Summer Olympic -- Pedal To The Medal

HER THIRD AND FINAL OLYMPIC GAMES THIS WEEK.

RACING INTO her third Olympics, cyclist Rebecca Twigg is seeking a third medal, and her first gold, in the time trial and the 3,000-meter pursuit. Off her bike, Twigg is engaged in a different pursuit - of a spiritual nature.

OREM, Utah - Rebecca Twigg sucks on a finger while watching the broken, white lines of interstate run together like a blur of splattered paint across the silvery concrete.

She sits still and trance-like, her thick, cocoa hair matted to her face by the dried sweat of a 50-mile criterium just finished in the foreground of the snow-dusted Wasatch Mountains.

While driving to her hotel, Twigg has retreated to her innermost sanctuary, where a Great Wall of secrecy protects her thoughts. She is oblivious to the passing cars and low hum of the air conditioner until the pregnant pause is 30 seconds long and ready to crumble.

Then words come quickly.

"I wasn't brainwashed; I really feel it," she says, still scanning the open road as if searching for something under the big, blue Western sky.

She feels the ethereal spirit of God.

After winning 16 national titles, six world titles and two Olympic medals, after becoming perhaps the greatest woman cyclist in U.S. history, Twigg is seeking truth in who she is and what she does, in where she is going and what she will become.

With her third and final Summer Olympics beginning in five days in Atlanta, Twigg, 33, has reached a juncture that will define her future.

Although the onetime Seattle wunderkind has devoted the year to winning a gold medal, "I don't think she knows what she is going to do when she quits racing," said her father, David Twigg of Federal Way.

Twigg only knows that this deep-rooted affinity for spirituality will lead her beyond the spokes and gears and aerodynamics of cycling.

The Olympics, where she will race in the 3,000-meter pursuit on the track and the individual time trial on the road, are simply a way station to greater fulfillment.

"It's not something that I can vocalize, it's something I feel," she said.

"Climbed over mountains Traveled a sea. Cast down on heaven Cast down on my knees."

- P.J. Harvey

Two years ago, Twigg was hurting. Not from the muscle-aching, lung-bursting pursuit of cutting milliseconds while pedaling around a velodrome, but from a broken heart.

After a relationship ended badly, Twigg felt as if something was broken inside. At 31, after living more than half her life on her own, she was lost.

Twigg began reading Paramhansa Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi" and pondering life's monumental questions. About the same time, she talked to her younger sister, Laura Pucher of Kirkland, about the breakup. A born-again Christian, Pucher prayed for Twigg. Then they prayed together over the telephone.

"I was really amazed," Twigg said. "Praying felt really unnatural because I grew up without religion, but after a couple weeks, I felt calm. Maybe it is meditation. I don't really know what it is."

Only that something unusual happened. Pucher had tried many times to convert her sister to Christianity, but Twigg was not receptive. Now they were drawn closer for the first time in years.

Their parents divorced when they were children, and the family was held together by the thinnest of threads since their mother died 10 years ago. Twigg rarely visited after leaving Seattle in 1985.

"My sister and I were getting along great for a while because we had something to talk about, finally," Twigg said. "Now she is a little discouraged because I haven't gone to Christianity.

"A lot of religions are just a lot of rules. I don't particularly like rules. I want to find the truth."

So, she continues a solitary search that parallels her cycling.

"For me, it is a real escape to be able to get on my bike and just go as fast as I can go," she said. "It's black and white. There is no gray area. No lies about that, and that is what I like."

"Be quite still and solitary.

The world will freely offer itself to you.

To be unmasked, it has no choice.

It will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

- Franz Kafka

Last September, Twigg was tucked into the aerodynamic position of a racer - head down, back arched - while prowling the Colorado Springs velodrome at 30 mph when she looked up to see a U.S. coach helping the country's other top pursuit rider, Janie Quigley, on her bike.

During training, only one rider usually uses the track to avoid collisions. For some reason, the coach, Craig Griffin, did not realize Twigg still was riding.

Twigg steered her sleek bicycle to the track's perimeter, but there was no room to get around them. So, she slightly swerved in the other direction and partially hit Griffin.

In an instant, the United States' powerful pursuit team was sprawled across the track in a tangle of bodies and bikes. Twigg suffered a broken collarbone, Griffin a bruised leg. Quigley escaped serious injury.

The accident occurred 11 days before the world championships in Bogota, Colombia. It usually takes six to eight weeks to recover from a broken collarbone, but Twigg was determined to visit South America.

The night of the accident, a surgeon inserted seven screws and a titanium plate to hold the collarbone together, and removed some bone chips. Then Twigg caught a terrible cold.

Still, she trained on a stationary bicycle until the world championships, where she illustrated the qualities that make her formidable.

In qualifying, Antonella Bellutti of Italy broke Twigg's world record in the pursuit. A few minutes later, Marion Clignet of France surpassed Bellutti's mark.

Undaunted, Twigg advanced to the final where she defeated Bellutti in world-record time: 3 minutes, 36.081 seconds.

Bellutti, Clignet and either Kathy Watt or Lucy Tyler-Sharman of Australia are expected to battle Twigg for medals in Atlanta.

The pursuit involves two cyclists starting at opposite ends of the oval and racing three kilometers (about two miles) with the winner either passing the opponent or finishing with the fastest time.

Eddy Borysewicz, Twigg's long-time coach, said she will be difficult to defeat at the Olympic velodrome.

"Her mind is strong," he said. "Her body is incredible, stronger than ever. Right now, she needs less and less help. She knows her body, knows her training."

Borysewicz said Twigg's strength comes from taking almost three years off after failing to make the 1988 Olympic team.

During the break, she became a computer programmer, adding an associate arts degree at Coleman College in San Diego to her degree in biology from the University of Washington. After Atlanta, she plans to attend graduate school in computer programming at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where she has purchased a home and now lives.

The 40-hour-a-week desk life left her antsy, and by 1991 Twigg was back on her bike.

"Cycling is in her blood," Borysewicz said. "It's like a disease."

At first, Twigg did not believe she could return to world-class form. But within a year she qualified for Barcelona, where she won a bronze medal in the pursuit to go along with her silver in the 1984 Olympic road race.

She possesses robot-like concentration when racing, which has carried over to the rest of her life. In the past two years, she has tried to channel that intensity.

"I'm still learning it," she said.

At the Orem criterium, Twigg, riding for training's sake, was dropped by the main pack of riders and reached a breaking point. "People were yelling for me and I had to fight the urge to say, `Quit cheering for me, I got dropped, can't you see that?' In my younger days, I'd yell back, `You try riding this thing. What do you mean, `Go'? You go.' "

At night, her meditation calms the frustrations and helps her regain composure. Twigg said she reminds herself of what really matters.

"You might feel like a speck of sand, but every person is important," she said. "How we treat other people is important."

In a way, faith has become a guiding light: "I think of God as a parent," she said.

"So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men:

And Dead once dead, there's no more dying then."

- Shakespeare

Twigg's mother, Barbara, introduced her daughters to cycling when they were early teenagers. The trio joined the Cascade Bicycle Club and rode a number of Puget Sound tours for fun.

One night at a club function, Barbara was persuaded to enter her eldest in races. The national championships were in Seattle that year so Rebecca wanted to qualify. At 14, she entered the state championships and defeated the other girl in her age group by 20 minutes in a 21-mile race.

Twigg quickly ascended in cycling. She also was doing so well in school that in 1977, her mother had her go from the eighth grade at Seattle's Eckstein Middle School to the University of Washington.

"Mom gave us a lot of responsibility early on and wanted us to really excel," Pucher said.

But by the time Twigg was 15, she and her mother were having difficulties. Barbara did not want her daughter to travel to so many races and after a bad fight, Twigg left home. She eventually moved in with Kay Henshaw, a member of her cycling team who was in her 30s.

The next four years were tough for mother and daughter, but they eventually reconciled.

"I know she really listened to her mom," said Henshaw, now of Bainbridge Island. "She never thought of moving back but maintained a relationship.

"Rebecca could always manage. At 16 years old, she was out there functioning by herself and making all the decisions and not having her parents there."

Back then, Twigg was reckless, enjoying the unfettered freedom of the spinning wheels. One early spring morning when she was 15, Twigg left on a long ride.

"Where'd you go?" Henshaw asked.

"Mount Rainier," Twigg told her.

When she was 19, Twigg and a boyfriend joined the Seattle-to-Portland tour.

"They were gone when I woke up and in my back yard at 4 p.m. when I returned from some errands," Henshaw recalled. "Back from Portland."

When her mother died, Twigg, then 22, was living the nomadic life of a professional cyclist. She did not confront her emotions over the loss until a few years later.

"I think I just set it aside for a while," Twigg said.

After the death, Pucher found a supportive letter her mother had written her sister. When asked about the correspondence 10 years later, Twigg said she was unaware of it.

"But just hearing that even now means a lot," she said. "My mom always told us that there's always room at the top for another good one."

Those words linger like a summer sunset as Twigg withdraws to her thoughts, that Great Wall enveloping her like a cocoon.

There has been room for her in a remarkable cycling career. But what about this transition from athlete to, well, what?

Twigg hopes it comes as easy as riding a bike.