Alison Dunlap








Alison Dunlap’s sport was soccer when she came to Colorado College. Successful as a high school athlete, she had planned to play CC Division I women’s soccer, study biology, and play the flute.

But then she was cut from the team, and the freshman suddenly found herself without a sport or a group of close friends.

“I was kind of at loose ends, looking for something to do, looking for a social group to hang out and fit in with,” Dunlap said. Then she saw a flyer for the CC Cycling Club.

Since she had received a road bike as a high school graduation gift she figured she would try the sport of cycling. She attended her first cycling club meeting and signed up.

Fourteen years later, Dunlap can count among her accomplishments winning the mountain bike world championships in September 2001, finishing seventh in the women’s mountain bike race in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and being a member of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics road biking team. Dunlap switched from road racing to mountain biking soon after the Atlanta games.

Not bad for a woman who got lapped in every race her first year of competitive cycling.

“I was the only woman on the CC cycling team my first year. I can remember feeling a little intimidated showing up at collegiate races with all these [University of Colorado] women at the starting line,” Dunlap said. “But even though I was getting dropped and lapped all the time in those first races, I don’t remember getting frustrated or feeling negative. I thought it was a great challenge.

“I knew I would get better. There was never a doubt in my mind that I would succeed at this,” Dunlap said, without any boastfulness at all.

Dunlap doesn’t believe she has superwoman genes or particularly extraordinary talent. She said she simply knew from experience that if she worked really hard, she would succeed.

She’s currently having “the best season of my career, so far.” In 2002, she won the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Tissot Mountain Bike World Cup Championship, the national mountain bike cross-country championship, and finished within the top five in all 2002 UCI World Cup races. She attributes her recent success to her years of experience and knowledge gained about racing and, of course, lots of hard work.
Dunlap was an academic success as well as an athletic one, and loved the time she spent at CC. She played the flute all four years she attended CC, participating in the chamber orchestra and community concerts. The valedictorian of Smoky Hill High School’s class of 1987 (Aurora, Colo.) spent a lot of time in the CC biology lab — she received the Mary Alice Hamilton award for the outstanding senior biology major — and planned to get her Ph.D. and teach college. The University of Utah even offered her a prestigious fellowship to study desert ecology. But cycling just kept getting bigger, and grad school had to wait. Dunlap graduated with honors in biology from CC in 1991.

“I absolutely loved CC, the Block Plan, and my studies!” Dunlap said. “I’d go back right now, if I could.”

Dunlap doesn’t believe she has superwoman genes or particularly extraordinary talent. She said she simply knew from experience that if she worked really hard, she would succeed.

When she’s not on the bike, Dunlap still likes to play the flute. She also enjoys reading Colorado history, Westerns, and adventure writing, as well as cooking and hiking in the mountains with her husband, Greg Frozley, also a mountain bike racer.