Eddie Borysewicz

After retiring from coaching in 2016, Borysewicz spent half the year in Ramona, California, and the other half in Poland. He died on November 16, 2020, at a hospital in Drezdenko, Poland, after contracting COVID-19. He was 81.

He lived in Ramona, California. His house burned in the 2003 Cedar Fire that devastated San Diego County. Eddie received over 600 letters from friends and cyclists worldwide in response to his loss. Donations totaling $120,000 allowed him to rebuild his house.

Eddie Borysewicz resigned as coach of the American national team in 1987 partly because of disagreements with members of his squad. He started his own amateur team in 1988. Sponsorship by Sunkyong, a Korean electronics firm, ended after a year and Borysewicz sought a replacement in Montgomery Securities. Its chief executive, Thomas Weisel, agreed to a team of 15 that included Lance Armstrong. That team, after several sponsorship changes, became the US Postal Service and Discovery Channel teams for which Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times before those victories were vacated in 2012 after the USADA ruled that Armstrong doped during each of those victories.

Fraysse, who had brought Borysewicz's appointment as national coach, said: "We've been looking into this stuff for years and years and years. We weren't gonna fall behind the Russians or East Germans any more." The practice was not against Olympic rules although Games medical guidelines discouraged it. Ed Burke, without Borysewicz's knowledge or approval, set up a clinic in a Los Angeles motel room. Four of the seven athletes who had transfusions won medals. The US federation banned blood-doping in January 1985. Although Borysewicz denied involvement, both he and Burke were fined a month's pay. Fraysse was demoted from first to third vice-president.

Among the first riders Borysewicz developed was Greg LeMond. He called him "a diamond, a clear diamond". That year, 1977, Sue Novara came second in the world sprint championship on the track and Connie Carpenter came second in the world road championship.

He went to the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976 as assistant for the Polish team. He went from there to the state of New Jersey in the U.S., to see friends with whom he had raced for Poland. There he became associated with the North Jersey Bicycle Club, whose jersey he was wearing when he met Mike Fraysse, chairman of the American cycling federation's competition committee, in a cycle shop. The federation had gained money for coaching and support of athletes from President Jimmy Carter's inquiry into the domination in sport by what were perceived to be state-sponsored amateurs from communist countries. Fraysee spoke to Borysewicz about bringing his experience of Polish sports schools. They spoke in French because Borysewicz spoke no English. Next year the U.S. federation took on Borysewicz as its first full-time coach. His riders referred to him as "Eddie B" because they could not master his surname, pronounced Borisevich.

Edward Borysewicz (March 18, 1939 – November 16, 2020), sometimes known as "Eddie B", was a cycling coach who brought the United States to world prominence, even though at first he barely spoke English. The US team, under his direction, won nine medals at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984. It was the first time Americans had won medals since 1912. Audrey McElmury won the World Road Cycling Championships in 1969, followed by Beth Heiden, in 1980.

The US did not send a team to the Olympic Games in Moscow. The Russians and most other communist nations then stayed away from men's cycling at the Games in Los Angeles four years later. That lessened competition but the four gold, three silver, and one bronze medal were the first Americans had won since 1912.