The AMS Comeback Masters Athlete of the Year Award Winners: Sandy Scott and Karen Einsidler win inaugural award for their remarkable returns to the winner's circle  

Sandy Scott and Karen Einsidler had goals -- not the garden-variety, New Year's resolution-type goals, but rather the kind rooted in hearts and minds. And nothing -- not life-threatening injury nor deadly disease -- would derail their dreams.

For Scott, a champion Masters cyclist, single-minded drive seems part of his DNA. For Einsidler, a world-class Masters swimmer, genetics may be part of the story, but past heartache also steeled her for life's toughest blows. For both, passion and purpose propelled them to be the AMS Comeback Masters Athletes of the Year.

Scott raced through his time trial so fast on Oct. 30, 2005, he was going to scratch from the second one, but reconsidered. Sometimes he can't help himself. So he pedaled, perhaps too fast, as a race official stepped onto the course, causing Scott to swerve on a bike not built for swerving.

As he barreled out of control, the last thought Scott remembers having was that he was speeding straight at spectators. "Witnesses said I speared the ground headfirst at a high rate of speed," said Scott, 67, who lives in Seminole, Fla.

His helmet disintegrated, and when he rolled over, his face was covered in blood. His fiancé, Rose Marie Ray, who had been widowed when her triathlete husband died while swimming at their club, watched in horror, then couldn't believe Scott was talking, even if it was gibberish. In the ambulance, he asked what he was doing there. When paramedics told him, "I said, 'I wasn't in any bicycle race.' "

The hospital would send him home, somehow without discovering he had fractured his C-1 vertebra, maybe because so many people with the injury die immediately.

In constant, severe pain days later, he went to see a surgeon, who ordered tests. "They came into the room and said, 'I don't want to scare you, Mr. Scott, but you have a broken neck,' as they're fitting me with a very stiff brace."

He wore the brace for five months, but it didn't really fit his goal of winning the Florida Senior Games in 2006. "I came to cycling really late in life, at age 64" -- when his fiancé came to his home one day with two bikes on her car and said they were going for a ride. He complied. "I was sore, but said I guess this is fun."

After rapid successes, he was more certain. "I realized I had the genetics for it. It's just fun for me. I refused to give it up because it's an important part of my life."

This is a guy who went from scholarship student in engineering at the University of California-Berkley to dropout to motorcycle cop to airline pilot to training company executive and master skydiver. "I've done everything very passionately."

So he got back on his trainer bike for 70 minutes a day. "It was absolutely miserable, but I refused to roll over," he said. He was soon lifting weights --"probably really stupid...I kept thinking, 'Boy, I sure hope I don't hear a crack.' "

The surgeon recommended fusing his vertebrae, though he would lose 50 percent neck mobility for life. "I just wouldn't have it," he said.

He was warned another fall from his bike could mean instant death. "I left his office and got on my bike. ... I was going on with my life because that's the type of person I am."

Nearly the dead type. He was soon riding with a fast-paced club when he came upon an accident. "This bike sailed through the air and hit my leg, bloodied it, but I didn't go down. I'm stupid enough even that didn't stop me."

He took lots of calcium, drank lots of milk, kept working out. Eventually, he healed.

The Florida state championships would be an emotional experience, especially crossing the finish line victorious. "The tears were pouring down my face, after traveling this journey of almost laid up to state champion. It was a real fun ride ..."

At the National Senior Games in June, Scott said, he was running the race of his life when he came around a corner, inexplicably went down the wrong road, and "blew my nationals." More recently, he's back to collecting championship jerseys and beating younger riders in sprints. "I'm a lot faster since I broke my neck -- it amazes me."

In Tenafly, N.J., Karen Einsidler was battling breast cancer in 2004, and she wasn't winning. She underwent two surgeries, and still they hadn't gotten it. Einsidler, 51, had things to do. Be a wife. Mother to triplets. Full-time lawyer.

Oh, and attain U.S. Masters Swimming Long Distance All-American status. Between bouts with the surgeon's knife, she was winning events such as the 10K postal championship for her age group. "I was really fatigued," she recalled. "But it was my way, I guess, of taking control. I didn't want to give up on my goals."

But she didn't want control over choosing between more surgery and radiation or the more aggressive route of a double mastectomy. She had too much to lose. "With three kids and a great husband, I wanted someone to tell me what to do," she said. Finally, a friend who was a doctor told her that if she was his wife, he would tell her to get the mastectomy. "It was very hard," she said. "It's a hard thing to lose part of being a woman. It's emotionally very hard and physically really, really hard."

Afterward, she received implants behind her chest muscles. When she finally returned to the water, she had to work through stages, including using fins, because of the risk of tearing something -- but it was mentally soothing work. "It was my way of ignoring some of the emotional strain. I had triplets who were 7 years old. I was trying to pretend everything was fine."

Plus, the 2006 FINA World Masters Championships were on the horizon in Palo Alto, Calif. "I only do the worlds in the United States. The last time was in Indianapolis in 1992. I won all my events and set world records. I knew those kinds of expectations weren't realistic. What I really wanted to do was win one event."

She trained with pressure on her chest and "a lot of pain and tightness. ... To this day, it takes a while for me to loosen up. I never swim without knowing I have implants." She also never swam feeling alone. "They say swimming is an individual sport, but it never felt that way because of the coaches and teammates. They would let me draft behind them in workouts so you get pulled along."

A swimming magazine article about her comeback attempt brought her celebrity at the worlds at Stanford University. "That was just very emotional. ... It was overwhelming to have all these women just happy I was back swimming."

Her husband and children became ill there, though, high fevers sending them to the hospital. In other bad news, in the first four events she took four silver medals. She concedes most people could love silver.

But, "the last event was the 400 free, and if I didn't win that I would've been devastated." A single win, after all, was the goal. With her husband again pacing poolside and friends who stayed to cheer her, she did pull it out. "It was a nice feeling to get the gold after all those silvers," she said. "That's just my personality."

So did genetic makeup fuel the comeback from cancer? "I've been through enough difficult experiences in my life," she said, citing losing her brother, a pilot killed in a military training exercise. "That was more painful than this. "To have lost someone important to you at a young age, you appreciate every day. I could have felt sorry for myself with all this, but that's such a waste of time and energy."

The water had made her whole before. She turned to swimming after getting divorced when she was younger. "It gave me my self confidence back."

Her swims today are recreational. "I put myself through a lot in the comeback. Right now I'm swimming because I really love swimming."

The next goal is swimming Lake Tahoe with friends, but not until next year. She offers that anyone facing breast cancer who would like to talk may email her at Karen_Einsidler@glic.com. "In the beginning I kept it somewhat quiet. But I realized, the best thing I could do with my experience washelp someone else."

Einsidler and Scott knew how to help themselves -- mainly by being themselves, by not surrendering. Scott emerged from a broken neck chiseled and faster than ever. He says he feels like he's 20.

Einsidler, the world champ, laments that her times are not what they were pre-cancer, but says those who know her know she will be back. We'd bet gold on it.