Atlanta 1996 / Orange County’s Connections to The Summer Games : Big Wheel Rolls Again : Hegg Pedals Toward Olympics, Eight Years After Disqualification

DANA POINT —  Steve Hegg heard the words but not the warning.

It was a couple months after the 1984 Olympics and Hegg was having dinner at his coach’s house. He had come from oblivion, this skier turned cyclist, to catch almost everyone by surprise, winning a gold and silver medal.

The air was very thin up there, but, boy, the view was nice. It was no time to heed advice.

“Right in the middle of dinner, my coach’s wife said, ‘The hardest part of your life is just starting,’ ” Hegg said. “Under my breath I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I thought it was a cakewalk from here. But she was oh-so right.”

Hegg, a Dana Point resident, now listens to anyone who says to beware.

He calls it the big difference between him as a 20-year-old, a somewhat cocky kid with a gold medal around his neck and the 32-year-old, somewhat cocky adult trying to shed the albatross dangling there.

This weekend in Seattle, Hegg will compete in the first of five races and time trials, the initial step to making the U.S. Olympic cycling team. His 1984 gold-medal performance is a little tarnished after being disqualified from the 1988 Games when too much caffeine was discovered in his system at the Olympic trials.

Hegg denied wrongdoing, and still does. But he reacted then by turning pro and has had a successful road-racing career. Basically, he pedaled on with his life.

But the Olympics are back in the United States for the first time since 1984, and professional cyclists will be allowed to compete. It was too tempting, even if it dredged up the past.

“If I had to do it all over again, I would do a lot of things differently,” Hegg said. “I would listen more to the right people. I ended up traveling down a lot of dead ends back then. I have put that behind me, when you guys [the media] let me. I have moved on.

“But when I heard the Olympics were in Atlanta, I thought, ‘OK, this is great.’ They are bringing the Games to my backyard and there were kids coming who want to ride on my swings. They are not going to get a chance. I will be sitting in them first.”

The analogy is bizarre and the translation is a bit tricky. But, basically, Hegg intends to win. It has nothing to do with anyone in particular--or even the thought of glory--merely that the Olympics are in the United States.

“I have to be there, it’s my swing set,” he said. “I mean what are the odds of the Olympics coming to my country twice in my lifetime?”

Or even twice in a career?

Cycling was not Hegg’s first international sport. He was a skier, good enough to make the U.S. Alpine team in 1983.

Cycling? That was a dodge, a gimmick he used as a kid to get away from his father’s rigid training schedule when the family lived in Mammoth. Ed Hegg, a contractor, would have his son and three daughters lift weights and run in the morning and play soccer in the afternoon, then lift more weights--a training program to help their skiing.

“My father was definitely a Little League parent,” said Hegg, who began skiing when he was 2. “One day I said, ‘Dad, what about doing a little bike riding?’ He got some bikes and it became a game. The further we could get from the old man and his training ideas, the better. We would ride as far as we could, then try to get home before the street lights came on.”

It took Eddie Borysewicz, a legendary cycling coach, to convince Hegg to change sports.

“I have worked with a lot of athletes and I know talent when I see it,” Borysewicz said. “Steve had power and incredible recovery [after workouts]. I could see he was going to be exceptional. Very few have his high threshold of pain.”

Hegg ended up part of the 4,000-meter pursuit team that set a Pan American Games record in 1983. He tried to juggle the two sports for a time, but ski season overlapped cycling season which, in turn, overlapped ski season.

When he showed up late for a training camp in January, 1984, Borysewicz was furious.

“I told him when you have two girlfriends, one day you are going to end up with a broken nose and no girlfriend,” Borysewicz said.

Hegg made the right choice.

He barely made the Olympic cycling team, then stunned people by winning a gold medal. Hegg set a world outdoor record in the 4,000-meter individual pursuit during qualifying, then won the event. He also pushed the United States’ 4,000 pursuit team, riddled with injuries, to a silver-medal finish.

Dana Point, not even an official city at that time, welcomed him home with a party. Heady stuff for a guy who had been an unknown a month before.

“I went in as the underdog, with no pressure,” Hegg said. “That’s the way to do it. But after finishing my workouts [before the Olympics] I knew I was the strongest guy on the team.

“The gold medal and all the hype that came with it enabled me to have a career in cycling. But I was not ready for all that followed.”

Hegg, who switched to road racing in 1985, had already started to explore areas that enhanced his abilities.

In 1985, an investigation by four U.S. Olympic Committee doctors showed that Hegg was one of several top American athletes who participated in blood doping before their events--a practice that was later banned.

“I was listening to people around me who I shouldn’t have listened to,” Hegg said. “It was a very dark time. I learned a lot through trial and error.”

The biggest error came at the 1988 Olympic trails in Houston. Hegg qualified for the four-man pursuit team, but two blood samples showed he had above the legal limits of caffeine. Hegg pleaded innocent, saying the coffee he drank that morning, combined with the Cokes he consumed during a three-hour rain delay before the event, made his caffeine level abnormally high.

Hegg now says he was taking caffeine tablets during the delay, but still insists he did nothing wrong.

“Caffeine tablets and Coke chasers wasn’t the best idea,” Hegg said. “I was the typical American thinking more was better. But when they took me aside and told me, my first thought was ‘You’re kidding.’ It was a little scary.”

With major ramifications; Hegg was kicked off the team.

“He made a few mistakes and everyone jumped on him,” said Borysewicz, who coached Hegg from 1981 to 1992. “He may have got some bad advice from others. But it was more the dehydration than anything at the trials. When you’re dehydrated, the caffeine is more concentrated.”

Hegg disputed the test results, but the U.S. Olympic Committee offered no chance for appeal. So he turned pro.

His career has included the 1994 USPRO national championship and a third-place finish in the first Tour of China in 1995. At 32, he claims to be hitting his peak as a cyclist, though the ever-growing number of younger competitors has taken to calling him “old man.”

Hegg listens. But that doesn’t mean he agrees.

“Earlier this year, this one kid, still wet behind the ears, asked me if I was trying Rogaine with minoxidil,”’ Hegg said. “I said, ‘Give me a break, punk,’ and he said, ‘I’m going to kick your [butt].’ Of course, he’s now pursuing a modeling career. He found out that was much easier.”

It’s certainly easier than trying to play on Hegg’s swings.