BMX cycling: Adversity no obstacle to Olympic BMX hopeful

CHULA VISTA, Calif. - When Arielle Martin climbs to the top of the five-story start ramp from which she plans to launch her Olympic dream, she sees a harrowing view of jumps, bumps and hard turns carved into the dirt below.
    But that's nothing.
    None of the obstacles the Cedar Hills native and Brigham Young graduate encounters on the BMX course can compare to the ones she has overcome in the past year to become one of the brightest medal hopes for the newest sport to join the Beijing Games.
    For starters, she has fought back from a serious knee injury that cost her sponsors and a spot on the USA Cycling Team. Not only that, but she shuffled through a series of coaches to find the right match and then watched her new husband get deployed to war-torn Afghanistan as a helicopter mechanic in the 101st Aviation Brigade.
    "The thought did cross my mind, 'Is this it?' " Martin said, recalling her injury just eight days after marrying Michael Verhaaren in December of 2006. "Is this a time I just need to call it quits and focus on my marriage, or what do I need to do?"
    Keep going for gold, it turns out.
    She and her husband agreed that, whatever the challenges, abandoning her sport after years of dedication would lead only to resentment and disappointment. "I don't want you to look back the rest of our lives and think 'I was that close, and I didn't try,' " she recalled her husband telling her.
    So Martin retrained her focus on making history.
    It took her only about five months to return to racing after speedskating legend Eric Heiden surgically repaired the torn anterior cruciate ligament in her knee, and only a few more to regain her top form.
    Now, she's the top-ranked American woman rider, and she's aiming to retain that standing over the final five qualifying races in order to automatically earn one of two spots on the U.S. Olympic Team for Beijing. The other spot will be left to the discretion of coaches and officials at USA Cycling.
    "I'm pretty confident that even if I'm not on top of that points board. . . . I have a pretty good shot" because of her skill on the demanding supercross-style course that will be used in the Olympics, she said. "Not many girls are willing to do this. Not many of them are willing to put themselves out here."
    Indeed, Martin has been a professional on the rock-star BMX circuit since she was a 15-year-old sophomore at Lone Peak High School, and has earned a reputation as a pioneering daredevil.
    "This girl is full of tenacity," said Bruce Mayer, the president and CEO of Formula Bicycles in San Diego, who sponsors Martin. "She rides like a guy and doesn't take any crap from anyone. And she's the type of person that if you said she can't do something, she's going to go out and prove you wrong."
    Having seen Martin recover from a severe back injury years ago, Mayer was willing to take a chance on her following her knee injury, when a previous sponsor dumped her - she would have been unable to compete at the 2007 World Championships in Canada - and USA Cycling removed her from its national team, uncertain of her prospects for recovery.
    "A year ago, people were telling me I was crazy because I signed Arielle Martin when she was under the knife," Mayer said. "Now who's crazy?"
    Martin crashed out of the world championships, but ultimately regained her spot on the national team with increasingly impressive performances. Now, she lives at the U.S. Olympic Training Center here, practicing every day on the Olympic replica course that sits just over a small hill from her apartment.
    Meanwhile, Martin keeps in touch daily with her husband, who calls from a pay phone in Afghanistan while they wait for him to get Internet access in his quarters so they can install online cameras. The couple met at a college bonfire, while she was earning a degree in exercise science at BYU and he was a student at Utah Valley State in Orem.
    "I don't like him being gone," Martin said, "but he's there because he wants to be there. He's not there because the Army made him go. I think that makes a big difference."
    Martin grew up around BMX, watching her father Travis Martin race locally while owning and operating the Mad Dog Cycles store in Provo. She was off-training wheels when she was 2 1/2 years old, she said, but had to wait until she was 5 before Travis and her mother Lori allowed her to race. Ever since, she has been winning titles and challenging the limits of her sport. But is she ever afraid?
    "All the time," she said. "I think that's why I do it. I love the adrenaline rush. You get up, and you're up five stories on top of that starting ramp, looking down at a jump that's 32 feet long? I love that. . . . It's just the biggest rush."
    mcl@sltrib.com