Evelyn Stevens was living the dream of just about every 20-something trying to scrape by in New York City, at least prior to the crippling collapse of the financial markets.
She graduated from Dartmouth, spent some time working at Lehman Brothers, and then went on to another Wall Street investment firm, where she admits to making "crazy" money. She had a rental house in the Hamptons, great friends and enjoyed the frenetic pace of city life.
Then one day, she gave it all up.
She gave up the spacious apartment, the high-profile career with the mind-numbing hours, the lucrative job, all for the often-meager existence of life as a professional cyclist.
It's certainly paid off in ways Stevens never could have imagined — in fewer than five years, she's won national championships, prestigious stage races and ridden her bike all over the world, a dream ride that continues in the London Olympics later this summer.
The biggest trade of Stevens' life ultimately worked out just fine.
"I left my job when I was 27," she said during a recent interview, "and I'd been working for four years, and you kind of come to a crossroads, where I could have stayed and had a nice salary and continue down that path, but when I'm 45, I won't have the chance to go after this dream.
"I kind of felt like I have the rest of my life to get back on the path," she added, "and make a nice, cushy salary, but I have the chance to do something I love to do every day."
Perhaps that's why she left such an impression in winning the Exergy Tour earlier this year, when she had a smile plastered on her face on every hill, even as rivals Amber Neben of the United States and Clara Hughes of Canada were grimacing in pain.
Or why she had such a positive attitude after the national time trials.
The defending champion, Stevens put together the kind of ride that any other year would have been enough to win the stars-and-stripes jersey for another year. But after more than 39 minutes of intense effort, she wound up losing to Neben by a single second.
"We were flipped last year. I was on the second-place end of it," Neben said. "I was so excited to win, but at the same time, I knew how Evelyn felt being in the position she was in."
Stevens, 29, was disappointed, sure, but she also shrugged off the defeat with a "why worry?" kind of attitude, the kind that seems to comes with the satisfaction of doing something you love.
After all, it still beats working in a Manhattan skyscraper 12 hours a day.
Stevens' introduction to bikes came in the fall of 2007, when her older sister, Angela, called her up and told her to bring clip-in pedals when she flew out to California for Thanksgiving.
Stevens started riding with her sister, falling in a heap 'til she got the hang of the pedals, and was smitten by a sport she barely understood. She returned to New York and bought a bike — just a simple aluminum rig, nothing like the carbon-fiber rockets she rides these days — and started to do laps in Central Park, eventually crossing the George Washington Bridge on long forays into New Jersey, where she couldn't believe the feeling of freedom that came on the open road.
It was cathartic, and energizing. It was fun, pure and simple.
It wasn't long until she started to ride in races, and win them, and people started to take notice. One of them was Jim Miller, the vice president of USA Cycling — a self-described obsessive results watcher — who kept seeing this name, Evelyn Stevens, topping all the finish sheets.
Miller's job is to know everything about every cyclist with the potential to help USA Cycling win races. He prides himself on it. And he had never heard of this woman.
"So I just sent her a pretty brief email, 'Hey, I'm Jim Miller, the national team coach. Who are you and what's your story?'" Miller recalled. "She was surprised that I called that fast."
If there's one thing about Stevens, though, it's that she likes going fast.
Two years after first throwing her leg over the top tube of a bike, Stevens finished 15th at the world championships in Switzerland. She was giving up her New York City life and embarking on a grueling, unpredictable career as a professional cyclist.
"It actually is pretty rare," Miller said. "I purposely told her that it wasn't uncommon, because I knew what type of athlete she was. I knew what motivated her. And for her to be really successful, she had to work really hard. I knew saying that would fire her up."
The fire has burned brightly ever since.
She won back-to-back national time trial championships. She landed rides with the best teams, HTC-Columbia and now, Team Specialized-lululemon. Earlier this month, she briefly wore the leader's jersey at the Giro Donne, the most prestigious stage race in women's cycling.
While the course at the London Olympics doesn't necessarily suit her strengths, she remains a viable threat to stand on the podium, something she couldn't even imagine four years ago.
"I remember watching the Beijing Olympics and thinking, 'Aw, man, it would be great if I could get there as a spectator,'" she said. "I don't think it ever crossed my mind until this time last year that I would actually have a chance to be an Olympian."
It was simply improbable, but then again, so is Stevens' story.
"I think if you're passionate about anything you do, you can be successful," she said. "I think I was fortunate to have a lot of experiences after I found the bike. I knew I wanted to be as good as I possibly can. Even when I was an amateur, I focused on it 100 percent."
"I know," Stevens said, "it's definitely different."
