IMO – Lance and Dave at Leadville

I will wager that no one has lost any sleep waiting to find out what my thoughts are on the “Lance Crashes Dave’s Leadville Party” saga.

That said, here’s what I think: That’s bike racing.

Not a lot of bike racers would win the Miss Congeniality Award. They are a fiercely competitive bunch.

My hunch about why Lance rode Leadville last year is that he knew Chris Carmichael, his long-time coach, was training like mad to finish Leadville in under 9 hours. Chris just missed the nine hour mark in 2007 and Ken Chlouber, the race director, had been giving him hell about it for a whole year.

Over dinner one night about 4 weeks before the race, my guess is Lance and Chris started talking trash, and next thing you know, Lance says, "shoot, I can not only break 9 hours at that race, I can win it without even training."

Game on.

Lance didn’t win in 2008. That bugged him and he came back in 2009 to wrap up loose ends.

Many people think it stinks that Lance raced Leadville, when the race has historically been a race for amateurs. I have to agree with The Bike Gal.

You can have all the idealistic thoughts you want, but the whole point of the event is to bring money into Leadville’s economy.

“The total purpose of the race was community,” Chlouber said, “bringing people here to spend money. My passion has never been that the world needs more exercise. It’s that Leadville needs more money. You’ve got your choice if you wanna stay fit, but we want you to come here and spend money.”

Paersonlly, I find Dave to be a more compelling role model and just generally a good guy. But the Powerline wasn’t lined with spectators 6 deep when Dave was racing against Ted McBlane and Jake Rubelt. [Who??]

Lance brings people.

More people means more money for the town of Leadville.

That's the bottom line.