Face-down on the pavement, his custom-made handcycle reduced to a twisted sculpture of metal, Alejandro Albor felt many questions racing through his mind:
• What's this sharp pain in my right side, and why can't I move my left shoulder?
• Where did that minivan come from?
• Will I still be able to compete in September's 2008 Beijing Paralympics?
• Is the woman who hit me ever going to get out of the van and take me to the hospital?
One thing Albor didn't dwell on in the immediate aftermath of that May 24 training ride, when a minivan ran a stop sign at the Sunrise intersection of the American River Parkway and sent him flying across the pavement, was the irony of it all.
The very reason Albor is wheelchair-bound to begin with is that at age 18 he slammed his car into a moving train. He wanted to take his own life after becoming distraught following a breakup with his girlfriend. He lived but lost both legs.
Now here he was at 44, content with life and at the height of his career as a world-class handcyclist, pinned to the ground once more – and not by his choosing.
"I was thinking, 'Oh, my God, no way I can compete (in June's Paralympic Trials).' I was very upset. That was it for me," Albor says.
It seemed particularly unfair, perhaps even cruel, that after pulling his life together – marrying and raising two children in Elk Grove, starting his own company making handcycles and finishing 3 inches from winning the gold medal in the 2004 Games in Athens – that Albor could have his Paralympic quest for a gold medal dashed by a vehicular collision.
So, as he was lifted onto the van, Albor did a quick body check. He thought he had perhaps ruptured a liver or kidney or even broken a rib on his right side, because he labored to breathe.
"Then I checked my other side and saw that my clavicle was sticking out of my skin," he recalls. "I figured, I'm finished."
And yet he still held out hope. Albor is nothing if not dogged. This is, after all, a man who has won five Ultra Challenge handcycling events, 267 miles from Fairbanks to Anchorage, Alaska. Pain, to him, is relative.
Doctors at UC Davis Medical Center wanted to operate to repair the clavicle and a partially ruptured left biceps muscle. (Albor's right side, incredibly, was simply bruised.) He would have none of it.
"After an operation, it would take six to seven months to get back in shape," he says. "Too late for me. I wanted to take a chance and hope the ligaments would heal. I had two weeks before the trials."
So doctors sewed him back up and left a 2-inch bump at the end of his shoulder. The first week of recovery, Albor did nothing but rest and – perhaps wishful thinking – prepare his backup handcycle for competition.
Then, one day, he wheeled himself over to the handcycle, climbed in and reached for the hand cranks. He could straighten his left arm just enough to grasp it.
The next day, he returned to the same spot on the American River Parkway where he was hit and started cranking. The pain was bearable until he reached the Hazel Avenue bridge and heard a sharp pop in his left biceps. It apparently had ruptured further.
He rested more after that and, three days before the trials, visited his doctor to get a cortisone shot. The doctor tried to talk him out of racing. In fact, Albor pulls out a letter his doctor gave him imploring him to "think of the long-term."
He got the shot and went to Denver anyway. And he wound up winning the time trial by 2 seconds over rival Oz Sanchez of San Diego. (Both men have qualified for Beijing. Their road race final is Saturday.)
None of this surprises Albor's wife, Kimberly.
"We've been married 16 years, and I've come to understand what tenacity is from him," she says. "I don't think of it so much as being stubborn as learning to handle adversity.
"Where other people might quit, he'll just keep going."
Sanchez marvels at Albor's grit but says he expected nothing less.
"He knows that if he keeps pushing it, there could be long-term damage," says Sanchez, 32. "But you only live once. What do you stand for? What's your passion? It's obvious this is what he loves. If I were in his shoes, I don't know if I'd do anything different."
Call The Bee's Sam McManis, (916) 321-1145.
