Chapter 17

The farewell at the airport was a quiet affair ... Melody, Beth, Jane, Joy, and Monica would be flying to Beijing and I would be joining them in their hotel after the road race was done. My original plan had been to walk in the opening ceremonies, but because the road race was scheduled for the first full day of competition, and to avoid any more of a media circus than it already was, the USOC and US Cycling had gently discouraged any of US Cycling from contact with any media in the ‘wild’ ... All media contact was tightly controlled by the USOC and US Cycling, and they were trying to ‘get past’ anything that had to do with Lance and the cloud that hung over him, and by extension, the rest of us as well ... All three of us had been part in some way of the US Postal/Discovery Channel teams that Lance had ridden with while ‘winning’ seven straight Tour de France championships, so by extension, we were all assumed to be a part of the ‘coverup’ that we didn’t know about, and hadn’t been let in on until just a few days ago ... I wasn’t sure what my focus for the road race was going to be like, or if we would simply be shunned by the rest of the riders and/or targeted for ‘cheating’! I just knew that given the chance to prove things on the road, I was going to give everything I had to seeing a US cyclist on the podium! A clean US cyclist!

So I kissed each of my ladies, hugging them close as they whispered little encouragements in my ears, and then with a simple wave I passed through security and into the terminal proper for my flight. This was not how I had envisioned my Olympic moment, but ... It was what it was, and what I had available to me, and I was determined to make it work for me come hell, high water, or, well, a doping scandal!

After a nearly twelve hour flight, and more chaos than the arrival terminal probably needed, we arrived in Beijing and made our way to the athlete’s village and our rooms in the Team USA area ... Here was the first time we donned our US Team jackets and the rest of our official wardrobe and tried to figure out the lay of the land, the shuttle schedules, and where to get something to eat! All while trying to get adjusted from the time zone changes and serious jet lag! For some reason, the word “fuck” had become a placeholder word for me, and I found much to my dismay that I said it far too often ... So much so, that Johan took me aside to check on my attitude! With that out of the way, I started to get the kinks out of my body, and to get in some training time on the road race course.

The Olympic Road Race course is closer to that of an Omnium, or a European Pro Peloton “Spring Classic”, in that it is a single or one day race and not a multistage race like one of the tour events. It was scheduled, according to the official Olympic program from 11:00 to 17:30 local time. At 245.4 K, or just over 152.5 miles, the course was flat for the first two-thirds, visiting numerous Chinese highlights, like the “Temple of Heaven”, the “Great Hall of the People”, and, of course crossing “Tiananmen Square”, and then settled into a grueling circuit of seven, 14.8 miles loops up and down something called Badaling Pass, with some sections as steep as 10% grade, before finishing in the Beijing National Stadium. We figured the ‘herd’ would hold pretty much together for the first flat chunk (and I would earn my keep here as a diesel!) and then the real racing would hit in the battle through the pass! Another thing about the the Olympic “Urban” Road Race (as it was called in the program!) was that there were no trailing team cars, only race official vehicles, and no radios to help direct the team ... We were on our own as far as keeping track of the contenders on the road!