Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Heading to world championships

The Denver Post has a profile of Twin Lakes mountain biker Cole Bangert, who is competing in the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Scotland. He's not exactly local, but in the scope of the world, Twin Lakes is just a stone's throw away.

And he rides here, so you may have seen him - probably his back - as he barreled down local trails.

I love this quote: "Apparently I broke my back at some point, too, although I don't know exactly when. As long as you break the right bones, they heal pretty fast."

There's some interesting stuff on why we don't support athletes at Cole's level - either with support or funding or prize money. Is it because it's bike riding? We sure throw our money behind other sports / athletes.

4 comments:

UltraRob said...

One of the things that some of us in the mountain bike world have discussed is that a sport has to use balls to be popular. Mountain bikers have to have them but you don't want to use them. There's money in golf, tennis, soccer, football, baseball, etc. but not in mountain biking.

There is increasing participation in long races like 100 milers and 24 hour races but there's little coverage. Floyd Landis was in Leadville a few weeks ago for the Leadville 100 but I never saw any local coverage. I got several pictures of Landis and Dave Wiens battling it out at Leadville.

Dena Rosenberry said...

Yeah, I was bummed Sports didn't cover Leadville. I thought they would, because they were talking about when Landis announced he'd ride.

It's an ongoing discussion in newsrooms - What do you cover outside mainstream sports?

Me, I like coverage of sports that everyday people actually do past their early 20s. I like watching pro football, but I know more people who bike and ski. So, who should get covered?

Dena Rosenberry said...

BTW, great to see your photos and reports from Leadville, Rob. You're a great resource for outdoors fans.

UltraRob said...

There is too much to cover everything. With Lance's Tour wins, cycling has got a little more press. With all the doping scandals it's gotten even more but not in a positive way. I would like to see and least big races and local races covered.