Looking past Lance Armstrong and finding Timmy Duggan

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ADELAIDE, Australia -- I’m not suggesting that Lance Armstrong is getting too much coverage at the weeklong Tour Down Under.

He drew Australia’s head of state Kevin Rudd to sweaty, hand-shaking hero worship, worship Armstrong has earned by his tireless work for cancer fundraising. It is not unusual here to see bald-headed chemo patients turn out by the side of the road waving ‘Lance’ banners, or spot them sitting outside the tournament hotel hoping to coax an autograph from their hero. And often, they do. Armstrong has returned to competition after a three-year retirement with a softer edge and a listening empathy that draws out from people their stories of surviving cancer or watching a friend or relative fight cancer.

But in the chronicling of Armstrong’s comeback, we ignore other stories.

Timmy Duggan’s story, for one.

Duggan, 26, from Boulder, Colo., is an eager young rider for the Boulder-based Garmin-Slipstream team created by former racer Jonathan Vaughters and forged in an idealistic hope that more and more doping testing will help clean up the sport. Duggan is an enthusiastic partner in that kind of future for cycling, and he is, like Armstrong, a survivor.

About 14 months ago, at the Tour of Georgia, Duggan was making a steep descent at

about 45 miles per hour when his wheel stuck in a bridge slat. That is all Duggan remembers of a four-day period when his wife, Loren, and parents, Debbie and Duane, gathered at his Georgia hospital room, hoping he would awaken but worried about what they would find. ‘Doctors told them that it was almost certain I would have some brain deficits when I woke up,’ Duggan said. ‘And so I did.’

Although there is some video of Duggan’s horrific crash, he hasn’t seen it nor does he want to. He was off his bike for four months and took suggestions that participating in a sport in which his head might well hit the pavement again was a bad idea. He also struggled with cognitive and emotional issues common to brain injury patients.

‘Things were just different,’ Duggan said. ‘My emotions were pretty raw. I’d get angry fast. I became depressed easily. These are all common and expected, but when they happen to you, it’s not common.’ Duggan’s doctors suggested he take a college-level Spanish course to see if his brain was still capable of learning. It was; Duggan can be chatty in Spanish now. But he still needed to learn if his reactions would be immediately responsive in a full-blown race in which competitors ride shoulder to shoulder and any wobble by one might mean a crash of many, and when the scariest part is still the fast descent.

Duggan is riding the Tour Down Under with the blessing of his family, of Vaughters, of team manager Matt White. He has found so far that he processes the feel of the peloton differently. He thinks different thoughts during the day, his mental checklist is different than before the injury. But he is racing, he is playing his role as helper for team leaders and regaining the realization that cycling is still his livelihood and that he still has the tools to be good at it.

After the Tour Down Under, Duggan will race the Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia. He is not good enough yet to be on Garmin’s Amgen Tour of California team, and that’s fine with Duggan. He is still learning. Until he was 19, Duggan was a ski racer, so he is still learning the art of road cycling; a huge crash that left him convulsing on the side of a Georgia road isn’t enough to change his mind.

Duggan had already won me over with his straightforward telling of the struggles of living with a brain injury, of the tension it can cause between the care-giving spouse and the patient and of how he is still learning little ways his personality has changed and his racing routines have been altered.

But he won me as a fan for good when I, after hesitating, asked him if he had a cleft palate. The scar is evident, and if the question seemed impolite, it had a purpose. I have a young nephew, my brother’s son, who was born about 18 months ago with a cleft palate. Young Nicholas has undergone two surgeries that have accomplished amazing things. Duggan gave me his mother’s phone number and told my brother and sister-in-law to call her if they ever had questions about dealing with a son and his surgeries, the extensive orthodontic work still to come.

And he suggested that anyone who wants to know more about his story should go to the website JustGoHarder.com. Those inclined to dismiss cycling as a doping-riddled, maladjusted sport might do well to check out some other stories. This is a good one.

-- Diane Pucin