrived a year ago when USA Cycling hired Pat McDonough, a 1984 Olympic cycling silver medalist and formerly the manager of the Lehigh Valley (Pa.) velodrome, to direct its track cycling programs. Already, Mirabella has found reason for optimism.

“They’re taking a fresh look, and I have hopes he’ll be able to convince some of the higher-ups who don’t know the athletes and what we need, that things need to be done,” she said. “Pre-2000 we were pretty well taken care of. After 2000 they dismantled the programs. The last five years there’s been a lot of times when it’s been, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can do this anymore, it’s just so hard.’

“I hope, even though I’m in my last couple of years of racing and I have maybe one more Olympics, that for future generations it will get better. There are so many young endurance riders with so much talent but there’s no reason for them to ride the track. There’s no incentive, no programs. They quit or go to the road.

“I hope for the sake of our sport we can get everything together. I think with Pat McDonough, if there’s anyone to do it, it’s him.”

Mirabella, 26, works for Home Depot’s community affairs and public relations office in Orange as part of the company’s Olympic Job Opportunity Program. She enjoys the work and the experience -- “I can say I did something more than ride my bike for the last four years,” she said, smiling -- but added that without the job she would have had to quit racing because she receives no stipend from USA Cycling and only a $2,500 basic annual grant from the U.S. Olympic Committee. She also got a $10,000 bonus from the USOC for her Athens bronze medal.

“Most of our athletes work,” said Mirabella, who also finds bike sponsors herself because she has no agent. “I’m so thankful for the Home Depot program, but I know our competitors don’t work. They don’t have to worry how they’re going to pay the rent....

“We’re really not supported on the track. We don’t really have a program, we don’t have coaches. Especially the endurance team. We haven’t had a program in five years. The fact that we had home track advantage isn’t enough.”

McDonough said he planned to revamp USA Cycling’s athlete-support system by basing financial awards on performance and times for track and road cyclists. He also said the absence of a track endurance coach “is not going to be the case in the future.”

He added, “One of our big plans is to not have an endurance track coach and an endurance road coach but to expand the program, so the top athletes are riding track as well as road.... The concept of what happens in other countries is to mesh your endurance program on road and track.”

These improvements will take time. “I’m a realist, and I can tell you the program didn’t get to this point in a year. It took several years,” he said. “It’s going to take us a number of years to get out. There’s a lot of different pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together. It won’t be easy.”

He shared Mirabella’s disappointment over her results this week. “She expected a lot of herself on home turf, as most athletes did,” he said, “but where we’re currently at isn’t where we want to be. This is America. I don’t think any of us is happy to be eighth, ninth, 13th. That’s not what this country is about. We’re about putting together a program that gets us on the podium consistently.”

Mirabella, a native of Racine, Wis., plans next to ride for the Burbank-based Bicycle John’s road team. But after three seasons back to back, she’s ready for some down time with her husband, Chris, who is her coach. He’s scheduled to finish his chiropractic studies in December. “It’s been handy having his new knowledge,” she said.

Racing at home was a new experience too, one she’ll remember even though she didn’t make it to the medal stand.

“I saw a lot of people from work and from my church,” she said. “It was awesome to race in my hometown. I just wish it had been a better performance.”