True spirit of Olympics found inside red bobsled
 |
|
||||||||||
PARK CITY, Utah — The first snowflakes were falling in yesterday's gathering dusk as Ildiko Strehli climbed out of her fire-engine red bobsled at the end of her final training run.
Her smile cut through the white-gray flakes. Her last ride before her first Olympics had been flawless.
Today, Strehli will do something remarkable. Today, just three years after undergoing a bilateral mastectomy, she will slide in the first Olympic women's bobsled. She will be racing for Hungary and racing for every person who's ever felt the terror from a positive biopsy report.
"She really represents the hard-driving spirit of the Olympics," said Bonnie Warner, a three-time Olympic luger, who nearly qualified for this year's U.S. bobsled team. "People get so wrapped around gold, silver, bronze. Well, Ildiko will not win a medal. I mean, we all know that. She's here to do her best. She is everything that's good about the Olympics."
In 1995, Strehli found a cancerous lump in her right breast. She had it removed and underwent chemotherapy. Four years later, less than a year after she began bobsledding, a malignant lump was discovered in her left breast.
But today she slides in a bobsled she has named "Sled Full of Hope." A pink ribbon, the universal sign for breast cancer, is painted on each side of the sled, as are the names of friends, family and other cancer patients who have supported her.
Twice she has been in that terrible place that cancer takes you, where the future becomes blurred and frightening. She has been there twice and survived.
The second time her doctor gave her the results of her biopsy, Strehli noticed a sign on the wall.
"It said one out of every 5,000 women between 30 and 35 will get breast cancer," she said. "I told my doctor, 'Well, now there are 4,999 women who won't have to worry.' She hugged me after I said that, and I felt as if it was my mother hugging me. It was then I knew I was in good hands."
Strehli had her mastectomy on Sept. 14, 1999. The stitches hadn't been removed when, on Oct. 2, she was told that women's bobsledding was added to these Games. "When we heard that news, my husband, Bobby, and I were determined to make it here," said Strehli, 37, who was born in Dorong, Hungary, but now lives in Park City. "This is so important to me. I want to tell the people who are fighting with cancer to keep fighting and never give up. They have to keep dreaming."
An ad in a Park City newspaper four years ago asking for foreign-born women who wanted to learn to drive bobsleds drew Strehli to this sport.
A former member of the Hungarian skydiving team, former collegiate swimmer, former luger and marathon runner, bobsledding sounded like a perfect fit. She answered the ad and went to driving school in Park City. After she finished the course, she was told of a World Cup event on the course in a couple of weeks. She had her bobsled driver's license, her steely nerves and her need for a new adrenaline rush.
She entered the race, and a Hungarian bobsled team was born.
"We borrowed a sled from somebody's back yard," said husband Bob Shell, a Park City ski instructor and home builder. "We put it back together enough to get it down the track."
Strehli phoned a Hungarian friend of hers Judy Haverty, who lives in Everett, and asked her if she wanted to bobsled. They entered the race, careened down the course and half of the team was hooked. "It was very scary," Strehli said. "I think Judy was very frightened."
Later, Strehli convinced former Hungarian sprinter Eva Barati to be her brakeman. They finished 17th in last year's World Championships. Last month, Warner loaned them her backup sled. That sled shaved the needed seconds off their time, and Strehli and Barati became one of only 15 teams to qualify for the Olympics.
Strehli has persevered through nasty scrapes with the wall and a nasty crash last August that left her with a broken shoulder and a herniated disk. She had two surgeries — back and shoulder — a week apart, and two months later, less than five months before the Olympics, she was pushing a bobsled again.
She ignored the fist-like knots in her back. She wanted this Olympic chance too badly. She needed to spread her word at more than 90 miles per hour.
"To overcome the kind of obstacles she has and to be at the Olympic Games is just amazing," said her friend, U.S. bobsledder Jen Davidson, former brakeman for Jean Racine. "I think Ildiko really represents the true spirit of the Olympic Games. She has that kind of spirit that won't take no for an answer, and that's a lot of what this whole thing's about.
"My mom is a breast-cancer survivor, and she came to watch me slide right after one of her chemo treatments. Ildiko saw that she had that telltale short hair and just came up and started talking to her. Now they're best friends."
Today, when the results scroll across the bottom of news reports, you won't see Strehli's name. But be sure, nobody has overcome more to get here. And be sure that of all the medalists in these Olympics, no one will achieve a greater victory than Ildiko Strehli.
Steve Kelley can be reached at 206-464-2176 or at skelley@seattletimes.com.