Cindy Devine became a world mountain biking champion by accident. But her love of the outdoors is no mistake.
In high school, Cindy preferred team sports, basketball and volleyball, in particular.
A similar group of girls at Garibaldi secondary in the 1970s played both sports.
"Basketball and volleyball pretty much had the same team members for me and these girls and our coach, Mr. Rodgman, were a family," Cindy said.
In high school, Cindy took part in track and field, cross country running, lacrosse, field hockey, rugby, basketball, volleyball and tennis.
In track, she did running events and hurdles. She liked running trails, but preferred team sports.
"I loved team sports, the connection with partners, the flow of the game, the load of responsibility on the group as a whole, the concept and joy of teamwork."
She had no interest in individual competitive sport, yet.
By 1984, Cindy had found cycling and was touring the Hawaiian Islands, Fuji, Cook Islands and New Zealand.
Living in New Zealand in summer 1986, someone showed her a mountain bike. She discovered off-road, single-track riding, in nature, with no cars.
"Riding beside Lake Wakatipu on an old wagon road was heaven for me and I was sold on cycling on dirt."
She returned to Canada in 1987. While back in BC, she visited Whistler, and started mountain biking. She rode most every day that summer, and went to races on weekends, to watch her friends.
Then they signed her up for some beginner races, which she won. Then she won more. She got bumped up to the sport division.
She won a BC championship in 1988, at age 28.
That same year, her second in competitive racing, she earned bronze in both the downhill and dual slalom events at Mammoth Lakes, Calf., which at that time was the most thriving mountain bike scene in the world.
The following year, she won gold in downhill and bronze in slalom at the unofficial world mountain bike championships.
The world championships became an official UCI sanctioned race in 1990. Cindy won the downhill event, becoming the first female world champion in mountain biking.
By 1992, she had captured one gold and two bronze in downhill at the worlds, as well as three Kamikaze Downhill titles, three Canadian downhill national titles and won the "Desert to Sea" 150 mile race, from Palm Springs to San Diego.
All that in three years.
She raced for eight years in all, while working enough as a physical therapist to keep her license.
Cindy retired from racing in 1994 as five-time undefeated Canadian national downhill champion. In 2003, she was inducted into the World Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
She continues to stay involved in mountain biking as an instructor during the summer months.
She still rides, on- and off-road, as well as wind and kite surfs, in Oregon or Texas, and enjoys a "true" Kootenay winter in Rossland, alpine skiing and slack hill touring off Red Resort, or skate skiing on the nordic trails.