Lu Sokhom, 68, pedals into the wind with a determination writ on his deeply lined face. His well-built body moves slowly, deliberately. He speaks with elaborate politeness, clasping his hands together and bowing as he asks his guests to sit down.
In his living room, a sculpture rests near a window, and two bicycles sit close together in a corner.
“I’m sure you can guess why I keep these two bicycles here,” he says. “I love these bicycles more than my life.”
Once upon a time, in the 1950s and 1960s, Lu Sokhom was Cambodia’s champion cyclist, a popular celebrity and two-time Asian Games gold medalist. Now, once again clad in a jersey and shorts, he is teaching a new generation of Cambodians to love bicycles as much as he does.
He has 12 students who train with him every day at his house in Russei Keo district. The former champion’s lessons are clearly not just about pedaling techniques—they are about passion and dedication.
Born in 1935 in Kompong Siem district, Kompong Cham province, Lu Sokhom lost his father at an early age. One day when he was 11 years old, the neighborhood children were teasing him and chasing him.
“They threw me in the river, even though I didn’t know how to swim. I began to struggle and gasp for air, and they just poked me back in the water with a stick,” he recalls. “They didn’t help me, but I survived. And I vowed to become the swimming champion of the province.”
In 1953, at the age of 18, Lu Sokhom was crowned the best swimmer—and runner—in Kompong Cham. “Everything people have done to mistreat me has always turned into something good in my life,” he says.
By the time he won that championship, Lu Sokhom had already discovered the sport that would become his claim to fame. Again, it was a combination of circumstance and dedication that showed him the way.
It was 1951, near the end of Cambodia’s colonial period, and Lu Sokhom, then 16, was casually riding his bicycle through Kompong Cham town. A pack of racing cyclists appeared in front of him, so Lu Sokhom decided to join them.
Pedaling as hard as he could, Lu Sokhom passed them all and won the race.
After that, he practiced cycling every day, with help from his coach Bun Nov. In 1953, he traveled to Phnom Penh and won the national cycling championship, winning about $1,200.
The awards and medals began to pile up at Lu Sokhom’s feet. In 1954, Lu Sokhom won the national championship again, this time in a newly independent Cambodia under the leadership of then-prince Norodom Sihanouk.
Lu Sokhom also began to find that winning wasn’t everything. Traveling abroad for the first time in 1955, he competed in Vietnam and, while he didn’t win, he earned about $6,000 for his participation.
Not only was cycling lucrative in those days, he says, it was glamorous; everyone wanted to meet him, and women flocked to his side. “I got married in 1960 to a girl from my district—she was so lovely,” he says. “We met in a theater. She showed me the value of Cambodian women.”
Remembering that time, he says, “I lived in happiness and honors.” In 1961 he won a gold medal at the Asian Games in Osaka, Japan—the only Cambodian athlete at the games to take top honors. On his return, Prince Sihanouk gave him bicycles and royal decorations—“an honor that has stayed with me forever,” Lu Sokhom says.
In 1961, he did it again, winning a gold at the Asian Games in Jakarta. Lu Sokhom says he was proud to bring honor and prestige to his homeland. “I was very glad to see the Cambodian flag in other countries,” he says. “It meant Cambodia’s sport sector was internationally well-known.”
In 1962, Lu Sokhom moved to Battambang province with his wife. Over the years, they had three daughters and a son. He lived there happily until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge came to power and sent him to do forced labor in Siem Reap province.
“I was forced to work very hard as a cook. I had to use corrugated metal to make pots to cook rice for thousands of Cambodians,” he says. One day, he heard that the Khmer Rouge cadres were planning to kill him. “I went into the kitchen at night and broke the pots,” he says.
“No one else knew how to make those pots. So the guerrillas couldn’t kill me; they ordered me to make more pots instead.”
In 1979, Lu Sokhom escaped the turmoil of Cambodia for the US, where he lived in peace with his family—his wife and four children all miraculously survived the genocidal regime.
“I didn’t want to leave Cambodia, but the situation forced me,” he says. “Still, I kept up my skills. I cycled all over the United States with my youngest daughter, who loves cycling just like me.”
After the UN-organized elections here in 1993, Lu Sokhom decided it was safe to return to the homeland he missed so much. Leaving his family in the US, he came back to Kompong Cham alone in 1994, moving to Phnom Penh in 1999.
His bicycles—and his memories of the glory they brought him—are still his most treasured possessions. “I’m 68, but I’m strong,” he says. “Some people have a lot of money, but their health is weak. I don’t need that.”
He rides often for pleasure, on city streets or through the countryside; people often cheer when he goes past, he says, exclaiming, “Wow, that bicycle is going faster than the cars and motos!”
These days, Lu Sokhom is not just a teacher but a sort of bicycling evangelist. The sport, he says, can make Cambodians healthier and make a name for the country abroad.
“Nothing is more wonderful than seeing the Cambodian flag in all the international sporting events,” he says.
His Kompong Cham Cycle Champions, the cycling organization he uses to introduce new racers to the sport, may produce yet another gold medalist someday. For now the association hosts its own monthly races to keep members in racing shape.
At the Aug 26 provincial championships for Kompong Cham province, members of the Kompong Cham Cycle Champions took first through sixth place, easily besting the 24 other racers to win the $100 first place prize for the 100 km road race from Kompong Som to Kompong Speu (National Route 4 is the only road in Cambodia with enough blacktop to host a bicycle race) with a winning time of 3 hours and 45 minutes.
Lu Sokhom took part in the race himself, leading the pack at times, he says, until his bicycle broke down near the finish.
In the end, it is a marriage of man and machine that drives Lu Sokhom. The bicycle is the ideal vehicle, with no smoke to pollute the environment, he says. “All we need is energy from the body to move the bicycle,” he says. “Then the sweat comes out of our pores, and we feel better.”
