Cycling season starts with Utah tests

MURRAY— The roads are still icy and nobody in their right mind is about to spend three or four hours peddling a bicycle up and down the canyons of the Wasatch Front.

That hardly means it isn't cycling season.

Many of the top cyclists in the nation gathered last week at The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital (TOSH) to kick off the 2007 season with a series of state-of-the-art testing and conditioning tests and exercises.

"This program is designed to progress the top athletes we have in the country to become the top athletes in the world," said Stephen Johnson, CEO of USA Cycling. "We used to have to go out and test people all over, but bringing them here, to one central place, helps us get things done much more efficiently."

USA Cycling brought 18 members of the national road cycling team to the TOSH human performance laboratory. The program, which started in 1999 and touts Salt Lake's Dave Zabriskie as its first graduate, is designed to take the nation's top young cyclists, put them on bikes and hook them up to a variety of tubes, wires and monitors.

Doctors at TOSH, such as five-time Olympic gold medal winner Eric Heiden and Massimo "Max" Testa, have helped the facility take yet another step toward becoming the top sports science lab in the country.

Skiers, snowboarders and speedskaters have long used the lab to find ways to make the seemingly minor steps that help transform them from world-class athletes into world champions. Now, cyclists are flocking to TOSH to be tested.

"The hope is for these guys to become an Olympic champion or a world champion," Heiden said. "The question is how to make this test and make a higher quality athlete."

By analyzing power generation, oxygen utilization and other physiological data, USA Cycling is using this week's tests as a sort of a spring training for the cycling season. The athletes in town this week are members of the U-25 national team. Among them may be the next Zabriskie, Levi Leipheimer or Lance Armstrong.

"Over time, data from tests like these will give us the ability to identify the best athletes in the country and advance our national program," said Johnson, who holds a Ph.D. in exercise science from the University of Utah. "We already have some of the best cyclists in the world coming from the United States and this is designed to make sure we always do."

The 18 cyclists in town over the week are seen as the future of American cycling. Many have already been signed by the top international and domestic racing teams. At next month's Tour of California — a warm-up stage race that attracts most of the world's top teams — USA Cycling will send eight of the U-25 racers to compete against the likes of Discovery Channel, T-Mobile and Team CSC.