The Iron Woman

摘要

First she got hit by a shattered storm window, which sliced her hamstring in half. Ayear later, it was an 18-wheeler truck. That one nearly killed her. Then last November she flipped over a fallen biker in the season's final triathlon and broke her collarbone. A few days later she had a biopsy to find out why the glands in her throat were swollen. Thyroid cancer. When Karen Smyers boards a plane next week for the U.S. Olympic trials in Dallas—one last chance, at 38, to keep alive her gold-medal dream— her fellow passengers should be forgiven if they say they'll take the next flight, thanks. Not that recent events have been all bad for the two-time world champ. "After radioactive iodine treatment," she wrote in a triathlon magazine, "I will be able to read in bed without a night light." Smyers's wit is legendary on the tour, and she's used it tirelessly.