Word: bike
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that had drifted under her patella. Doctors operated at 8 a.m., making three small incisions to remove the cartilage, clear the blockage and restore flexibility to the joint. At 7:30 p.m., she boarded a plane to Houston; the next morning, she was in the gym riding an exercise bike. Exactly two weeks after the surgery, she was flying through the air and landing without a wince. Six weeks later, she had become the first American all-around gymnastics champion in any international competition, let alone the Olympics...
Whether dirt bike racing can make the jump to the big time depends on the success of the sport's latest gimmick--a compact version of motocross called "stadium supercross," which made its only New England appearance of the year Saturday night in Foxboro's Sullivan Stadium. Supercross is sealed down, off-road motocross in which racers compete on a half-mile man-made course. Unlike indoor soccer or box lacrosse, supercross is not significantly different from its bigger, outdoor brother. It also boasts a number of features that have promoters, sponsors and racers licking their lips in anticipation...
...race there last weekend indicated that as accidents go, they are pretty tame. A motocross crash has none of the explosive finality of an Indy car slamming into the wall at 200 mph. A rider loses control in a jump, hits the ground off balance, falls off his bike, picks it up and starts going again. Crashes serve much more as opportunities for passing than for broken legs. One of the most exciting parts of Saturday's action was in the second-to-last race, when leader Scott Burnsworth fell on the sixth lap and local favorite Jo Jo Keller...
During a race any time spent in the air is lost, as the bike is merely floating, not moving ahead. So drivers try to stay on the ground as much as possible. Promoters, though, try to play up the sport's dangerous in-the-air element. The most exciting part of this course was a large jump called the catapult; Diet Coke gives the driver who jumps the farthest a $1000 bonus. The fans love it, but it reinforces the idea that motocross is a show and not a sport...
...next day a special exercise cycle was rigged over Benoit's hospital bed, and she began pedaling with her hands to keep her cardiovascular system in fettle. After four days she resumed running, just a mile at first. Next she swam, rode a bike, lifted weights. With a time of 2:31:04, eight minutes slower than her 1983 Boston Marathon record, she won the trial, finishing in tears. Says Bob Sevene, her coach mostly in the sense of someone to lean on: "Joan has this tremendous ability to blank out everything at the start of a race-heat...