Cyclist Dotsie Bausch nearing stretch run for Olympic qualifying

Eighth in a series of occasional stories.

As soon as Dotsie Bausch opens the door to the main building at the Irvine Animal Care Center, Mandy and Brandy, a pair of excitable miniature pinschers, begin leaping excitedly against the vertical steel bars at the front of their cage.

“They are so wildly energetic,” Bausch says of the adorable — and soon-to-be adopted — brown and black siblings. “These two really need a lot of exercise to drain them so they can be calm when people come to look at them.”

So Bausch, wearing a bright red vest over a black track suit, clips nylon leashes to the dogs’ purple collars and takes them on a brisk walk around a large grassy field behind the kennel, a routine that benefits both woman and beast.

“It’s like an oasis,” Bausch says of the shelter. “You just get out of there with so much more peace. I literally think this is like my therapy.”

It’s also an increasingly important part of Bausch’s training regimen as the summer Olympic Games in London draw closer. A world-record-holding track cyclist with seven national titles in four events, Bausch has a good chance to make the team for the three-kilometer team pursuit.

But she’s the oldest of five candidates trying for four spots — including one alternate berth — so nothing is certain. At 38, she may be the most brittle of the five, with nagging pain from a bulging disk in her back putting 12 years of grueling preparation at risk.

“The excitement and intensity is rising,” she says. “We’re six months out, so we don’t have much more time.”

Sitting in the infield at the Home Depot Center velodrome in Carson after a mid-January practice, Cari Higgins, another contender for the U.S. team, is a bit more precise.

“One hundred and ninety-nine days,” she says. “Not that anyone’s keeping track.”

In addition to Bausch and Higgins, Lauren Tamayo, a former junior national road champion, and Olympic veterans Sarah Hammer and Jennie Reed are also in the mix for a berth on the London team with two major competitions left. On Monday the women are scheduled to leave for a training camp in Majorca, Spain, ahead of February’s World Cup event in London, where they will get their first look at the Olympic Velodrome. April brings the world championships in Australia, further increasing the tension.

“Having five girls going for four spots, there is a fire there,” says team coach Neal Henderson, who will help determine the Olympic roster in June. “Nobody has any guarantee at this point. And that’s healthy.”

But it’s also nerve-racking.

“Everyone’s different on when they’re going to start feeling the crunch,” Hammer says. “For me, what I learned from last time, was to just kind of take it step by step, race by race, and have the Olympics in the back of the mind. It can become such a big thing thinking about it just looming on the horizon.”

Bausch has learned to cope with the help of puppy love. Which is why she often drives straight from training to the shelter, where she cleans kennels, give baths and exercises abandoned dogs.

“You feel so much better when you come home after giving back,” she says. “It just feels like it’s such a better balance to not be self-focused. And sports is very self-focused,”

Once upon a time, so was Bausch.

After an unsatisfying college internship as an entertainment reporter for a Philadelphia TV station, Bausch became a runway model in New York, where she was sucked into a self-absorbed lifestyle rife with cocaine and parties that stretched till dawn. Next came a long, nearly fatal battle with eating disorders that saw her 5-foot-9 frame shrink from a healthy 139 pounds to an unsightly 90.

Her hair fell out in clumps. Her memory faded. And feeling too weak to do much else, she slept excessively.

“I was really sick,” she says now. “It was totally debilitating.”

But the same punishing, addictive personality traits that almost killed her also proved to be her salvation when, as part of her therapy, she climbed onto a bike and found she not only had uncommon talent but also an insatiable desire to train.

Within two years she had won a state championship, and two years after that she was recruited to the U.S. national team. It was a rapid rise — but not so fast that Bausch forgot what she was really chasing on her bike.

That’s why the wilted, decade-old flowers from her first podium finish in a major race are tacked to a wall in the garage of her Irvine home, just high enough to see from the seat of her high-tech, stationary workout bike. And it’s why, after getting past the decade she describes as “the selfish 20s,” she married former national champion cyclist Kirk Bausch and began looking for something more lasting and meaningful than just pedaling fast.

“As a gold medalist, I would have a little bit larger of a platform to be able to help people,” she says. “It’s huge in the back of my mind. The more I train, the better I’m going to do, the more people I can help.”

Bausch is already a busy motivational speaker as well as a counselor and mentor to more than 70 people dealing with the kind of eating disorders that once controlled her life. For eight years she was also a court-appointed volunteer advocate for abused and neglected children.

Over time, however, that work proved emotionally draining. So a year ago Bausch became an advocate for animals instead, helping care for a menagerie that includes 83 cats, 39 dogs and 27 rabbits at the Irvine shelter.

“Dotsie is a big part of our family here,” says Ron Edwards, animal care administrator for the city of Irvine. “Her enthusiasm and commitment is motivating.”

But her Olympic dreams, Edwards says, were until recently a secret.

“No one there knows what I do. For all they know, I’m a secretary,” says Bausch, who has worked more than 100 hours at the shelter. That earned her the coveted pink dot that’s pasted to the laminated white name tag clipped to her vest, a recognition that allows her to work with even the most challenging animals.

“When I got that pink dot I could have cried,” says Bausch, who has two Chihuahuas of her own, Yodi and Minnie. It “was more exciting than any medal I’ve ever won in cycling,”

That ranking of personal accomplishments could change if Bausch leaves London with a medal. Then again, maybe not, given the send-off she got after a recent shift at the animal shelter when Turk, a handsome 4-year-old German shepherd, bussed her on the forehead.

“I’m a lucky girl,” she said with a smile.

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Times staff photographer Wally Skalij contributed to this report.