Shasta Explorer - Humor - Doing time at the OTC

The US Olympic Training Center (or OTC as it is more commonly known) is in Colorado Springs, Colorado in the shadow of Pikes Peak. It sits in a pocket on the southeastern slopes of the Front Range at 6200 feet. In the summer it is a delightful place to train, but during the winter it's a godforsaken frozen tundra...

Unfortunately to maintain your status on the National Team in the early 90's you had to 'play the game' and part of the game was doing time at the OTC. The National Team coaches made it clear that the only way to Barcelona was through the Training Center. It didn't matter if you won every race between January and August, unless you spent time at the OTC and developed a relationship with the coaches you weren't going to Spain... (Technically, if you won the Olympic Trials you were guaranteed a spot on the Olympic Team, but that still didn't mean they would let you compete at the Games)

The National Team was composed of the top 20 riders in the country based on domestic and international results. This was the pool that the Olympic Team would be picked from, and to keep your spot on the National Team you had to test and train at the OTC, not that anyone got any significant training there over the winter...

While you could try to train on the frozen roads, you usually spent as much time picking yourself up off the ice as you did actually riding your bike, so winter preparation consisted mostly of wind-trainer workouts, uphill running, weightlifting and a little mountain biking... for the particularly courageous.

In the winter of '91 I alternated between quality training in California and penance at the OTC, but by mid-winter I had decided that if I had to suffer through any more cold Colorado training camps I was darn well going to have fun doing it... For the January camp I drove back to Colorado with my friend Tim. I had traveled to several races with Tim and we always had a good time. He was easy going and had a great sense of humor so I figured spending time with him would make a late winter prison camp... er, I mean, 'training camp' more bearable.

Now the Olympic Training Center itself is a nice facility, if you have a thing for detention centers... It is a gated complex with a 24 hour security detail and every athlete is assigned an ID card which the guards check whenever you attempt to enter the compound. Once inside though you have free reign. Presumably the security is there to protect us from negative influences, like friends or any thoughts that might deviate from your sporting profession. We were after all tasked with making Uncle Sam proud and you can't very well do that if you have a life...

So my first dilemma was how to smuggle Tim into the Center. I can't remember how this was accomplished, I think I slipped him my ID card over a back fence, but I do recall thinking it was remarkably easy to penetrate a 'maximum security' training facility.

There was an unexpected problem though. Since the OTC was in the middle of remodeling the dorms, the athletes didn't have their own rooms like we enjoyed previously. Instead we had to double up and I was supposed to share my room with a teammate, which created a bit of a problem for smuggled friends.

As we picked up our room assignments I asked the dorm coordinator if I was supposed to have three roommates. He said no, you are scheduled to room with (so and so). I said well there is already somebody in my room and it is definitely not (so and so)... They checked their records and said my room was supposed to be empty. I replied, well it's not and I am pretty sure it's not (so and so) because he has some seriously hairy legs...

They checked the dorm assignments again with a confused looked and replied there must be some sort of miscommunication with one of the other sports. They asked me if I minded rooming with this stranger until they got it sorted out and I replied, 'Not at all, he seems like a likable fellow...' With that problem solved and the knowledge that the wheels of bureaucracy would take months to address this anomaly, the only remaining step was to assign my new roomy a sport.

We chose Table Tennis... after all how many of you can recognize all the members of the U.S. Table Tennis Team even during an Olympic year? (By the way if you ever want to see a serious 'Table Tennis Professional' come completely unglued, just ask them if they play 'ping-pong'!) Anyway, with Tim's identity firmly established as an international Table Tennis star we got down to the business we had come for, having fun in between my winter torture.

We worked out a system where in-between my workouts I would hand off my ID card and he would partake in whatever physical activities he fancied; swimming, weightlifting, the sauna... There was also a plethora of entertainment options to choose from, including movies and an arcade. And of course, Uncle Sam was more than happy to provide complete health services for America's finest, free of charge...

Need a cavity fixed or new pair of glasses? Stop by the on-site dentist or ophthalmologist. Have a strain or sore muscles? Visit the sports medicine clinic or the massage therapist. Feeling bad about your last performance, there's always a shrink on call to tell you how great you are... Still, the best part of all had to be the cafeteria. All the food you could eat, 24 hours a day and more choices than I have ever seen. Yes, slogging through a winter camp at 'The Springs' definitely had SOME perks.

But due to our shared identity there wasn't as much opportunity to get together as I had hoped. Sometimes I worried that Tim would get bored or otherwise regret his decision to partake in our little adventure, so we also tried to get outside the facility from time to time and enjoy a more normal existence.

I shouldn't have worried though because now that Tim was one of America's 'golden boys' he had more than enough opportunity to share the finer points of life with attentive others. And while his celebrity status didn't change his easy going personality, I suspect he broke more than a few ladies hearts by politely declining their offers of hands-on personal coaching and analysis of their Table Tennis technique...

As this particular camp wound to a close and I nursed my new combination of running and black-ice induced injuries, I reached the conclusion that I really didn't want to play this game anymore. If a cycling career was in my future it would be on my terms and nobody else's. While I did learn a lot while on the National Team, and I was certainly treated well, I just couldn't manage to get the schmoozing part down.

With my decision made I declined to return to anymore camps knowing full well this meant my only hope to make the Olympic Team would depend on winning the Olympic Trials outright. While I had great form it was not enough to overcome three bike changes and a broken chain that finally ended my ambitions. By then it didn't really matter that I won my next nine races, I had taken a gamble and lost...

The ironic thing is Tim fit right in at the OTC, in fact much better than most, despite the fact that 'technically' he wasn't supposed to be there. He had, by all appearances the makings of the perfect Olympian. The truth is he probably could have gone to Barcelona on personality alone, never having touched a paddle!