We were trading pulls and I just couldn’t go anymore.” “I was fried,” Armstrong said from the victory podium at last Saturday’s Blast the Mass mountain bike race at Snowmass Village, where he was named Colorado’s 2009 cross country state champion. He set the previous course record on the 100-mile course in 2007 when he knocked off Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour de France champion who was subsequently stripped of his title after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.Įven Armstrong admits that the father of three and part-time trail builder wrested victory away from him at the 90-mile mark a year ago.
The two-time national cross country champion, who retired from mountain bike racing as a full-time pro in 2004, has never lost the LT100 since first earning a lottery spot in 2003. Wiens isn’t about to give up his title without a fight, however. This time around, the seven-time Tour de France champion is in even better shape, having recently completed his comeback bid with a third-place showing at the Tour.
When Lance gets on that bike, it’s to win. “I told his trainer, Chris Carmichael, that I thought Lance was just being good and letting the homeboy win. “Wiens beat him last year, and that doesn’t sit well with Lance, you know,” said race director Ken Chlouber of Leadville. He beat Armstrong by nearly two minutes and shattered his own course record by 13 minutes after a hard-fought battle in Armstrong’s first attempt at the dirt-road race last year. Battle of the best at Leadville 100 – The Denver PostĪrmstrong’s motivation? Well, it’s not as if Wiens - a Mountain Bike Hall of Famer himself - doesn’t have a hunch.