(Before I start I went back and read the many posts that would disagree with
me on this, no flaming necessary)
Last Friday I had the an opportunity to ride with Greg LeMond, 3 time Tour
de France Champion at the kickoff event for the 2004 Trek 100 which raises
money for children's cancer research. In a nutshell, what a treat; not so
much as having the guy 3 feet to my left talking to me being Greg, not
watching his technique (I need all the help I can get), but seeing what a
regular guy he is. In these days of athletes being me-me and really
self-absorbed (including that guy that's going for his 6th TDF victory this
year), Greg was as interested in listening to someone talk about their bike
or their best ride as he was about telling of how we won de Tour in by 8
seconds. Matter of fact, he didn't bring anything up about himself. He
kidded us that we could all drop him and take it easy on him. I asked him
if he would be kind enough to sign a poster I had laminated of him when be
was SI's Sportsman of the Year in '89 and he said no problem at all. I
brought it to the dinner that evening and he got a real charge out of it;
"That's when I was skinny, had poofy hair, and went fast." They broke out a
huge box of posters of him winning the Worlds in '89 and he was signing them
for everyone writing things like, "You could have beat me that day." My
camera was on low battery so it took a few seconds to cycle up and he was
very patient with it, just had a great time. My buddy, who is just getting
started with cycling but very enthusiastic, asked Greg about training and he
spent 10 minutes with him going over what works and how to do it
properly.The best thing of the entire weekend is the riders raised over
$500,000 for research but for the 82 of us in the Century Club it was extra
special. It was very cool to not only meet someone I look up to for his
biking ability but that he didn't feel any better than I am. If other
professional athletes were like him we could actually have them as role
models.