When Alison Dunlap was cut from the Colorado College soccer team, she panicked about what to do next. 

In search of her next great passion, Dunlap, then a freshman, saw a poster for the school’s cycling club, and thinking “I like to ride a bike,” attended a club meeting and was hooked for the next four years, which culminated in a collegiate national championship title in 1991. 

A decade later, Dunlap was one of the best cyclists in the country with several national titles, a world cross-country mountain bike championship title (2001), two Mountain Bike World Cup wins, and two Olympic Games berths in the road race (1996) and cross-country mountain bike (2000). 

She is also a 2003 Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame inductee and member of the 2015 U.S Bicycling Hall of Fame class.

“Cycling fit my body and personality, I liked the challenge of it,” Dunlap, 56, said. “My success came very slowly. I got last in my first couple of races, but I just loved it. I was very motivated, determined, and I had a unique ability to suffer. In a race, maybe I wasn’t the strongest or fastest, but I could suffer more than anyone, and that’s the reason I did well over the years: because I worked really hard.”

Dunlap officially retired from professional racing in 2010, but she hasn’t strayed far from the cycling world. This fall, Dunlap served as a first-time volunteer coach for two local high school mountain bike teams, the Palmer MTB Team and the Manitou Monsters (Palmer, Coronado, and Manitou high school composite), which are both part of the unsanctioned prep mountain biking Colorado League. 

As a coach, Dunlap used her experience and expertise in the sport to help Palmer to an undefeated season in the Crystal League (consisting of one-fourth of the state’s high schools) and a first state championship title in division three over Regis Jesuit and Eagle Valley. 

Palmer’s team is a family affair, with Dunlap’s husband, Greg Frozley, who has an elite mountain biking background, also coaching the high schoolers. Their son, Emmett Frozley, a freshman at Palmer, is the team’s fastest competitor and helped his team at state with a 13th-place finish out of 150 in the varsity race. 

“He’s a total shredder on the bike,” Dunlap said. “I knew when Emmett started high school, I wanted to be more involved. He joined Manitou Monsters in seventh grade, but couldn’t race. By eighth grade, he was the fastest kid, so it made sense to get involved with the high school program.”

Frozley was all on board. 

“She lets me do my own thing but also gives me help,” Emmett Frozley said. “She tells me to ride hard, have fun, and do my best. She doesn’t care how I do, whether first place or last, she is always there and happy for me.”

Like his mother, cycling was a natural fit for the young cyclist. 

“I don’t know what it was about it, but I just saw my parents going fast and having fun, and that’s what I really enjoy about it,” Emmett said. “Feeling strong and going fast. Showing how tough you can be on the bike. Showing grit and determination in a race or just a hard ride, seeing how hard I can push myself, and that’s fun to do, just testing your limits of yourself.”

With years of riding and learning from his parents, Emmett is grateful to have them as coaches this year. With more structured training and the introduction of strength training, he is having even more fun doing the sport he loves. 

“It adds another element to riding and the whole training thing of grit and determination,” Emmett said. “How many intervals can I do? How strong can I be by the end of the season, and working on that training has made it more fun to work toward a goal instead of just riding for fun.”

As he’s learned more about training and racing from Dunlap, Frozley has realized even more how talented of a cyclist his mom is. 

“She is still so fast and it’s crazy what she can still do, and it’s fun to see that she’s continued her love for basically her whole life. It’s amazing to see that you can love a spot that much and continue to pursue it.” 

As a coach, Dunlap shares the little things when it comes to racing — like how to warm up or wear layers for cold weather — but also the big things, like the importance of hard work. 

“I had a mindset of ‘if I work harder than everyone else, I’m going to win, and if I don’t win, I just need to try harder or be more focused’,” Dunlap said. “It was never anyone else’s fault. I never blamed anyone but myself.

“That’s what I’m trying to instill in Emmett, is that you can be the most gifted, but if you don’t work hard and are not willing to suffer, you’re not going to win.” 

That mindset helped Dunlap win a World Cup title in her first year as a mountain biker and make the Olympic cross-country mountain bike team in 2000, a year after she and Frozley were married. 

A crash in the Olympics ended her dreams of medaling, but when the world championships were announced to take place in Vail, she was determined to get revenge in her home state. 

A year later in Vail, four days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Dunlap won the world championships for elite women’s mountain biking, which she called her crowning achievement. 

“A lot of luck goes into mountain biking,” Dunlap said. “(The Olympics) was fuel for the fire to come back the next year and win the world championships. The race was very emotional; my whole family came. It was pretty special.”

Dunlap still rides four or five times a week, often with her family, in their favorite local spots, such as Pulpit Rock and North Cheyenne Canyon. A couple of times a year, the family makes their way to Moab and Summit County (Colorado) to enjoy their trails and stunning scenery. 

Riding looks a lot different now, but she is thankful to share it with her son and inspire the next generation of mountain bikers. 

“For me, the biggest challenge I’m facing now is menopause,” Dunlap said. “I feel a little slower, heavier, getting used to the things that change. That’s been frustrating in a lot of ways, but I still get to ride. My son is more athletically gifted than I ever was. Right now, we are enjoying that he just loves to ride. We are very thankful.” 

Top five individual scorers for Palmer at CO MTB League 2025 State Championships 

Emmett Frozley (freshman): 13^th place, varsity boys 

Seth Carlson (senior): 47^th place, varsity boys 

Will Friesema (freshman): 1st place, freshman boys  

Aspen Roberson (freshman):  5^th  place, freshman girls  

Leila Hanson (sophomore):  25th, varsity girls 

Top five team scores (division three): out of 39 participants 

Palmer: 2,234

Regis Jesuit: 2,044

Eagle Valley: 2,043

Aspen/Basalt: 2,019 

Estes Park: 1,872