Local Sports News

Cyclist on track for Olympics

7/18/05

By LEAH ETLING
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

DP grad Hartfield rose quickly from novice to national champion

He was riding an old mountain bike. He'd devoted much of his previous athletic energy to water polo. The Tour de France? He didn't know what that was.

Now a national championship winner in the one kilometer race on the track, the 18-year-old Hartfeld is postponing his college career in the hopes of making the U.S. National Team.

He and teammate Cody O'Reilly will compete in the world junior championships of cycling in Austria next month. O'Reilly, the son of Echelon coach Rory O'Reilly, is a road rider who placed second in two events at nationals.

He has a year left to compete at the junior level. But for Hartfeld, a recent Dos Pueblos High graduate, the nationals in Pennsylvania were his last chance to prove how hard he has worked since joining the team five years ago.

"He didn't come out of the chute and show everyone he was going to be the next star, he just nipped away at things," said Coach O'Reilly. "He really did it with a lot of hard work. He has some talent, but his biggest talent is to bear down and get it all done."

Hartfeld didn't find out until a few months ago that when he joined the team, O'Reilly told his parents that he wasn't the best rider out there, but that he had lots of determination.

That trait continued through to nationals, where he won the kilometer by more than two seconds. The race was also a two-second-plus personal best with a time of 1:08.66. That means he's traveling at speeds of around 40 miles per hour, on a banked track, for three laps. The world meet will be held on a 250-meter track, so the race will be four laps.

Hartfeld was also first in the team sprint, which he rode with two athletes from Pennsylvania, and took second in the keirin, a Japanese-inspired race in which a motorcycle paces the cyclists for the first four laps of a two kilometer.

After four laps, the riders can pass the motorcycle and have ideally positioned themselves for the best final sprint. The race is a violent one, which "lots of head butting and hitting of bikes," he said.

Hartfeld expects to complete in the kilometer and the team sprint in Austria, although final selections will be made by the national team coaches later this month.

The sole track-focused athlete on the Echelon team, Hartfeld has to do some of his most intense training on his own. His determination has helped out there.

"Everyone isn't a natural athlete. There really is no substitute for hard work," he said.

His coach is a former world record holder and 1984 Olympian who also coached 2004 Santa Barbara Olympian Adam Duvendeck. Duvendeck and Hartfeld have a common weakness to their sprinting: the all-important start. O'Reilly, a strong starter throughout his competitive career, worked with both athletes to keep the beginning of the race from being a weakness.

"You need to get up to speed really fast. The first lap is always the fastest, and then you start to fade," Hartfeld said. He had the fastest first lap of anyone in the field at nationals.

Hartfeld aspires to be an Olympian like his former teammate Duvendeck, perhaps in 2008. Hence, his decision to postpone attending UC Davis' aerospace engineering program until at least 2006.

"I want to have a gauge for what it's like to ride full time. If that's what I want to do, I'll decide if I want to ride first or go to college first."

Despite a busy schedule of travel and training, he graduated with honors from Dos Pueblos and has completed many college credits through advanced placement courses.

Track cycling has been on the decline in the U.S. for the last several years, and Hartfeld is passionate enough about it to hope to work for a resurgence, even locally in Santa Barbara.

A plan to build a track facility in Goleta near Girsh Park is on hold until funding can be obtained.

The nearest competition track in California is in Carson, which was recently rebuilt and is the only track in the Western Hemisphere capable of holding senior events, which require a 250-meter track, indoors, with less than a 45-degree angle.

"People just don't know what it is. It used to be one of the most famous sports in the U.S. around 1900, and now it has died out."

Should that determination be applied in that direction, don't be surprised to see a resurgence.