Pennsylvania Handcyclist Cody Wills Is Powered Up And Ready for Huntsville Season Opener

The hills of suburban Paris left handcyclist Cody Wills gasping for breath in his Paralympic debut last September.

The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, native had gotten so ill from a virus in Paris that he was moved out of the athletes village to the Team USA high-performance center. He had a fever. And chills. He lost sleep and had little appetite. Tests for COVID-19 and strep throat and other illnesses came back negative.

Despite missing some training runs, a determined Wills still raced.

“Once I got to the big climbs on the course where I needed to put out more power,” Wills said, “I just started coughing. My lungs were burning. That’s where I basically lost it.”

Hoping for podium finishes, Wills, who competes in men’s H2 class, wound up finishing fifth in the road race, which was run in rainy conditions, and sixth in the time trial, his strongest event.

Two days after he returned to his home in central Pennsylvania from Paris, he tested positive for COVID.

“All of September was just bad for me,” he said.

And that’s why the promise of a new season has Wills, 34, pumped for the U.S. Paralympics Cycling Time Trial on March 29 in Huntsville, Alabama. A good performance there will send Wills to a pair of world cup competitions in May in Europe.

“That’s a good place for me,” Wills said of Huntsville, where he won silver and bronze medals in the world cup final in 2023. “I like that course a lot. I’m excited to go back there.”

Since participating in a U.S. Paralympics Cycling talent ID camp in 2019, Wills has risen quickly in the H2 class. He competed in his first national championship race in 2019 and made his world cup debut in 2023. He’s on the national team for the second consecutive year.

Wills severely injured his spinal cord in a pro-am motocross race in 2011. Three years later, after meeting fellow Pennsylvanian Brandon Lyons, who was paralyzed following a diving accident and then became a handcyclist in the H3 class, Wills also turned to cycling.

Both made their Paralympic Games debuts in Paris.

“It’s awesome that me and Brandon both qualified for our first Games together,” Wills said. “It’s kind of crazy we grew up about 30 minutes away from each other and now we have traveled all over the world together representing Team USA.”

It all adds to a clear motivation for Wills.

“I just want to be winning,” he said. “Whether it’s the world cups, world championships, Paralympics. That’s what I’m working towards, to be winning everything.”

Wills has an intense training regimen that has him working out six days a week inside his home gym in Linglestown, Pennsylvania. He’s now working with a strength coach as well, all while emphasizing recovery as part of his routine.

“Over these past few months, something that’s making a big difference for me is additional recovery work that I’m adding in,” Wills said. “At this point, with my injury level, I don’t recover as fast as some of the other classes. So I’m basically spending more time doing recovery work off the bike than I am with my actual training. It’s making it so I go into almost every ride fully recovered and able to push myself.”

Those pushes are critical as Wills chases after the three fastest in the world in the H2 class: Florian Jouanny of France, Sergio Garrote Munoz of Spain and Luca Mazzone of Italy. The three cyclists, who have each won Paralympic medals in their careers, claimed all six H2 medals in Paris.

“Coming into the H2 class, like France, Italy and Spain, those three guys have just been at it so long,” Wills said. “You can’t just come in and catch them within a few years. Each year, I’m continuing to get better and finding new things.”

On race day, the chase will be on.

“There’s those three guys that usually get away from the start in the road race,” Wills said. “I just need to be able to hang with them for the whole race to have a chance at it.”

Wills is in his fourth year with coach Jim Lehman, an endurance coach with U.S. Paralympics Cycling.

“That’s going well,” Wills said. “We’re figuring out what works for me, what doesn’t, ways for me to peak at the right time and ways where we need to cut back a little bit, be a little more reserved so I don’t overdo it on the bigger events.”

Jared Siegmund, a strength and conditioning coach at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center, is also working with Wills.

“I’m hitting really good power numbers,” Wills said. “I feel like this season should be a good one for me.”

Not far off is Los Angeles 2028, a home Paralympic Games that Wills hopes to compete in, the memories from Paris remain vivid.

“It was really cool,” he said. “We got to go to the Opening Ceremonies, which was just an incredible experience. Once we entered the stadium, and just everybody sees us and they’re chanting, ‘USA.’ It was just so cool to be there.”

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.