Mark Whitehead

Mark Whitehead

To person
Full name	Mark Scott Whitehead
Nickname	Meathead
Date of birth	February 14, 1961
date of death	July 6, 2011
nation	United States
discipline	Track cycling, road cycling
Driver type	Endurance, short term
Team (s)
1986-1987 1987-1988	Schwinn-Icy Hot Medici
Last updated: May 9, 2015

Mark Scott Whitehead (born February 14, 1961 in Bell , † July 6, 2011 in Frisco ) was an American cycling coach and cyclist who was mainly active on the track .

Mark Whitehead started cycling at the age of eleven, following the example of his father Pete, who had raced in Europe. In 1978 and 1979 he started at the UCI World Junior Championships . In the course of his further career he won a total of 20 national championship titles, the first in 1981 in Madison - a title he won again in 1983 with Danny Van Haute . At the UCI Track World Championships in 1983 in Zurich , he finished fifth in the points race . In 1984 he became the American team pursuit champion with Leonard Nitz , Kit Kyle and Danny Van Haute . He qualified for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles , where he started in the points race.

It later emerged that Whitehead belonged to a group of American cyclists who had prepared for the Olympics with blood doping a week before the start of the Olympics , although this was not prohibited at the time. The drivers are said to have been asked to do so by the then national coach Edward Borysewicz . Because it was too late to inject autologous blood before the games, other people's blood was used. The result was that Whitehead fell ill, had a high fever and was eliminated in the run-up to the Olympic race. In 1995, Whitehead stated in an interview that it was his own decision to try blood doping and that no one had made him do it.

After the Olympics, Mark Whitehead turned professional , retired from active cycling in 1989 and became a cycling coach. Among others, he looked after Sarah Hammer and Rahsaan Bahati . He died in a hotel while the national junior championships were being held in Frisco at the age of 50; an exact cause of death was not disclosed.

Whitehead was married to cyclist Rebecca Twigg for two years : at the time of his death he was married for the second time and had three children. Because of his quick temper, he was nicknamed Meathead ( idiot ), he himself created the battle cry "You can't beat the meat". He was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the Valley Preferred Cycling Center in Trexlertown , Pennsylvania .

Web links

• Mark Whitehead in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Mark Whitehead in the Sports-Reference database (archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Valerie J. Nelson: Mark Whitehead dies at 50; cyclist was part of US team that participated in blood doping during 1984 Summer Olympics. In: latimes.com. July 9, 2011, accessed May 9, 2015 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Olympian Mark Whitehead dead at 50. In: velonews.competitor.com. July 7, 2011, accessed May 9, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Seth Davidson: Seth Davidson Archives - Page 3 of 4. (No longer available online.) In: Cycling Illustrated. September 25, 2012, archived from the original on May 18, 2015 ; accessed on May 9, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.