from the Salt Lake Tribune
JUYONGGUAN PASS, China - Having been controversially denied the chance to ride in the Tour de France last month, cyclist Levi Leipheimer spent much of his time in Utah, instead.
Riding among the mountains of the Wasatch Front and living with a friend near Park City at 9,000 feet, he trained for the Beijing Olympics and allowed the refusal of cycling officials to permit his new team into the tour because of its past associations with doping to fuel his intense drive to make his summer mean something, and perhaps show the world what it was missing.
Powered by fresh legs and weeks of training in the thin mountain air, the man who found his start in cycling years ago while a student at Rowland Hall in Salt Lake City finished third in the Men’s Individual Time Trial on a grueling course near the Great Wall on Wednesday - giving him a cherished bronze medal to ease the pain of missing his sport’s premier event and finishing only 11th in the road race four days earlier.
“It’s one of the highlights of my career,” he said, comparing it to the joy of winning the final time-trial stage of the Tour de France last year. “The Tour de France, it is the pinnacle of our sport. And for me to win that stage and then stand on that podium the next day was incredible. It still doesn’t even feel like it really happened. And this is just as good. Standing up there today was incredible.”
Good thing he could manage it.
Leipheimer dropped to the ground after crossing the finish line of the torturously hilly 29.4-mile course, exhausted from the effort that brought him home in second place - but with five riders yet to go in their one-by-one race against the clock.
Two of them were out of contention - Salt Lake City’s David Zabriskie already had finished, and wound up12th - but Leipheimer sat back on the pavement, drenched in sweat, and waited to see whether the others would bump him off the podium.
“Honestly, I was delirious,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t be sitting down on the ground, but I just need to stop for a second and collect my thoughts, catch my breath and get some water down.”
It was clear that Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara, the last rider, was annihilating the field and going to win the gold. Sweden’s Gustav Larsson was already in, ahead of Leipheimer. The only question remaining was whether Spain’s Alberto Contador - the pro teammate who won the Tour in which Leipheimer finished third last year - or Australia’s Cadel Evans could eclipse Leipheimer’s time.
Neither did.
Contador came first, falling eight seconds short. Then, Evans crossed the line, behind by nearly 14 seconds, and Leipheimer, still sitting on the pavement, had his place on the podium, just hours after American Kristin Armstrong of Boise won gold in the women’s time trial.
“It was a big relief,” Leipheimer said.
Officially, Leipheimer finished in 1 hour, 3 minutes and 21.11 seconds - nearly 1:10 behind Cancellara. The Swiss star won in 1:02:11.43 after earning bronze in the road race, while Larsson finished in 1:02:44.79, somewhat surprisingly taking the silver.
Zabriskie seemed disappointed with his performance, after not finishing the road race. He’s one of the best time trialists in the world, too, but clearly strained against the hilly course and perhaps suffered from having to recover from a back injury suffered in a crash at the Giro d’Italia in May that interrupted his training and kept him out of the Tour de France, too.
“I don’t think I ever bogged down or anything on the climb,” he said. “It’s just like any time trial. You just give it your all. I threw up when I crossed the line. I was really exhausted. I can’t go any harder than that.”
Leipheimer thought just the opposite.
He said he felt stronger as the race progressed, and like Larsson, regretted not choosing a larger chainwheel to provide a bigger gear that would have enabled him to go even faster on the sweeping descents on the course.
Still, he was resilient enough to start reeling in competitors in the final miles, and drew upon the strength he forged on all those relentless training rides back in Utah, fueled by his frustration at missing the Tour.
“I kept telling myself there’s no way I’m going to be 10 or 15 seconds from a medal,” he said. “I’m not going to let that happen, and I think that came from watching the Tour in July.”
“Just to be an Olympian,” he added, “and then to win a medal, it’s indescribable.”
