Cyclist Cruz Returns to Olympics Via the Process of Trials and Error

Antonio Cruz made his way to his first Summer Olympics, 16 years ago, the same way he arrived at his second: by pedaling his bike.

Cruz was 12 in 1984 when he and his father parked the family car about six miles from the Olympic road cycling course in Mission Viejo, pulled a couple of bicycles off the rack and-- just to get into the spirit of the competition--rode the rest of the way to the starting line.

“My dad and I rode out there,” Cruz said, “and we were just riding around the course, checking out different vantage points. Then the last two laps [of the race], we made our way back to the start/finish [line] and we could hear the leaders coming from all the cheers and my dad just kind of helped me push our way through to the front.

“I was able to see probably the last 500 meters of the sprint between Alexi Grewal and Steve Bauer [of Canada]. And it was so amazing to see Alexi win for the U.S. and then just to hear people go crazy.

“It was such an awesome feeling. You know, I really felt a part of his win, it was so exciting.”

Inspirational, too.

That year, Cruz took up competitive cycling.

“As soon as we left there,” Cruz said of the ’84 Olympic road race, “I just couldn’t wait to pedal my bike as fast as I could.”

Twelve years after that, he and his wife, Jody, named their new baby daughter Alexi May.

“It’s not a very flattering thing, I guess, to say to Alexi,” Cruz said with a laugh, “but when we had our daughter, I just thought that would be an awesome name. Very unique.”

And four years after that, Cruz is headed for another Olympics-- again on two wheels, again self-propelled.

By winning a race he wasn’t supposed to, by ad-libbing his way from Saturn team pace-setter to leader of the entire pack at last weekend’s U.S. Olympic road cycling trials in Jackson, Miss., Cruz earned a berth on the five-man road racing squad that will represent the United States in Sydney.

“The night before, we had a team meeting and we determined the guys who were going to go for the win--and that was Frank McCormack and Trent Klasna,” Cruz said. “My role was to help those guys win the race any way possible. Be aggressive, cover any of the moves that would go up the road, always try to represent Saturn in any of the breakaways.”

Rain and a course littered with massive puddles, however, altered the race dynamics. When it became clear to Saturn officials that neither McCormack nor Klasna was in position to win, they called an audible.

“I was there doing my job,” Cruz said, “and I ended up in the final breakaway, with about three or four miles left in the race. We wear radio earpieces and right about then, I got a call on the radio saying, ‘OK, it’s your race to go for, your race to win.’ ”

Suddenly, Cruz’s mind was racing faster than his legs.

“I was happy for a second,” he said, “and then I just felt that pressure.

“I just started running things through my mind like, oh, how much training it took to get here, and all the support that I had, and what it was like to be back at my old job as a pharmacy technician.

“And that right there sealed the deal for me. I was like, ‘Oh, I have to win this! I’m going to win this.’

“It was funny, because I even called up some of my co-workers and I was describing it to them and when they heard me tell them that, they just started cracking up because they knew how bad I wanted to be out racing.”

Rx FOR BURNOUT

Pharmaceutical work was starting to look like a life career for Cruz when, from 1990-95, he dropped out of the sport.

“I got burned out,” Cruz said. “Not really from racing, but from the fact that I rode really well as a junior locally and nationally and I really wanted to be a part of our senior squad . . . and when that all fell through, it was just too hard for me to take. I didn’t want to go back to doing local races.

“I wanted to be a professional. I wanted to go to Europe. All of a sudden I just lost interest when it wasn’t possible then and there. I didn’t have the maturity that it took to push your way past that and eventually make it.”

After graduating from Whittier California High in 1989, Cruz married, moved to Reno and traded his racing lycra for a white pharmacist’s smock. He seemed to have settled on that course until he showed up as a spectator at the 1995 Nevada City Classic.

“When I went and saw that and saw all the guys I used to compete against, it was weird,” he said. “I just felt, myself, a part of the race. I could see myself playing out tactics I would use if I was still in there. And I thought, ‘Why not be in there? I know I can still do this.’

“The very next week I was training to race. I always rode my bike for fun, but I just really got that bug to compete again, to just go for it.”

Cruz and his family moved to Long Beach in 1999. From there, he began training for the ride through Mississippi mud that would take him to Sydney.

Cruz is the only automatic qualifier on the five-man road team. Two riders will be chosen by U.S. Cycling officials, with two more spots awarded the top U.S. riders in the World Cup and general world rankings. Defending Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, currently fifth in the world rankings, will qualify for the Olympics via that route.

Armstrong’s name was in the air as Cruz climbed off his bike at the trials.

“Have fun riding for Lance,” one rider cracked, alluding to Cruz’s likely Olympic role as an assistant to Armstrong’s gold-medal bid.

Cruz shrugged.

“I’m sure I’ll have my role,” he said, “but my role [at the trials] wasn’t to win. Anything could happen. You never know.”

A JOB TOO WELL DONE

What we would call a stadium demolition, the Aussies refer to as “a counter-terrorism exercise.”

Last week, elite Australian army forces staged a mock terrorist attack at the Olympic softball stadium, or what had been the Olympic softball stadium. By the time commandos had finished storming the stadium and completing the drill, doors had been knocked down, windows smashed and entire walls demolished--damage costing tens of thousands of dollars to repair.

“If we are going to play these sort of exercises for real, if they have to be actioned as if they were the real thing, inevitably we are likely to cause damage to some place or other,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Peter Ryan said.

“Things could get blown about by helicopters, for example, or doors broken down.”

Ryan said it “is no good saying, ‘There’s a door, we normally would break it down, but on this occasion we’ll just put a cross on it and pretend we’ve done it.’ We have to do these things for real.”

A spokesperson for the commissioner said repair costs already had been factored into the overall cost of the drill and would come out of the New South Wales state budget.