From Jaw-Dropping to Heart-Stopping to Proof the Strong Prevail

The Dr. Neal Stansbury Story in a Nutshell

By Kevin Kolodziejski

If you read what follows with only passing interest, never feel the itch to drop what you’re doing and go out and ride, never pause to reflect on just how blessed you are to be alive . . . well then, my friend, I have failed to do my job.

But that won’t happen if you do yours earnestly. Which is to role play. To put yourself in Dr. Neal Stansbury’s place with the pretending beginning in medias res.

Imagine being in your early 40s, going to a local crit, placing in the money in both the 30-plus and 1/2/3 races, yet expressing exasperation afterward to your faithful lieutenant. In the race that came down to a two-man sprint, you see, you lost by half a wheel. But that outcome didn’t occur in either of the just-mentioned contests.

Oh no. It occurred in the 40-plus event. Your third race of the day.

Quite a successful Sunday, huh?

Why the Successful Sunday Is No Surprise

It’s really no surprise, though, because you’ve pulled off that Triple Crown a few times before. The real surprise here is the request made by the faithful lieutenant.

For you to somehow conceptualize being anything less than thrilled with two podiums and three paychecks after an afternoon of racing. To aid in that ask, let’s recall another Triple Crown in your collection, one so stunning it even makes Secretariat, god rest his equine soul, envious.

The Triple Crown That Makes Secretariat Jealous

Six years before this, despite being old enough to compete for the Pennsylvania State championships in the then-offered 35-plus category, you enter the 1/2/3 events and win all three: the crit, the TT, and the road race.

While knowing of that please-take-me-now-Lord trifecta still might not allow you to feel Stansbury’s aforementioned frustration, it certainly makes something else easier. For you to understand why he’s absolutely legendary in Pennsylvania cycling circles. And that simply recalling Stansbury’s finest victories would make for a great article.

I mean, this is the guy who once got forced into the grass just before the final sprint during a crit in a park, avoided hitting two spectators, rode around two unoccupied lawn chairs, got back on the course, and still won. So why in the world will we now say sayonara to such stories? Because Stansbury needed to say the gravest of goodbyes to his wife and daughters about six years ago.

The Beginning of What Could Have Been the End

About two years before that three-paycheck Sunday, you see, Stansbury began to experience at times what seemed to be ventricular fibrillation — the most common and deadly type of arrhythmia — while racing. It would cause his heart to beat as if he were contesting the hilltop finish on Mont Ventoux against, God rest his Italian soul, Marco Pantani. Two of these episodes were so severe Stansbury feared he’d soon be riding with “ll Pirata” at an even higher altitude.

A byproduct of these episodes led Stansbury to suffer a mini-stroke while walking through the Philadelphia International Airport. A five-day stay in the hospital followed.

Despite tests performed there and consultations afterward, Stansbury’s doctors were still in the dark. But something needed to be done, so on six separate occasions, they cauterized his heart. That’s right, they burned and destroyed parts of Stansbury’s heart in the hope it would make what’s left work right. No dice; his situation got worse. The guy who once turned down a pro cycling contract to attend med school was now struggling to get up a single flight of stairs. So Stansbury put away the bicycle, all thoughts of ever riding one again, and devoted virtually all his strength to surviving each workday.

But he used the little strength he had left each night to read what he could about his condition. Eventually it uncovered what the docs had failed to catch. That he had a very rare type of cardiomyopathy, one that would kill him.

Unless he got a heart transplant first.

The Heart of the Matter

Stansbury was added to a heart transplant list immediately. Meanwhile, and it truly was a mean while — three years at that — Stansbury’s heart deteriorated to the point it triggered multi-organ failure and forced his doctors to tell him what as a doctor himself he already knew. That without a donor heart he had two weeks left.

The Role Playing, Not Stansbury, Ends Here

You can stop the role playing now because Stansbury’s faithful lieutenant acknowledges the limits of your imagination. That there’s no way you can — or would even want to — imagine Stansbury’s next two weeks. So let’s just fast forward, say the procedure was a success, and revel in the fact that Stansbury returned to work only 10 weeks after his surgery.

Which was no surprise to anyone one who really knows him or trains with him, but was a bit of a head-scratcher for the doctors who had never raced against him. He returned, after all, 14 weeks ahead of their suggested schedule.

That fact attests to Stansbury’s bulldog nature, and so does this cryptic response: “Challenge accepted.” It’s what Stansbury said to a doctor who expressed serious doubt he’d ever regain the degree of fitness needed to race again. Since Stansbury’s words confused the doc, he clarified matters by saying, “I am about to prove you wrong.”

And did he ever.

Stansbury Resumes Racing 

He finished fifth in his first 55-plus race. After that, he learned that the Transplant Games of America offered a 20-km time trial, trained for it, and took home the gold in the 2022 event held in San Diego. Competitive fires fully stoked, Stansbury kept training and took a far longer flight in 2023. One to Perth, Australia for the World Transplant Games.

There, he finished second in the 10-km time trial by a single second to a former professional cyclist from Great Britain. After getting in a two-man breakaway in the 30-km road race, he took the gold medal. He was later told his breakaway companion was Italian — and had won the race four or five times before.

And with that triumph, it’s time for the faithful lieutenant to stop reporting and start editorializing.

What’s as Impressive as Any World Championship

What’s as impressive as his world championship is that Stansbury also races back home against 55-plus guys with his same-old success. Last year, for instance, he won the Pennsylvania State Criterium Championship in his age group. But victories like that are not only impressive because Stansbury’s performing them after a heart transplant. Oh no. He’s soon to be 63 and, as somebody who’s that age already, of this I can attest. The differences in the capabilities of a 55-year-old cyclist when compared to one who’s 63 are best measured in dog years. Unless, that is, your name’s not Fido but Dr. Neal Stansbury.

Yet what’s even more impressive is how his near-death ordeal has made him so grateful. ”I wake up every morning just thrilled I am still here and able to do what I do,” he says. “I look at life through a different lens now.”

And if we both did our jobs today, you now do too.

---

Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.