Up she jumped and climbed back on.
"Georgia was a very willful child," said her mother, Susan Gould, who owns a photo gallery in Baltimore. "At 10, she learned to ride a unicycle. That Halloween, she dressed as a clown and rode the unicycle from house to house, collecting candy."
Early on, Georgia Gould was always moving. She attended a private high school in New Hampshire, then tried four colleges - including one in Ghana - before graduating from the University of Montana with a psychology degree.
She became an ardent cyclist at 19, when she moved to Idaho and met David "Dusty" LaBarr, a mountain-bike enthusiast four years her senior (they wed in 2006). Together, they rode logging roads, deer paths and forest trails.
The sport grew on Gould, though she lacked focus. On occasion during an outing, Gould would disappear, forcing LaBarr to double back and beat the bushes. He would find her filling her water bottle with wild berries she picked along the way.
Gould began entering races in 2000 and turned pro in 2004. A year later, she did the national mountain bike circuit, traveling the countryside in a GMC van. LaBarr was her mechanic. To save money, they ate pasta off a campstove, bathed in streams or friends' motel rooms and slept on a futon in the back of the van.
That season, Gould placed ninth in the U.S. standings, gained a sponsor (LUNA nutrition bars) and ditched the van. She has been riding high ever since, winning her share of World Cup races and placing second in the U.S. championship in 2007 and 2008.
There have been setbacks. Two months ago, while leading a race in Santa Barbara, Calif., Gould collapsed in 103-degree temperatures and was hospitalized with heat stroke.
"Ten minutes from the finish, my body shut down. Never happened before," she said. "I couldn't ride or walk. I remember looking for a tree to crawl under, and then I passed out."
Gould has since recovered.
"That was scary," said Ollett, her coach. "It was a bigger deal than people realized, but she has bounced back pretty darn well."
Beijing awaits.
"I rode that [Olympic] course in a race last year and placed fourth," she said. "There are a lot of short, steep climbs and descents without much time to recover. And they've buried some rocks and put in a log here and there to make it more interesting."
Berry bushes, she didn't see. All she wants to pick up in China is the gold.
mike.klingaman@baltsun.com
