He Refuses to Be Left Spinning His Wheels : Cycling: Suspended for failure to appear at a drug test, Placentia’s Jeff Evanshine will miss the Olympics. But he won’t go out without a fight.

PLACENTIA —  The news hit Jeff Evanshine like a lightning bolt. Somebody knocked on his hotel door the night before the U.S. Olympic cycling trials in Altoona, Pa., and told him he’d been suspended for three months for failing to appear at a drug test.

So many good things have happened to Evanshine in the five years the Placentia resident has been cycling. But 12 hours before one of the biggest races of his life, it all came crashing down around him.

A possible berth on the Olympic team was history. So too was a promising summer of racing in U.S. Cycling Federation-sanctioned events. But it was the stigma of the suspension that stung Evanshine most of all.

When you’re 18, the first American to win the Junior World Championship road race since Greg LeMond in 1979, any setback can seem like the end of the world. And when you feel you’ve been wronged by the powers that be, it’s even harder to stomach.

“It’s B.S.,” said Evanshine, who last week was granted a 30-day stay of his suspension and is still appealing the decision. “They put my picture on the (back of the) rule book and then hit me over the head with it.”

The story unfolds this way: On June 4, Evanshine rode in the New Jersey National Bank race in Freehold, N.J., and was randomly selected to be tested. He said he was never informed and returned to his hotel to shower, eat and rest after the race.

Days passed and Evanshine went to Altoona to compete in a 128-mile road race June 17. The night before the race, however, officials told him he would be suspended for failing to appear for the test and could not race.

“All I could have done was race anyway because I had my numbers,” Evanshine said. “It’s hard to know what to do.”

He was so shocked, he simply packed his bags and returned to his parents’ house in Placentia--feeling older, wiser and more cynical than in the days before Altoona.

The longer the wheels turn beneath him, the more Evanshine has come to realize that the chasm between winning and losing isn’t just about time and distance and defeating other riders. Sometimes, you have to beat a system that seems intent on defeating you.

He was 13 when friends introduced him to cycling. Mostly he followed along in leisurely tours around Orange County, discovering things others speeding past in cars might have missed. In time, he began to race, tentatively at first but learning all the while.

In 1989, Evanshine competed in the Junior National Championships in Colorado Springs for the first time, finishing fourth in the road race for riders in the 15-16-year-old age group.

“I went, ‘Wow,’ ” he said. “That was the first time I thought I was any good. I really never had won a lot of races or anything. Usually, I had gone with the flow of the race. I had some nice placings but nothing like that.”

That race earned him a spot on the U.S. Junior team and the opportunity to take advantage of the best coaching and training the country has to offer. A year later, Rene Wenzel was hired as coach for the U.S. Junior road racers, which Evanshine said was a significant turning point in his career.

By last summer, Wenzel had helped prime Evanshine for the greatest victory in U.S. Junior cycling since LeMond, a three-time winner of the Tour de France, won the Junior World Championship 12 years earlier. That’s not to say that anyone had an eye out for Evanshine when the world’s top 19-and-under cyclists gathered last July in Colorado Springs.

“I was a good rider, but it was difficult to tell how good I was,” Evanshine said.

After all, he had grown an astounding five inches since the beginning of the year, finally reaching 5 feet 8 inches that summer. Moreover, he still has the baby-faced look of someone much younger. Even today, Evanshine said he doesn’t shave.

The road race was contested over 123.5 kilometers (77 miles) along roads in a mountainous spot near Colorado Springs called the Garden of the Gods.

Right from the start there were numerous breakaways--small groups of riders trying to ditch the main pack over the course of the race. Evanshine remembers thinking it was imperative to stay close enough to the front to catch the right breakaway--the one that would not come back to the field.

With 27.4 kilometers (a little more than 16 miles) left, Evanshine was in what turned out to be the right breakaway. Slowly but surely he moved away from the others in the group, telling himself he needed to build a significant lead over the final 13.7 kilometers.

“If I had a minute I knew I couldn’t be caught,” he said.

Pictures in a scrapbook in his bedroom show Evanshine hitting the finish with arms raised and both fists clinched in exultation.

“It was huge,” he said. “There was tons of publicity. Tons of things happened for me. A lot of doors opened. I thought everything was going good until this incident happened.”

There was a drug test after the New Jersey race. Evanshine was selected to be tested. He did not appear for the test. He admits that much. However, he wants to make it clear that he’s not taking a performance-enhancing substance.

“I would hope nobody would think I purposely skipped the test,” he said. “I’ve been (tested) negative several times before this. I’ve been tested a lot and I’ve never had any problems.”

What bothers him is how unyielding the cycling federation has been in handing down the suspension. He’s not asking for forgiveness because he feels there’s nothing to forgive.

If he had known he was a random selection, he would have gladly taken the urine test after the New Jersey race. But he said no one told him until it was too late.

“Having (the suspension) overturned completely is my first goal,” he said. “Then I want to force a change in the legislation in the rule book. I’ll file a civil suit. If it (a suit) needs to happen, it’ll happen.

“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t want to handle it that way because it’s bad press. But they didn’t have any consideration for me, coming to me 12 hours before the trials race. It’s pretty malicious, I think.”

Evanshine feels this is a battle worth fighting, and he’s not about to quit until he’s vindicated.