Paralympian rides to gold

[Christopher]

http://www.sacbee.com/100/story/1348704.html
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Paralympian rides to gold

By John Schumacher
jschumacher@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008 | Page 1C

Mark Bristow's cycling career veered into unexpected territory during a sprint to the finish in a Labor Day weekend race at San Francisco's Levi Plaza in 1997.

After a rider went down in front of him, all Bristow remembers is hitting a tree at about 30 mph. He broke his shoulder and collarbone and damaged nerves in the right side of his neck that left him unable to use his right arm above the wrist.

The brachial plexus injury forced him to relearn how to write, eat, throw, catch and ride, among other things. It also led to a crowning achievement as a Paralympian.

Bristow, a project manager for Sun Microsystems who lives in Sacramento, earned two gold medals for Great Britain at the recent Paralympic Games in Beijing.

The 46-year-old husband and father of two won the men's 1-kilometer time trial in the LC1 category (for athletes with an upper limb disability) in a world-record 1 minute, 8.873 seconds. He also helped his native country claim the gold in the men's team sprint, holding off the host Chinese on the third and final leg.

"It's something you always dream about," said Bristow, who was born in Essex, England. "When you've got your wife and family and friends down at one end, 6,000 people cheering you on, this is why I've worked so hard.

"I'm probably happier. I actually achieved a dream."

One realized only after a long, painful journey from that San Francisco spill.

Five weeks after the accident, Bristow was back on a bike, riding essentially with one arm as he tried to reclaim a sense of normalcy.

"He is the most dedicated person I have ever met," said Patty Fado, Bristow's wife. "I have watched him thrive in adversity. There's never been a doubt in his mind that he wouldn't overcome it.

"For him, I think it is something that came out of an awful thing that happened to him … He dreams. He has no fear. None."

Bristow underwent two surgeries, one involving a nerve graft from his left leg and the other a nerve transplant from his rib cage, in an effort to regain use of his right arm.

Neither worked, leaving him unable to guide his right hand unless he grabbed it with his left.

That created challenges in everyday life, especially after son Scott, 7, and daughter Cate, 5, were born.

"I was concerned," said Bristow, who met his wife in the Bahamas in 1989 and moved to San Francisco in 1995 before getting married in 1996.

"How do you pick up a child and cradle its head? … Trying to change diapers, it's very hard."

Bristow, who moved to Sacramento in 2000, said his right arm will occasionally slide out of control, sometimes knocking things over, like his plate on a restaurant table.

He's learned to use a hammer and electric power tools differently and to play catch left-handed "just so you don't look like a fool when you play with your kids in the park."

Through it all, he rode. And worked, despite the side effects of medication he stopped taking about six months after the accident.

Bristow started racing again in 1998, finishing sixth in a World Masters event for able-bodied riders. He won a national championship in a 1999 event for disabled riders and worked his way onto Great Britain's national team for the 2005 World Cup, winning an individual silver medal and a team sprint gold.

A bronze individual medal in 2006 and a team sprint gold in 2007 at the World Disability Championships helped him secure a spot on Great Britain's Paralympic team, which won 12 gold medals out of 13 events entered in track cycling in Beijing.

"We went there with a very professional attitude," said Bristow, who spent 12 weeks in Manchester, England, training with his teammates before the Games.

"We were there to win medals. Nothing else."

That meant skipping the Opening Ceremony and passing on parades held to honor the team. The payoff came with plenty of gold, including Bristow's world-record performance in the individual time trial, where he beat China's Kuidong Zhang by 1.6 seconds.

"It's great to win an event like the Paralympics with a world record," Bristow said. "Then you win it and nobody else has gone faster. It's not like they weren't there or didn't have a good day.

"It was a great relief in many respects. I'd never won a championship of that magnitude. I'd always done it for the team."

Bristow spent several days in China after his events with his family. Now, he's back in Sacramento, working from home on his laptop computer and squeezing in workouts on his bike or the makeshift weight room in his garage.

Fado said success hasn't changed her husband.

"He's still happy-go-lucky," she said.

And looking forward to future competitions.

The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are set for London, giving Bristow the prospect of competing on a grand stage in his homeland.

"I can't see why I can't," he said. "If someone new comes along and I have to go five seconds faster, then possibly not.

"But the last four years I've gotten three seconds faster. The next four years, who says I can't get a second faster?"