FABB Blog

With dark-framed glasses and unassuming presence, Dombrowski looks more like a computer analyst than a world-class athlete. It wasn’t long ago that he was simply riding his bike on weekends along Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park. As he kept getting faster, opportunities opened up, prompting him to leave his home near Warrenton, abandon his studies at George Mason University and uproot his life.

“It’s definitely unique when someone like that comes along because it doesn’t happen very often,” said George Hincapie, a veteran cyclist who has ridden the Tour de France 17 times.

Not long before he moved to France, Dombrowski sat in the living room of his parents’ home and explained his meteoric rise. A friend at Fauquier High School raced mountain bikes, and a teenage Dombrowski would ride trails with him for fun on weekends. When he finally entered a race, though, he was hooked. Suddenly, Dombrowski found himself on the bike every day.

“It was a dream to make it a career, but only in the sense like, you might play high school football and you’d like to play in the NFL,” he said. “You have to be realistic about it.”