Margaret Douglass
Age: 47
Hometown: Salt Lake City, Utah
High School: Highland High School.
College: University of Utah, Class of 1981
Now: Massage therapist and instructor
Sport: Competitive Cycling
Status: Single
Enjoys: Working out at the gym, playing table tennis and pool, hiking and reading
It's a Fact: Douglass is a seven-time Gay Games medalist in competitive cycling. At the 1994 New York Gay Games, Douglass won gold medals in the road race and team time trial and a silver in the criterium. At the 2002 Sydney Gay Games, Douglass won gold medals in the road race, criterium, and team time trial as well as a silver in the individual time trial.
Margaret Douglass likes to boast that she learned to ride a bike at age 3—and she's pretty sure it was without training wheels.
Growing up in Salt Lake City, Douglass was lucky to have a father who was really into competitive cycling. Her only problem was that he only encouraged her brothers to take up the sport. They weren't interested, but Douglass definitely was.
'When I told [ my parents ] that I wanted to seriously race at about 12 and 13, they kept on discouraging me,' Douglass said, adding that in good Mormon families like hers, girls typically were only expected to get married and have kids. So Douglass started training whenever she could, behind the backs of her parents.
'When I started racing at 18, then [ my dad ] got really excited,' Douglass said. Unfortunately, Douglass' mother held sway in the family and ultimately put the kibosh on her racing aspirations because, in her words, 'I was a girl and she didn't want to see her daughter get hurt.'
'I would have liked to have tried for the Olympics and see how far I might have gone,' Douglass said. 'But when you don't have the support of your parents and no money, who do you turn to?'
Douglass may have missed out on Olympic dreams, but she has proven herself time and time again in other competitions like the Gay Games. 'Competing in the Gay Games has really meant a lot for me,' Douglass said. 'Both times it was really empowering as a gay athlete.'
Douglass takes the Gay Games seriously. Before her previous Gay Games outings in 1994 in New York and 2002 in Sydney, Douglass hired a personal coach to help keep her at peak physical condition. 'I have a harder time now that I'm older—to keep up with the level of competition from the younger girls,' Douglass said.
Douglass is very active with Salt Lake's Wasatch Women's Cycling Club and she cites her close proximity to such great hilly cycling trails in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons as an extra training edge. She also says Salt Lake's high altitude has given her a greater lung capacity.
Douglass' favorite competition is the criterium, which she also says is the best one for spectators to watch. 'It's an enclosed course at least a mile in circumference and it requires the most tactics after the road race,' Douglass said, likening the event to a chess match. 'Your strategy and plan of action are important, but you also have to figure out what your opponents are doing.'
Cyclists have to put a lot of faith in their bicycling equipment, since malfunctions and accidents can dash many hopes of winning. Douglass herself suffered a crash in 2003 that grazed part of her right ear off, while racing on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. She also was in an accident in Sydney the night before the team time trials when a motorist's car door unexpected swung open directly in her bike path.
'I was hurting so bad,' Douglass said.
'But I had to compete the next day because I didn't want to disappoint my two ( recruited Aussie ) teammates.'
She admitted that she was the weakest link in her team's performance, so she was all the more grateful to still win a gold medal in the competition.
Douglass is gearing up to defend her titles at the 2006 Chicago Gay Games, but she isn't losing sight of the basic fact that it's 'just a lot of fun to compete.'
