Guilford native is World Cup leader

LaPointe stands atop international para-cycling point standings

By Ernie Clark
BDN Staff

Jay LaPointe’s earliest sporting interests tended toward individual pursuits, as evidenced by the BMX bike he rode around his native Guilford as a youngster.

Contributed photo

PARA-CYCLIST — Jay LaPointe, a 1991 graduate of Piscataquis Community High School now living in Las Vegas, is competing on the national and World Cup para-cycling scene in the T1 division (for the more disabled trike riders). Today he stands as the International Cycling Union’s World Cup T1 para-cycling points leader. LaPointe suffered a spinal cord injury in 2004, while training on his motocross bike, that left him diagnosed as a C5-C6 incomplete quadriplegic.

Now 43, the 1991 Piscataquis Community High School graduate has experienced some life-changing tragedy — a spinal cord injury he suffered on June 10, 2004, while training on his motocross bike left him diagnosed as a C 5-6 incomplete quadriplegic.

“Today the left side of my body works much better than my right,” he said this week from his home in Las Vegas, Nevada. “I was righthanded before and now I’m lefthanded.”

While that injury diminished his physical abilities LaPointe’s competitive side never wavered, and today he stands as the International Cycling Union’s World Cup T1 para-cycling points leader.

LaPointe rides what he calls a trike, a three-wheeled upright tricycle with a normal bicycle frame but two rear wheels so riders like himself with balance issues can pedal.

“It’s basically a regular bike on the front end with a bigger rear axle,” said LaPointe, who purchased his most recent custom-made trike and frame earlier this year for approximately $12,000.

“They’re not cheap,” he added.

LaPointe competes on the national and World Cup para-cycling scene in the T1 division for the more disabled trike riders.

He won both the time trial and road course races at the UCI World Cup stop in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, in May, then finished eighth during a second stop in Spain to retain the points lead in a 2016 schedule limited by next month’s Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

LaPointe didn’t fully pursue a Paralympic berth this year, in part because he’s still developing as a para-cyclist after fully committing to the sport 3½ years ago and because the T1 riders in many ways must compete with T2 (less disabled) riders for Paralympic qualification.

“They’re a lot faster,” he said. “The thing with trike riders in the Paralympics is they throw us all into the same arena. In the time trial they have what they call ‘factoring’ — we call it handicapping the handicapped — and a T1 rider has to finish in a certain percentage of the T2 men.

“For the road race it’s all head to head, and I’ve yet to see a T1 trike rider beat a T2. That’s a pipe dream if anybody thinks that’s going to happen because if you’re fast enough to beat a T2 then you’re a T2.”

LaPointe might have considered it a pipe dream that he would ever be competitive on any sort of bike after that day 12 years ago in Colorado — where he moved after high school — when he was practicing for a looming pro motocross career but landed on his neck after riding the bike over a jump.

“I had instant paralysis from the neck down,” said LaPointe, the son of retired Maine State Trooper Gerald LaPointe. “The neurosurgeon told me I had a 3 percent chance to ever walk or feed myself again.”

LaPointe said it was three months before he could move any of his limbs and a year before he could stand independently.

Gradual improvement continued for the next few years with less and less reliance on a wheelchair as his walking improved. With that improvement came more and more interest in returning to a biking regimen of some sort.

“Therapy is always ongoing, I pretty much have to do it to stay functional every day,” said LaPointe. “The more institutionalized, structured therapy lasted for about seven years but I just got fed up with punching the clock, so to say, and wanted something else to do.

“I really wanted to get out and stretch my legs and get the wind in my face again.”

The initial steps of LaPointe’s road back to racing began in his mind as much as it did in his arms and legs.

“When I first started the act of pedaling a recumbent bike or any type of bicycle or trike, I would actually pedal in my sleep at night,” he said. “It was almost neuro-muscular training because even though I was off the bike my body was now thinking it needed to keep doing it and I was starting to re-educate my nervous system on how to pedal the bike.

“There were six or eight months of that before I finally stopped doing it in the middle of the night.”

LaPointe’s work on a recumbent bike (which places the rider in a laid-back, reclining position for ergonomic purposes) soon led him to pursue other biking options.

“I read online at one point about a guy in California who is now a friend who had an upright trike,” he said. “Once I figured out how to get one, that started the whole competitive process again.”

That required Lapointe to literally re-learn how to ride a bike, or in this case a trike.

“They are the most cumbersome things to ride,” said LaPointe, who owns a titanium trike and a stainless steel trike, each weighing about 27 pounds. “They go great in a straight line but anything past that it’s like pedaling a big, fat school bus. You can’t lean it so you have to steer it, and they’re very tippy, like the three-wheelers of the ‘80s. So take everything you know about cycling, throw it out the window and start over.”

By 2013 LaPointe hired a coach and was committed to competing as a para-cyclist, first locally in Colorado.

“I was really surprised when I found out how fast those guys could go,” he said. “I know I’ve got some problems with me, but I watched a guy who could barely walk but you stick him on a bike and he’s just lightning.”

A year later, LaPointe was a first-time national champion in the T1 men’s time trial competition held in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s the first of four U.S. championships LaPointe has won over the last three seasons.

He won in both the time trial and road race divisions in 2015, then earned his third straight national T1 time-trial title earlier this year at Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

LaPointe’s most recent national title came after he moved from Colorado to Las Vegas, where he can now work out on his trike year-round.

“There’s a ton of training involved,” he said. “Cycling is very cumulative so the less time you take off from cycling and training and racing, the better off you’ll be. With any type of spinal cord injury or disability like that we tend to see muscle atrophy starting a little quicker. We’re already a little behind the eight-ball when it comes to muscles, so when we start to develop some strength it also tends to go away a little faster.

“Moving to Las Vegas I was able to train during the winter and it made such an impact on my racing that I think I’m going to keep doing it for at least another four years before retiring.”

LaPointe plans to compete in several more races stateside this fall, then continue with a mix of World Cup and national-level competition as he prepares to make a more serious bid for the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo, Japan.

“I’ll give it another shot for sure, that will be almost seven years of training so by then the legs will hopefully have enough strength to do it,” he said.

“I just have to be stronger. I need to pedal more and then it just takes time. You just pedal and pedal and pedal, and when you’re tired of pedaling you pedal some more.”