In baseball, there's Nolan Ryan, never to see the good side of 40 again, but still throwing no-hitters. Boxing? George Foreman has proven you can eat your way out and back into fame and fortune. It only stands to reason there would be some oldies but goodies on the cycling circuit.
Park City's Cyndi Schwandt overcame a four-second deficit to a much-younger Teresa Williams, winning the women's pro elite division of the Utah State Mountain Bike Championships Sunday afternoon.Schwandt, 40, finished the 15-mile race in 1:28.19, nearly two minutes ahead of second-place Williams.
Schwandt's championship came only about a year after she began racing in the pro elite category. She even didn't start racing mountain bikes until she was 35. A Colorado transplant, Schwandt said when she moved to Park City she gave up on road racing because "the roads were so awful over here." However, she had no complaint with the mountains, and made the switch to mountain bike racing.
Soon she began to find herself lining up against racers half her age. Now there's even a wider gap. "Some of their mothers are younger than I am," says Schwandt.
But none are faster.
Schwandt dueled closely with Williams through the first lap of the three-lap race. But by the time the second lap had passed, Schwandt had gained more than a minute. It was never close thereafter.
In the pro elite/expert men's division, Salt Lake's Scott Lung, also a road racer, won easily over Salt Lake's Martin Stenger and Roy's Glen Adams, clocking a 1:34.28 time in the 20-mile event. Lung led all but a few moments during the first lap, finishing well over three minutes ahead of Stenger.
"I knew Martin was going to be a big factor," said Lung. "Maybe he was sick or something."
Stenger, who hasn't been training in recent days due to what he said were sinus problems, said his strategy was to let Lung set the pace, then try to power past him at the end. "But I didn't have much left at the end," said Stenger.
The only difficulty Lung had was on a treacherous stretch that Park City racers fondly refer to as the "spin cycle" - an area filled with obstacles that severely test a riders technical skills. "Going through the `spin cycle' is like trying to get your car in the garage real fast," said race organizer Bob Walker.
(For other results, see Scoreboard on D4.)