Jamie Whitmore wins cycling title
When Jamie Whitmore crossed the finish line of her 12.18-mile time trial in 34 minutes and seven seconds to win USA Cycling’s C-3 category of the Paracycling national championship Thursday, she thought back four years to the words of a doctor she’d asked if she could ever ride a mountain bike again: “He was trying to cheer me up when he told me: ‘You might be able to ride a stationary bike again one day.’”
In a sparkling eight year career before she was hit by a rare and virulent form of cancer known as a spindle cell carcinoma early in 2008, Whitmore won a record 37 XTERRA championship events, five XTERRA USA National titles and one XTERRA World Championship. After doctors removed her left gluteus and cleaned out some cancer cells around her sciatic nerve, outsiders held very low expectations for a resumption of her remarkable outdoor endurance talents.
But no matter the unrelenting pain, no matter the struggle in rehab, Jamie Whitmore would never quit. Along the way, Whitmore and her husband Courtney decided to have children and she gave birth to twins two years ago. Just 15 months ago, Whitmore and Courtney went for her first outdoor ride in three years – on a tandem bicycle. This March, Whitmore figured out a way to ride a mountain bike on tough terrain again, and propel herself along a demanding off road running trail, and finished XTERRA Guam in 4 hours 52 minutes to win the Physically Challenged division. Right about that time, she and Courtney entered the legendary Leadville 100 mountain bike race as a team.
And soon thereafter someone from USA Cycling called and asked if she wanted to enter the National Championship Time Trial for C-3 category Paracyclists.
Yep.
After a few months of training on the roads, she was ready and completed the 12.18-mile course (with 1,000 cumulative feet of climbing) in Augusta, Georgia at an average speed of 21.4 miles per hour with a 23-minutes margin of victory.
Still, like everything in her life since the cancer, this ride was not easy. “The funny thing was at the beginning I pulled out of both pedals and for awhile I was coasting along trying to clip my feet back in,” she said in a telephone interview. “I got my good foot right away, but it took me a while to set my bad foot back in place. After 20 or 30 seconds I was going. You know it felt really good to be back racing on a bike again.”
In the complex categories of Physically Challenged sport, C-3 is one of five two-wheel cycling categories and includes competitors with varying degrees of amputation and, for Jamie, “comparable multiple impairments” with a tested point score used to measure relative disability.
Technically, Whitmore’s victory puts her in contention for one women’s paracycling slot available on the US Paralympic team which will be announced tomorrow. However, categories C-2, C-4 and C-5 all had faster winning times at Augusta.
