World Class on Wheels or Blades.

World Class on Wheels or Blades. Becoming the best in the world at one sport is difficult enough, but reaching the pinnacle of two sports, almost simultaneously, is nearly unheard of. In the 1970s American athlete Sheila Young was able to accomplish just that in cycling and speed skating. . Sheila Young: World-Class On Wheels or Blades Sheila Young of Detroit, Michigan achieved a rare feat in sporting history. In the early 1970s she reached the pinnacle of two different sports that had barely registered in the American public's consciousness: speed-skating and cycling. Whether her body was bent parallel to the ice or to the road, and whether she was on blades or on wheels, Young performed at a world-class pace. She earned relatively little money or fame from years of practice on frozen ponds and glamorless cycle tracks, but Young's achievements established her as one of the preeminent women athletes of her era. Women's cycling wasn't even an Olympic event in the 1970s. In speed-skating, Young had missed winning a bronze medal at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, by a tiny margin of .08 seconds. The following year, however, she won a world championship title in cycling and set world records in skating, an unheard-of dual accomplishment. At the next Winter Games, in 1976 in Innsbruck, Austria, the 25-year-old won gold, silver, and bronze medals in speed-skating events. She was the first American ever to win three medals in a single Winter Olympics. Young first caught the ice skating bug from her older sister at age nine, and skating became her first love. Her cycling prowess came later when she needed to find a summer activity to stay in shape; she found that the legs that propelled her forward on ice skates were just as effective powering a bicycle. After becoming a junior national speed-skating champion, Young met coach Peter Schotting, a Dutchman. Recognizing her potential, Schotting took over Young's training to ready her for international competition. His rigorous regimen included skating, running, and, in summer, cycling; the pedaling motion was a variation of skating movements. Young's remarkable achievements of 1973 began when she won the world amateur sprint speed-skating championship in Oslo, Norway, beating out Dutch and German opponents over three distances. Later that month, in Davos, Switzerland, she set a world-record time of 41.8 seconds in the 500-meter speed-skating sprint. The next day she added another world record in the four-sprint speed-skating event. In February, Young finished second overall at the world sprint championships in Stromsund, Sweden, winning the 500-meter race but losing the title to Antje Keulen-Deelstra of the Netherlands. The following summer, Young won the national cycling women's sprint title and then traveled to San Sebastian, Spain, for the world cycle track championships. There she completed the final race after a fall that left her legs and arms bleeding. Her insistence on carrying on was rewarded with a victory that made her a world cycling champion. Young had to wait until the next Olympics in 1976 to reach the top in skating competition. In Innsbruck, Austria, Young was the favorite for the gold medal in the 500-meter sprint. However, she surprised everyone by first taking the silver in the 1500-meter event. "I thought it would be good to skate another distance first, and the conditions were really fantastic," she told the New York Times. In fact, Young missed a gold in the race by a margin once again of only .08 seconds. The following day Young sprinted for gold in her best event, the 500 meters. With low fog and mist hanging over the ice, Young smashed the Olympic record, clocking a time of 42.76 seconds. Then, having been one of the first to skate, she had an agonizing wait to see if her time would be bettered as skating conditions improved. "I didn't like to go early," she told The New York Times afterward, "The warm-up conditions were terrible. The ice was bad, then good." But no one beat her time, and Young had the gold. "It was weird. I wasn't sure till the end," Young said, "Then I got this rush through my whole body." With that win, and a third medal the next day--the bronze in the 1000-meter race--Young entered the history books. Thanks in part to Young's success, U.S. skating developed enough to provide top speed skaters with stipends, state-of-the-art training facilities, and the promise of commercial endorsements. She blazed a trial for speed skaters such as Bonnie Blair, from Champaign, Illinois, who won five gold medals and a bronze over three Winter Olympics, to become the most successful U.S. female Olympian of all time. No one, however, is likely to surpass Sheila Young's amazing double success in separate sports. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.