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Inside Olympic Sports
Posted: Tuesday May 30, 2000 03:48 PM All in the Games Hunter Kemper beat the Texas heat -- and all comers -- at the U.S. Olympic triathlon trials By Brian Cazeneuve
Hours after handily winning the U.S. Olympic men's triathlon trials in 90° heat in Dallas on Sunday, Hunter Kemper was giving public-speaking pointers to a new Olympic teammate. "Closer to the mike," Kemper, 24, told Nick Radkewich, 29, at the postevent press conference. "Gotta talk right into it."
Kemper didn't hold a grudge against the family. He not only helped Nick handle the spotlight on Sunday but also helped his friend and training partner earn an Olympic berth. After winning the first of USA Triathlon's two Olympic trials, on the Olympic course in Sydney in April, Kemper guaranteed the U.S. men two more spots by competing in several international events and beefing up his World Cup point total before May 2, thus assuring the U.S. of the maximum three slots. Kemper didn't need to compete in Dallas, but the purse of $11,700 was nearly twice the biggest sum he'd ever won. He spent most of the bike leg in a pack of five but pulled away in the run, leaving the remaining U.S. berths to the next two Americans, Radkewich in fourth and Ryan Bolton, another of Kemper's training partners, in fifth. The women's race on Saturday was testier and less predictable. Barb Lindquist, the favorite, and Sheila Taormina, a swimming gold medalist in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay at the 1996 Games, shared a one-minute lead in the 1.5-kilometer swim and extended it to 3:30 in the bike phase as some in the trail pack of 12 cyclists wondered why the stronger riders among them weren't making a charge at the two leaders. Taormina surged ahead in the 10-km run and crossed the line first in 2:05:27, 40 seconds ahead of Joanna Zeiger, an asthmatic who, because of the humidity, needed eight puffs of Ventolin from her inhaler during the race. Jennifer Gutierrez, who placed fifth in Dallas, had already earned her Olympic berth in April. Lindquist collapsed during the run and dropped out. "My core got too hot, and my legs got the wobbles," she said while she received fluids through an IV tube. Nearby, third-place finisher Siri Lindley, on her own IV bag, spotted Lindquist and began sobbing because her friend had failed to make the team. "Not everyone on the bike wanted to race her heart out, and that's sad," Lindley said. Taormina, who bought her first bike only two years ago, said she was stunned to receive her first inquiries from agents, including Lance Armstrong's rep, after the race, and wasn't sure she was ready for the fast lane. "All I need," she said, "is to be sure that when I'm 80, I'll still have a quilt to pull over me and food on the table."
U.S. Cyclist Set for
Sydney Having just finished a 50-mile training ride in Palo Alto, Calif., one day last week, Nicole Freedman, America's newest cycling Olympian, barely noticed the race developing on the outside of her van. Big Spider, the swifter sprinter, made a dash toward the top of the van's side-view mirror but got caught in the rust and stopped. Little Spider, the sturdier climber, slowly scaled the mirror's edge and reached the summit first. His rival having bailed out to an adjacent web, Little Spider was safely home. So was Freedman. "Here's my abode," said the 5'2" Freedman, 28, who has lived in the 1978 Ford Econoline, which she parks in a friend's driveway, since December 1996. "Here's the bedroom [she points to a mattress in the back], kitchen [an unused burner], lounge [a swivel chair with a frayed cover], library [books on the van's front seat] and walk-in closet [cycling gear on the dash]. Best of all, it's rent-free. Last year I even took it out on gas left from '96. Ran O.K." Freedman used to kick in $450 a month for a room in a converted garage, but because she has only once made as much as $10,000 a year, for the last four years she has used the former rent money to help make payments against the $30,000 in student loans she amassed while attending two colleges. She was never meant to be an impoverished cyclist. Her father, Marvin, a math professor at Boston University, told her, "I was afraid of having a boy because I didn't know any sports. Then I got you." Nicole spent two years at MIT, where, she says, "I played left out on the basketball team and slept through computer science. In fact, I snored -- loud." She transferred to Stanford in 1992, became a 5:04 miler on the Cardinal track team and earned a degree in urban planning. In her senior year she started cross-training on a borrowed bike and was hooked. Freedman arrived as a long shot at last month's U.S. road cycling trials in Jackson, Miss., where only the winner of the 64-mile race was assured an Olympic berth. U.S. coaches will choose two other cyclists in July. "My odds of making it as a coaches' selection were less than zero," says Freedman, citing her relative lack of experience. "I had to win." Freedman edged Pam Schuster by a bike length. In a delirious postrace celebration she lay face-down on the concrete, rocking her body and punching the ground. That night she splurged on a double greaseburger, fries, onion rings and a root-beer float. "Living the high life," she says. Three months before the trials Freedman had signed with Charles Schwab, the first sponsor to give her a salary in addition to equipment and traveling expenses. Last year she also had become a cycling-category manager for San Francisco-based venussports.com, an E-commerce site that caters to women athletes and grants her flexible work hours. As Freedman has already shown, she's quite at home around web sites. Want evidence that IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch is still running the show in the wake of the bribery scandal that rocked the committee in 1999? With Athens, which will host the 2004 Summer Games, running behind schedule, Samaranch pressured Greek premier Costas Simitis into appointing Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the savvy, Harvard-educated head of the city's bid committee, as the new chief of the organizing committee. Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, a conservative lawyer, had been bypassed for the organizing committee post after Simitis, a Socialist, took office in 1996. ... Meanwhile, Samaranch won p.r. points by inviting U.S. taekwondo athlete Esther Kim to attend the 2000 Games in Sydney as the IOC's guest. Kim forfeited her final match at the U.S. trials last month to friend Kay Poe, who had an injured knee but is a much stronger medal contender than Kim would have been. ... Look for two medical marvels at the U.S. rowing trials in Camden, N.J., later this month. Dan Perkins, who will try to make the team in double sculls with Ian McGowan, has successfully battled brain cancer. Missy Schwen-Ryan, a 1996 silver medalist in the pairs with Karen Kraft, will try to make the team, again with Kraft, after having donated a kidney following the Atlanta Games to her brother Michael, who suffered from a degenerative disease. ... Seeing double in Canada: Carol Montgomery , who has already earned a triathlon berth, will try to make the Canadian track and field squad in the 10,000 meters later this month. Hayley Wickenheiser , a silver medalist on Canada's ice hockey team at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, is down to the final cuts for her country's softball team. ... Baylor track and field coach Clyde Hart recently sent a letter of intent for the year 2018 to Sebastian Johnson, who was born on May 6 to Michael Johnson (who has trained under Hart for 13 years) and his wife, Kerry. ... Do you have any doubt that women's gymnastics is becoming more womanly? Russia's Svetlana Khorkina, 21 years old and a shade under 5'5", won four golds at the European Championships last month. If she wins the all-around in Sydney, she'll be the oldest to do so since 26-year-old, 5'3" Czech Vera Cáslavská in 1968. Issue date: June 5, 2000
For more Inside Olympic Sports see this week's issue of Sports Illustrated, on newsstands Wednesday, May 31. Click here to subscribe to SI.
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