Paralympic cycling champion dies in McKinney tollway crash

Dory Selinger, a Paralympic gold medalist and longtime North Texas cyclist, was killed when a vehicle struck him near Alma Drive and the Sam Rayburn Tollway service road in McKinney, a crash that shut down the southbound service road and put one of the city's busiest commuter corridors back under scrutiny. McKinney police said the cyclist died at the scene as investigators worked the case.

Selinger’s wife, Laura, said cycling was part of his daily routine and that she first knew something was wrong just after 6 a.m., when she received an alert from his tracking device. Friends and fellow cyclists remembered him as a mentor, and plans were being discussed for a memorial ride in his honor.

Selinger’s name carried weight well beyond North Texas. The International Paralympic Committee’s athlete profile shows he won gold in Atlanta in 1996 and added three medals at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games. He was also a three-time world champion and kept racing after a severe early-1990s crash that cost part of his right leg, making him a familiar symbol of perseverance in adaptive sports.

The fatal wreck also lands in the middle of a broader Texas bicycle-safety problem. TxDOT says Texas recorded 80 bicyclist deaths, 429 serious injuries and 2,761 bicycle-involved traffic crashes in 2024, with driver inattention, failure to yield and speeding among the leading contributing factors. Those numbers give added urgency to the questions now hanging over the Alma Drive crossing, including how drivers are using the road, how visible cyclists are at that hour and whether the design of the service road leaves enough margin for error.

At the time of the initial reports, police had not publicly detailed what role speed, lighting or any roadway changes may have played at the scene. McKinney police and TxDOT both provide access to crash reports, including public request options through the city’s records office and TxDOT’s crash-report system, documents that will be central as investigators reconstruct what happened on the stretch near Alma Drive.