Missy Giove has just been crowned World Champion in the Downhill, a fitting end to a season which saw her lose the number one spot in the World Cup in the very last race; a season which started with her lying in hospital with a cracked pelvis and continued with a series of crash-test dummy incidents which will necessitate hours of surgery over the winter. Yet Missy's race at Mammoth in 1994 will long be remembered by her friends and associates as her most courageous yet. Why? Read on...
"Latte?" Missy asks. Not being au fait with the various US coffee concoctions, I ask what it is and Missy describes it as an extra milky cappuccino. It is her favourite drink and its caffeine content her only stimulant. Being brought up in New York alerted her at an early age to the horrors of alcohol and drug abuse, but today, the day of the Kamikaze and Grundig Downhills, Giove looks as if she will need a bit more than just a cup of coffee to get her going.
Crash, bang... ouch
Missy, in her normal impish fashion, had agreed to the interview, but only if I rode the Kamikaze first. On the day before her downhill races she agreed to meet me after her practice session and we would ride the downhill together, with her demonstrating slowly (oh, how I prayed) how she would attack the course. I made out my will and took the cable car to the top of Mammoth Mountain with the group of other journos who also demonstrated cerebral impairment by being there, but Missy was nowhere to be seen.
I rode the course at around a fifth of the speed the pros would, but this was only because that was the slowest my bike would go with both brakes locked on and the wheels sliding through the two-inch thick layer of dust that covered the track. Hanging off the back in the recommended manner with the death grip applied to both brakes, I was a very relieved and happy bunny indeed when I reached the bottom unscathed. It was there that I learned that Missy had not been quite so lucky and had been carted off to hospital after crashing badly high up on the track, and that the prospects of her being allowed out, let alone with the intention of racing the following day, were very slim.
So, it's nine thirty the next morning and I am at Missy's condo, gazing in admiration as she struggles to get ready for the race. I ask her about the crash. "I was hammering the course with Myles (Rockwell, her Volvo Cannondale teammate), goin' at race pace and on the worst possible part of the course you could get a flat, I got one. I couldn't see what was goin' on 'cos the course was very dusty and Myles was kickin' up a storm in front of me. The next thing I knew was my rim had folded and before I had time to react my bike had gone over the bank. I fell off and rolled over the cliff edge, droppin' about fifteen feet on to a whole bunch of boulders." Missy was whisked off to hospital where it was discovered that as well as being bruised from head to foot she had broken a carpal in her thumb, with another possible break in her hand.
