Teen uses mountain biking to cope with father’s cancer

Teen uses mountain biking to cope with father’s cancer

(Lori Leger)


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PARK CITY — Sports have often inspired and motivated people, and for one Utah teen, mountain biking helped her cope with her father's cancer diagnosis.

Sienna Leger Redel grew up riding bicycles with her family in Park City. Her father, Karl Redel, professionally raced mountain bikes from 1990 to 1994, and she decided to follow in his footsteps and began competitively racing in 2010. Sienna is now in her second year racing on the Park City Mountain Bike High School team in the Utah High School Cycling League.

“Sienna has always been drawn to the bike,” Karl said of his daughter. “She was an immediate rider at 4 years old. She’s always been a natural on a bike. She has a natural flow that a lot of riders don’t possess.”

Karl said Sienna has done well competing, taking third place at the MTB Nationals in Pennsylvania earlier in 2014 and second place at the Subaru Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, California. However, Sienna didn’t have an easy road to success: Karl was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in October 2013.

Karl had surgery, three months of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation, followed by another three weeks of chemotherapy. Through the challenge of seeing her father sick and fighting for his life, Sienna said she used mountain biking as a way to cope.

“Racing really helped me because I was able to not think about my dad’s cancer and focus on what’s in front of me,” she said. “I was able to achieve a great goal that I’ve had of going to Nationals and competing against some of these girls that are extremely fast. I’m able to achieve all these goals without thinking of the dark side of what’s happening in my life.”

Because Karl couldn’t work and the cancer treatment created large medical expenses, the family wasn’t able to afford new bike parts for Sienna. As a result, Sienna said her father would take parts off of his racing bike and add them to her bike to help her continue racing.

“I would scavenge and do everything I could to keep her bike as race worthy as possible,” Karl said. “I needed those breaks too. I needed to see (my kids) succeed.”

As a result of her experience, Sienna wrote an essay and sent it to the Utah High School Cycling League directors as a way to encourage others to use mountain biking to help them through the stresses of life.

“Even before this, I was trying to encourage people to get on the mountain bike team and now since this has happened, I’m going to try even more. I want to try to encourage all these other girls and guys to join the mountain bike team to find something new and achieve greater things.”

Sienna has a goal to qualify for the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in 2016, and she hopes to someday race professionally.

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