Quests Separate Soldier And Olympic Hopeful

CHULA VISTA, Calif. — She longed to compete in the Olympics. He always wanted to join the Army. She started BMX racing at age 5. He stocked his movie collection with war films.

On Jan. 2, Arielle Martin and her husband, Michael Verhaaren, left their Utah home on separate missions. She traveled here to train for the Beijing Olympics. He went to Afghanistan for a year deployment.

Now, they are separated by thousands of miles, but leading parallel patriotic lives: a wife who wants more than anything to represent her country, and a husband fighting to protect it.

“People love a hero story, right?” Martin said.

They met four years ago at a bonfire. She studied exercise science at Brigham Young. He was a graphics design major at Utah Valley State.

She told him she liked his belt buckle. It caught his attention that she noticed.

Eventually, they figured out that they went to the same high school in Cedar Hills, Utah. He dated one of her best friends, and his best friend lived three houses down on her street. Somehow, their paths crossed often, but they never met.

They went to Applebee’s on their first date, and three days later Martin broke her elbow. Unable to race for the next month, she spent all her time with Verhaaren.

Martin found out that Verhaaren lived in Russia for two years, serving a Mormon mission; that Russian military history always fascinated him; and that he repeatedly watched “Band of Brothers,” the HBO miniseries on the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.

Verhaaren discovered that Martin inherited a love for BMX racing from her father and a competitive nature from her mother; that she begged her parents for a GT-mini race bike; and that she turned professional at 15. The family even has a video of Martin at 16 months, ignoring a wagon full of dolls and toys, chasing her uncles around yelling, “Bike! Bike! Bike!”

“I don’t really remember not being on a bike,” she told him.

He wanted to join the Army, but hesitated because of the strides he and Martin were making in their relationship. She worried that all the time they spent together would hurt her Olympic chances when BMX racing made its Olympic debut in Beijing.

She broke up with him in February 2006, but changed her mind a few months later. They met again and, after deciding to get back together, Verhaaren dropped a bombshell. “Oh, by the way, I’m joining the Army,” he said.

He enlisted and reported to basic training. To their mutual delight, he landed in the 101st Airborne Division, working as a crew chief on a helicopter. They spent their engagement apart before reuniting, and they were married in December.

“Of course the war was a concern,” said Martin, who took her husband’s name, except for competition purposes. “But at that point, it was really too late to go back.”

During the first race of the 2007 season, eight days after they were married, she tangled with another rider and ripped apart her knee. Martin had sustained other injuries as a teenager — a lacerated liver, a bruised lung and a broken back that prompted doctors to suggest she never ride again.

But this was different. The Olympics were approaching. His military dreams were just beginning. Her Olympic dreams were potentially over.

After doctors told her the anterior cruciate ligament was severely damaged, no longer attached, she opted for surgery. But that decision came with major consequences. Dropped from sponsorships, dropped from the team financed by USA Cycling, Martin had to ponder two soul-searching options.

“Should I continue to pursue this?” was one. “Or should I just give it up?” was the other.

Once she decided to return, there was no looking back, no regrets. Eric Heiden, the speedskating star turned elite surgeon, cleared his schedule to perform the surgery. Six months later, Martin returned to where she felt most comfortable — on a bike.

On her second race back, at the Olympic test event in Beijing, she sent what she called a message to USA Cycling by tearing through the qualifiers.

“The motivating factor is there, and the confidence is there,” said Mike King, a former BMX world champion turned director for USA Cycling’s BMX division. “I couldn’t say that eight or nine months ago.”

Martin and Verhaaren spent a year together before they left on separate missions. Both marveled at the impeccable timing of their simultaneous departures. His deployment allowed her to train full-time in California without worrying about leaving constantly. Her training allowed him to concentrate on a year overseas.

“I knew they were a done deal from the beginning,” said Lori Martin, Arielle’s mother. “Both have a strong sense of who they are and where they’re going and why they’re doing what they’re doing. And they’ve both had that since they were young.”

They talk every day, sometimes more than once. She speaks of the new training facility here, of her Olympic chances. He tells about the training missions the 101st embarks on, sends pictures of his Army gear and the gun he operates on the Black Hawk helicopters. So far, Verhaaren has not seen combat.

“He’s such a little kid sometimes,” Martin said, laughing. “You know, boys and their toys and all that.”

Verhaaren gets three weeks’ leave, which they plan to use for a vacation in September, after the Olympics. He is scheduled to return home after the deployment in December or January. She cannot wait.

After a recent practice at the BMX track here — a near-exact replica of the track in Beijing — King sat on a couch in his office, marveling at Martin’s story. She has returned to BMX prominence and appears likely to earn an Olympic bid, in part because of an increased focus allowed by her husband’s deployment.

“They’re living separate lives, but both are committed to their country,” King said. “I can see in Arielle that she has a dream. Her dream is to represent her country and go to the Olympics.”

While her husband continues fighting for it.

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