Cyclist David Zabriskie doesn't have to think hard to remember the few months he spent at the U.S. Olympic Training Center just after graduating from Olympus High School a decade ago.

The message he absorbed there remains on the tip of his tongue:

"That was one of the first things they said," he recalled. " 'If you want to go to the Olympics, this is where it starts.' That's always been in the back of my head. It's something I really want to do."

Now, the 28-year-old Zabriskie is only months away from fulfilling his dream by competing at the 2008 Beijing Games in China next summer.

He's not yet assured of a spot - he missed a chance to clinch one when he finished 12th in the time trial at the UCI Road World Championships in Germany last month - but probably can count on getting one, as the two-time defending national time-trial champion and one of the best riders in the world.

"It would mean the most to me," he said.

But Zabriskie still has much to do before attempting to deliver a road time-trial medal to the United States for the third straight Olympics (Lance Armstrong earned bronze at the 2000 Sydney Games, while disgraced drug cheat Tyler Hamilton won gold at the Athens Games in 2004 with Bobby Julich taking bronze).

Zabriskie is moving to a new professional team, for starters, and directing a new charitable organization - the Yield to Life Foundation - aimed at improving cycling safety and awareness. That has been an important issue for Zabriskie since the inattentive driver of a sport utility vehicle crashed into him in Mill Creek Canyon four years ago, badly injuring him and endangering his cycling career.

"I think a lot of people see bikes as just bikers in the road, and they detach all life from the bike," he said. "So the main goal is to try to change that mentality a little bit, that there's life hooked to the bike, and just yield up a little bit and give enough space and, hence, yielding to life.

"Then, hopefully, there will be fewer accidents and more people will feel comfortable and more people will start riding more bikes. And that yields to the whole life of the world, because there will be less cars, and then the world can survive."

Zabriskie chuckled at how that all sounded.

"It's going to be a big challenge," he said. "But I felt like I had to start somewhere."

The same might be said for his new team.

Facing what must seem like an insurmountable level of drug cheating in its sport, Team Slipstream has adopted an especially aggressive anti-doping approach. Each of its two dozen riders - including reformed drug cheat David Millar of Great Britain and Christian Vande Velde, as well as Zabriskie - will be tested for banned substances every week through urine and blood analysis, for a combined total of some 1,200 tests this year.

That's more than 20 times the number of tests to which most other pro cyclists are subjected through the International Cycling Union, the team said.

"It's important, for sure," Zabriskie said. "There are questions within the sport, all the people you're racing against. So it's good to have the peace of mind that at least the guys on your team that you're racing with are clean."

Not only that, but jumping to a mostly young American team from Danish Team CSC could afford Zabriskie a chance to expand his role from that of a time-trial specialist. After all, the team doesn't really have a prototypical general-classification rider, and Zabriskie said he has been improving the other aspects of his riding.

"I have put a team together based on compatible personalities, and people who I trust and bought into the team's concept," team manager Jonathan Vaughters told reporters when he announced his new lineup after the Tour de France in July.

For the moment, Zabriskie is enjoying some down time after competing in the world championships and entertaining supporters at a series of fund-raisers in Draper last week for his foundation and for Bikes for Kids Utah, a charitable group that donates bikes and gear to underprivileged schoolchildren.

But soon enough, he will be headed back to his home near Los Angeles to begin preparing for the coming months. They are some of the biggest of his life, considering the looming Olympic Games, their commencement barely a month after the Tour de France, and the likelihood that Team Slipstream will have to anxiously await a "wild-card" entry just to compete in the Tour next year.

Like the man said, though, he has to start somewhere.

mcl@sltrib.com

Zabriskie File

* Won U.S.National Time Trial Championship

2005

* Won Stage 1 of the Tour de France

* Won Stage 8 of the Giro d'Italia

2006

* Won U.S. National Time Trial Championship

* Won Stage 2 of the Settimana Internazionale di Coppi e Bartali

* Won Prologue and Stage 3 of the Dauphiné Libéré

* Won silver medal at World Time Trial Championships

2007

* Won U.S. National Time Trial Championship

* Finished third in Stage 20 of the Giro d'Italia

* Finished fifth overall in the Dauphiné Libéré

* Finished 12th at World Time Trial Championships