Oklahoma Cyclist Gabby Platt Speeds Toward Shot At World Cup, Paralympic Racing

When Gabby Platt first showed up to participate in a U.S. Paralympics Cycling camp nearly 10 years ago in Chula Vista, California, she was so new to the sport she didn’t have a bike.

She laughs about that now.

“I didn’t really realize how much it took to be really good at this sport,” said the now 37-year-old Platt, a native and resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who had won a national championship with the Dallas Mavericks women’s wheelchair basketball team. “I didn’t even have my own bike. Hooked up with a company in the San Diego area and I rented a bike. It wasn’t a competition bike; it was like a recreational bike.”

It was only a temporary fix.

After a couple of days at the camp, which was held at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center, Platt borrowed a high-performance bike from U.S. team coaches.

And from there, Platt sped on a cycling journey that she hopes will include a trip to the Paralympic Games Paris 2024 later this year.

“That’s kind of always been the goal,” she said.

Platt, who was injured in a 2011 shooting, gave up wheelchair basketball in 2018 and has since focused on cycling, where she’s a member of the Challenged Athletes Foundation’s women’s handcycling team. Competing in the highly competitive WH3 class, Platt won a road race national title last summer in Augusta, Georgia, and posted a pair of top-10 finishes in the World Cup Final last May in Huntsville, Alabama.

She also finished third in the Tour of America’s Dairyland Para race, a world championships team selection event, last year in Wisconsin.

“It was a good experience,” Platt said. “Of course, you always want to be better, you always want to go faster. I think last year was a good year for me. It kind of put me in a good place.”

The push for Paris begins soon. The U.S. Paralympics Road Cycling Open, a qualifying event for the next two world cups, is coming up in April in Bryan, Texas. A good performance would send Platt to world cup competitions in Europe in May.

After that, Paralympic spots will be determined in a road time trial selection event in July in Loma Linda, California.

“Right now I feel 100 percent motivated,” Platt said. “I feel stronger than I’ve ever felt in this sport.”

Back in 2011, that wasn’t the case. Platt, who has a 19-year-old son, still remembers the day she was shot when a routine trip to a store with neighbors turned into a nightmare: April 19, 2011. Platt said she was shot in an isolated area and left there.

One of the bullets ripped into her spinal cord, leaving her with permanent damage.

“It was really hard on my son and my mother and my two sisters because after I was injured, I ended up moving back in with my mother,” she said. “It was really hard on them to kind of see what I was going through. And it was hard on me.”

Platt’s life changed again when she discovered the Center for Individuals with Physical Challenges, a recreational center in Tulsa that is devoted to rehabilitation, transition services and adaptive athletics.

“When I went to the Center, I thought I had it bad,” Platt said. “From my perspective, my life was over because I couldn’t use my legs. I went to the Center and I saw all of these people who, they’re still living their lives, and a lot of those people were in worse situations than I was in. Some of them couldn’t use their arms, just various conditions, and that motivated me to want to move forward.”

It was there that Platt, a former able-bodied basketball player in high school, joined a group of men to play wheelchair basketball. She eventually wound up playing with the Lady Mavericks women’s wheelchair team.

But in the middle of all that basketball, Platt discovered cycling. Among those she has cycled with and struck up friendships are three-time Paralympian Alicia Dana and Jenna Rollman, who finished one-two in last year’s time trial at the World Cup Final.

All three compete in the competitive WH3 class, which also includes Germany’s Annika Zeyen, a five-time Paralympian and 2020 gold medalist, and Italy’s Francesca Porcellato, an 11-time Paralympian who has won a fistful of medals in three sports.

“Our class is stacked,” Rollman said, “not only in quantity but quality. Our class is extremely hard.”

Platt is ready. She made her world cup debut last year in Huntsville. She won a national title. Her days now are spent on a trainer at home and on the roads in and around Tulsa.

“This time, I kind of did all that I could do,” said Platt, who fell short of a Paralympic roster spot in 2021. “I feel like I might have a shot at performing well at the selection race and the other races this year to put me in position to be at the Paralympics.”

Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic and Paralympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to USParaCycling.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.