Alise Willoughby is the Olympic gold medal favorite in the BMX competition that begins Thursday
BMX racer Alise Willoughby will represent the United States in the Paris Olympics, shown here at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center with her husband and coach Sam Willoughby. Pack up their home in Chula Vista, head back to his native Australia, start over, leave the past behind.
It’s a poignant, and instructive, piece of symbolism. You can avert life’s bumps, or you can just keep riding over them. “But I never associated my accident with a jump or a track or with the sport. It just happened. I never really looked at it like that jump did that to me. And honestly, it’s a small jump. … It was a freak accident.”
And Alise is 33 in a sport increasingly populated by youngsters. The last three gold medalists have been 20, 22 and 24. The months and years after Sam’s accident were devoted to him. There was a surgery to remove his C6 vertebrae and replace it with a titanium cage. Doctors fused his C5 and C7 vertebrae with a plate and four screws. He spent time at a rehabilitation clinic in Colorado that specializes in paralyzing spinal injuries while the wedding was postponed. Two years later, he was able to propel himself down the aisle, upright, with the aid of a medical walker but uses a wheelchair for most daily chores.
They had talked about her retiring after Tokyo, about moving to Australia. She was 30 and had been racing for 24 years. She’s been to three Olympics. She had a silver medal and two world championships. Maybe it was time.
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