Sam Kavanagh, Bozeman, Montana, won two gold medals and earned two national titles at the USA Cycling Juniors, U23, Elite, and Paralympic Road National Championships, June 22-25, in Bend, Oregon.
On the day his daughter turned a year old, Sam Kavanagh wears the national championship medal he won in Bend, Oregon, on June 22. Photograph courtesy of Sara Kavanagh.
On June 22, Kavanagh was one of eight U.S. Paralympic Champions crowned across various divisions, when he won the men’s class C4/C5 road race by less than a second, according to usacycling.org. His second gold medal was the result of winning the next day’s 20K criterium. Then he placed third in the June 25 time trial, which garnered him a position at the starting line of the 2010 UCI Road World Championships, to be held August 19-22 in Baie-Comeau, Canada.
To prepare for the National Championships, Kavanagh traveled to Europe in May, competing in two stage races. He placed second in Spain’s Bizkaiko Bira road race and first in France’s Handisport Challenge International de Paracylcisme, winning three out of seven total stages over the two events.
“That changed my expectations,” Kavanagh was quoted as saying in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “Going into nationals, I anticipated that I could win one national championship-to come home with two and medal in all three events was beyond what I expected.”
Kavanagh was fitted with a prosthesis after his lower left leg was amputated, the result of injuries he sustained when he and four friends were caught in an avalanche while back-country skiing on New Year’s Day 2005.
One year after the accident, Kavanagh made the U.S. Paralympic Cycling Team and competed in the world championships in Switzerland. In 2008, he won the national championship in the 4K pursuit but missed qualifying for the Paralympics in Beijing by just two seconds. According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Kavanaugh stated that he will now focus on the U.S. track nationals, which will be held in July in Colorado Springs.
For complete results from the paracycling portion of the events, visit USA Cycling’s results and rankings system. For detailed coverage of the paracycling portion of the event, visit www.usparalympics.org
