MOUNTAIN BIKING: Emmett to race with healing arm, heavy heart

In September, Kelli Emmett was cycling with her father, enjoying his positive attitude and easygoing personality. They were happy and healthy, and she had Olympic aspirations.

Ten months later, Emmett is recovering from a broken arm, her father has died and her hopes of making the 2008 Beijing Games have practically vanished.

Change has become painfully commonplace for Emmett, a Colorado Springs mountain biker who is trying to stabilize her life and regain her competitive edge.

Emmett, 30, will compete today at the USA Cycling Mountain Bike Marathon National Championships, raced in conjunction with the Firecracker 50 in Breckenridge.

The 50-mile race is Emmett’s first since fracturing her humerus in May. It will be her longest since her father died of brain cancer in March.

Chances are Emmett’s father would have been in Breckenridge for the race. A retired electrical engineer, David Emmett traveled to most of Kelli’s races after she started competing on the national mountain bike circuit in 2000.

Doctors removed a cancerous brain tumor from David Emmett, 64, in late September, and he couldn’t walk by the beginning of November. Several rounds of radiation and chemotherapy did nothing as the cancer spread throughout his brain.

“It was evil,” Kelli said. “It was amazing, watching the deterioration. He kept deteriorating and getting worse and worse."

Five days after her father’s death, Emmett was back on her bike. She logged a fifth-place finish at an International Cycling Union (UCI) race in Puerto Rico and finished fifth at a National Mountain Bike Series stop in Phoenix.

But Emmett wasn’t the same rider. She missed her father too much.

“I felt tired and run down,” Emmett said. “It was really hard to stay on top and be aggressive. You’ve got to be so focused and so ready to race. You’ve got to be 100 percent to be on the podium.”

When Emmett returned from a two-week break, she regained her winning touch by outlasting a strong field at a regional race in Monterey, Calif. Then she got hurt.

Emmett broke her arm during a practice ride in preparation for a World Cup in Germany. She stumbled to a 91st-place finish, unable to effectively defend against other riders and attain maximum acceleration on steep climbs.

At the advice of her Giant Bicycle team, Emmett skipped back-to-back World Cup races in Canada to give her arm time to heal. Her UCI ranking plummeted, and she’s now 23rd nationally and No. 95 in the world in the women’s professional cross country division.

“My goal is to make the Olympic team,” said Emmett, a silver medalist at the 2005 Pan American Mountain Bike Championships. “I definitely missed out on some points. Hopefully I can make them up with some good results.”

Emmett will compete this month at the Mountain Bike National Championships in West Dover, Vt. She probably won’t have a high enough UCI ranking to qualify for the world championships in September in Scotland.

Qualifying for Beijing might be impossible. Like the world championships, Olympic selection is based on a rider’s ranking.

“It’s a little bit of a long shot right now,” Emmett said. “It has been a rollercoaster year. Some years are like that. You just keep working, knowing that it’s going to come through at some point.”