Senior Cyclist
My profile of David Stanton originally appeared in Columbia University’s alumni magazine here
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Champion bicyclist David Stanton has a not-so-secret alter ego—Captain America. Most mornings find him in a skin-tight stars-and-stripes jersey as he powers through training rides as long as 60 miles past egrets and herons on a paved trail that snakes along the bay near his Newport Beach, California, home.
The razor-lean Stanton, a gastroenterologist, got the iconic top last September when he won a Gold Medal at the USA Cycling Master Track National Championship in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania. He took the 65-69 age group division honors at age 65[ and defeated a former US Olympic cyclist finishing a two-kilometer velodrome race in two minutes and 36 seconds.
Donning the jersey, which all winners receive, gave him the “the thrill of a lifetime,” and he says “I’m like Captain America, and I wear it quite a bit.” He originally saw the patriotic prize nine years ago at his first national competition. “I really loved it, coveted it, and wanted it so badly, and you never know if it's going to happen for you,” he says.
A lifelong athlete, Stanton played on Columbia’s varsity golf team. As an adult, he took up competitive skiing and came to cycling in 2009 when his wife invited him to attend her spin class. Realizing he had found a sport that would give him “a lot of athletic purpose later in life,” he took to it with gusto.
To celebrate his first anniversary on wheels, he entered the Everest Challenge, a two-day mountain stage race in the Eastern Sierras that involved 29,000 feet of climbing. Later, after suffering a broken collarbone at the start of a crowded race, he switched in 2013 to time-trial events. Racing on 24 mile courses, he then won six straight California championships in his age group.
Stanton rounds out his six-day-a-week exercise regimen by lifting weights with a trainer. The six-foot tall rider has also become a vegan and weighs 155 pounds. “I can’t say it’s helped, but it certainly hasn’t hurt,” he says. “And it’s pretty unarguable that a plant-based diet is better for the animals.”
He loves cycling’s rigors. “You learn determination. You learn patience. You learn resiliency, but at the end of the day bicycle racing is about tolerance of suffering,” he says.
He quotes legendary Belgian cyclist Eddie Merckx, who remarked ‘I'm no better than anybody else. I can just suffer more.’ For Stanton, the sport is “about pushing yourself to the so-called ‘pain cave’ and holding it for however long you need to hold it.”
He burrowed deep for six days and eight hours in 2015 when he competed on a four-man team in the ultracycling event Race Across America. During this nonstop ordeal from California to Maryland, one team member always rides while the others rest in a van. (His least favorite state? Kansas. “Flat, dusty, windy, ugly.” The most memorable? Colorado, because of extreme temperature changes. In Durango, the day started at freezing and hit 85.)
“Thankfully, my time not sleeping during medical training did prepare me a little bit, but it was like nothing else I’ve ever done or would ever want to do again,” he says. He got one or two hours of shuteye that week, and when the odyssey ended at one a.m. in Annapolis, Maryland, he couldn’t remember how to open a champagne bottle.
“Cycling has taught me I thrive in an environment where the process is king. I like playing to big events, big things, big goals. I can set lofty goals, sometimes meet them, and enjoy the process along the way,” he says.
Now training for this fall’s national championship, Stanton has a new challenge—keeping up with—and beating—younger competitors who are aging into the 65-69 category. “As you get to the back end of your age group, it's a whole ’nother challenge,” he admits. “But, honestly, after winning it once, it's now all gravy. It hasn't diminished my desire, but it certainly diminishes the stress.”
For more stories similar to this one, buy my book Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory.