As Good As Gold; 1 Woman, 9 Sports, 10 Countries, and a 2-Year Quest to Make the Summer Olympics

New York: ESPN Books [A Division of ESPN Publishing], 2010. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Aaron Goodman (Jacket photographs). xx, 297, [3] pages. Illustrations. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads To Nancy and Ed-- All y best to you! Kathryn Bertine. Foreword by Kathrine Switzer. Bibliography and Resources. Kathryn Bertine (born 11 May 1975) is a Saint Kitts and Nevis racing cyclist, author, activist, film-maker and former professional figure skater and professional triathlete. She turned professional in road cycling in 2012 and raced on World Tour teams until 2017. Bertine competed in eight UCI Road World Championships, won three Caribbean Championship titles and six Saint Kitts and Nevis National Championship titles. She is best known for her activism in petitioning the organizers of the Tour de France, the Amaury Sport Organisation to launch a women's Tour de France. Her first book was a 2003 memoir of her sporting childhood and professional figure skating career. By 2005, Bertine was a professional triathlete - however this was not financially sustainable. In 2006, she began working with ESPN on a project to take her to the Olympics. The idea was to see if she could make it to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. After attempting multiple sports including handball, open water swimming and modern pentathlon, she chose road cycling. In 2007, she took up Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship to improve her chances of selection for the Olympics, after not making the U. S. team. She did not make the selection for the Olympics, but continued to compete as a cyclist for Saint Kitts and Nevis, winning the national road race and time trial championships three times between 2009 and 2011. Imagine George Plimpton. Except with real athletic ability. And he's a woman. And she's taken on a challenge that makes Paper Lion look like a brisk game of Go Fish. Meet Kathryn Bertine, elite triathlete, former professional figure skater, and starving artist. Just as her personal and professional dreams begin to crumble in the summer of 2006, ESPN stakes her to a dream: Take two years to make the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. As Good As Gold is the heroic, hilarious account of Bertine's serial exertions in the realms of triathlon, modern pentathlon, team handball, track cycling, road cycling, rowing, open water swimming, racewalking, and, fasten your seatbelts, luge. On her journey, the obstacles range from jet lag to jellyfish, flat tires to floundering relationships, repeated rejection to road rash. But, as time is running out, Bertine doesn't sweat the small stuff, only the large, like scouring the globe for a tiny nation to adopt her, and pushing her body and mind as far as it will go. Maybe all the way to China. Between harrowing, often laugh-out-loud episodes of triumph and humiliation, Bertine takes short Water Breaks to contemplate the ins-and-outs of fan mail, failure, rehydration, nasal reconstruction, and how best to punish steroid users. Kathryn Bertine swims, runs, and rides, and writes, like a champion. In As Good as Gold, Bertine proves she has something more valuable than an Olympic medal. She's got Olympic mettle. When it comes to the human heart, she takes the gold.