Champion bicycle racer Mike Zagorski never saw the car before it hit him. But he's got a piece of it — and he'd like to match it up with the rest of the car and the hit-and-run driver that goes with it.

Zagorski, winner of the first two races in this year's state championship bicycle race series, was on a training ride about 6:30 a.m. July 20 when the car clipped him from behind on Kalaniana'ole Highway in Kailua, leaving him with a broken arm.

Zagorski got only a fleeting glimpse of the car — he thinks it was a white Toyota — that sped away without stopping. However, he does have the car's driver-side mirror, which hit him and broke off.

"At first it was kind of depressing knowing that someone could hit me like that and just leave. Now, I'm angry," he said.

Zagorski, who regularly rides about 200 miles a week while training for races here and on the Mainland, is asking for the public's help in trying to find the driver of the vehicle.

"If anyone's got any information or remembers seeing anything, I'd like to know," said Zagorski, who works as an intern at a Honolulu architectural firm.

Kailua police said they have forwarded a report on the accident to the Honolulu headquarters, but investigators at the Traffic Investigation Office have not received it or started an investigation yet, a spokesman said Thursday. Getting the paperwork started on a noncritical hit-and-run accident can sometimes take up to 10 days, the spokesman said.

Bicycle advocates say that sooner or later, almost every dedicated bicycle rider in Hawai'i is going to have a similar accident or close call.

Federal statistics show at least 40 bicyclists have been killed and thousands more injured in traffic accidents in the state in the last 20 years. Nationally, more than 600 bicyclists die and about 540,000 suffer injuries severe enough to require an emergency room visit.

"It's almost inevitable when you ride with a lot of traffic. There are a lot of tourists who are looking everywhere else but the road. And there are more and more people with cell phones and other distractions," said Carl Brooks, a manager at the Bike Factory store in Honolulu and a leader of the Hawai'i State Cycling Association. "Cars still think they own the road. Drivers can often see a bicycle but it doesn't register with them. And even when they see you, they don't think a bicycle can be traveling almost as fast as a car," Brooks said.

And even though Hawai'i is an ideal place for cycling, state and city officials do little to encourage it, he said.

"We've got more and more people who want to ride, but there's very little being done to make O'ahu a safer place for bicyclists," said Brooks.

"All the talk these days is about mass transit, not something as sensible as bicycles. They keep telling us we're going to get some sort of magical bike path from Pearl Harbor to the Natatorium, but nothing ever happens on it," Brooks said.

All Zagorski, 26, remembers of the accident, which happened while he was on a sun-lit shoulder of the highway, is the sudden pain he felt when he was struck by the mirror and seeing the car rush off as he fell to the ground. He called 911 from his cell phone and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where the break in his arm was discovered.

He's not letting that keep him from trying to complete his dream of winning this year's racing championships. Within days of the accident, he was training again. He hopes to take the title when the series concludes with an 81-mile race on the Big Island on Aug. 7.

Eventually, he hopes that winning the title will lead to a professional racing contract on the Mainland. "He's the best all-around rider in the state, and has won the two previous races in the series," Brooks said. "And he's one of the most dedicated riders. So he's going to ride the final race with a cast on his arm. It's going to be very challenging, but he's determined to do it."