PARIS — After a young Felicia Stancil’s mother died in a car accident, her father began looking for things they could do together.
Activities that would help them both heal, he thought. Activities that would bring them both joy.
When she was only 4, he took her on a short bike ride through their Lake County neighborhood, watching carefully as she pedaled her way around with the help of training wheels. As soon as they arrived home, however, Felicia had a demand.
“I wasn’t going in the house until he took off my training wheels,” she recalled to the Tribune. “I just stood there and wouldn’t let him go inside. So he went into the garage and took them off.”
Jamie Stancil, a BMX rider who raced regionally and on the pro circuit, didn’t think she was ready. He caved, however, because he wasn’t sure how to get her in the house otherwise.
“Then she got on the bike and took off down the street,” he said. “She was zipping up and down the road without any problems and I was like, ‘Holy cow.’ It was incredible.”
After a few trips up and down the block, Jamie Stancil asked his daughter a question that would change both their lives and put her on the path to becoming a two-time Olympian.
“Do you remember how I told you that I raced?” he asked. “Would you like to try it?”
Her answer was an emphatic yes.
“So I threw her in the back of the car, buckled her in and drove to the bike shop,” Jamie Stancil said. “And, when I got there, I bought her a used race bike.”
By the week’s end, he had her at the racetrack in Grayslake. Not too long after that, the Lake Villa native began competing.
“She had a little trouble with the turns because they were so big and she was so little,” Jamie Stancil said. “But she loved it and she had this incredible natural instinct.”
Those instincts have served Felicia Stancil, now 29, well over the years, helping her obtain a college scholarship, win multiple world championship medals and secure two Olympic qualifications.
After three uncharacteristic races Thursday, she failed to advance to the semifinals in the women’s BMX racing event and is no longer in medal contention. Jamie Stancil said his daughter had started to feel ill Wednesday evening and had not improved by the next day.
“I’m glad I’m here,” he said, as he waited for her outside a designated athletes’ area.
His presence was perhaps the day’s one silver lining for the family. Jamie Stancil could not attend her Olympic debut in Tokyo because spectators had been prohibited from attending due to the pandemic.
“People couldn’t be there just because of what the world was going through and we understood that,” she told the Tribune prior to the Olympics. “But I think that’s what makes it so special this time.”
Until Tokyo, Jamie Stancil had been at all his daughter’s big races, including her first national title at age 6 and her first world crown three years later. He was her first coach and has been her biggest cheerleader since the moment he removed those training wheels, offering advice when asked and a sympathetic shoulder when needed.
They traveled the globe together, as Stancil won 10 world amateur titles before deciding to become a professional racer while still at Grayslake North High School. When she raced for Indianapolis-based Marian University, he went to as many of her competitions as possible.
The results, however, never really seemed to matter to her father, Stancil said. It was as if being together, talking about racing and teaching her the value of hard work was enough for him, she said.
“BMX was my dad’s way of showing his love to me. It’s something we have bonded over my entire life,” Stancil said. “But he never rewarded the results. He always rewarded the process. I learned a lot about having a strong work ethic and just enjoying the moment from him.”
At her father’s insistence, she had tried other sports growing up — snowmobiling, volleyball, softball, track and field, and gymnastics — and they all fed her competitive nature in one way or another.
But nothing, literally nothing, came close to the joy she felt speeding and jumping around a BMX racetrack.
When she was 13, BMX racing became an Olympic sport and offered Stancil a new goal to work toward. After being injured during the 2016 cycle and barely missing the team, she secured her spot in the 2020 Olympics four years later.
She finished fourth in Tokyo, missing a medal by just a fraction of a second. The loss motivated her to stick around for another cycle, to achieve something that wasn’t possible when she first started riding.
She started her next Olympic push by winning the 2022 world championship, despite dislocating her hip earlier in the year.
“Finishing in fourth place definitely motivated me more than anything that has motivated me before,” she said. “I always worked hard, but during the last cycle I worked hard and kind of hoped for the best. This time, I’m working a lot harder to make it happen.”
To that end, she spent a few weeks this summer in Paris practicing on the Olympic track. By the time she left in early July, she had ridden it hundreds of times and believed the course’s big jumps played to her strengths.
On an overcast night in Paris, however, she couldn’t summon those strengths. Her father — wearing a Team USA T-shirt with “Stancil” and her bid number stenciled on the back — waited afterward near the athletes’ area as a thunderstorm rolled in.
Jamie and Felicia Stancil would finish the Paris Olympics the same way she learned to ride a bike:
Together.
