FLCC> Max effort: local fourth at Leadville 100

[Milton Taam]

<URL:
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20070815/SPORTS/108150048/0/FRONTPAGE >

LEADVILLE — The best story to come out of last Saturday's Leadville 100
mountain-bike race wasn't that living fat-tire legend Dave Wiens won for the
fifth year in a row, or that Wiens did so after holding off embattled 2006
Tour de France winner Floyd Landis.

No, the best story was the one about a 24-year-old local ski patroller named
Max Taam, the fourth-place finisher whose remarkable accomplishment went
virtually unnoticed in the midst of the hoopla surrounding the duel between
Landis and Wiens.

See, before Saturday, Taam had never even competed in a mountain-bike race
longer than 25 miles. He didn't even start racing competitively until last
year, when he won his first overall crown in the local Aspen Cycling Club
summer series.

Which is to say that no one - especially Taam - expected him to stay on
Landis' back tire for nearly half of the grueling Race Across the Sky, let
alone finish fourth behind two other riders whose last names need no
introduction.

Wiens, 42, is a Mountain Bike Hall of Fame member and former World Cup
winner from Gunnison who has so dominated the Leadville 100, organizers
should consider renaming it after him. Landis is, well, Landis. While his
2006 Tour victory hangs in doubt as he and the rest of the cycling world
await the ruling in his doping arbitration case, what was never in question
was Landis' desire to win in Cloud City.

He trained religiously for the Leadville race, even renting a local house
for three weeks of riding at altitude. Finishing behind the 31-year-old
Landis was Vail's Mike Kloser, another MTB Hall of Fame member who entered
his first Leadville 100 specifically for the shot to pedal against the
former Tour winner.

All three riders expected to be out front, vying for a win in what was the
fastest Leadville 100 ever. Taam admittedly had much more modest
aspirations.

"Really, I had no idea what to expect, but I think I exceeded any possible
expectations I might have had," said Taam, a compact, easy-going former
college rower blessed with legs like an NFL fullback. "I didn't even know
until a month ago that I would be racing. The past month it was my focus,
just riding different sections of the course, but because I'd never done it
before, I didn't know what more I could do.

"Next year, I'm trying to do a little better in it."

Wiens - who crushed the old course record of 7 hours, 5 minutes and 45
seconds with his winning time of 6:58:47 - personally told Taam that he
expects the same.

The race winner congratulated the unassuming local by mentioning that one
day he, too, will know what it feels like to win the Leadville 100.

"That was pretty cool," said Taam, who fell off the pace of the lead three
in the race's second half to finish in 7:31:28. "I rode with all three of
those guys for the first 40 miles, and talked to all three afterward and
they were pretty impressed."

Before Saturday, Taam said his competitive racing aspirations centered
around his road bike.

He won the state's Category 3 criterium earlier this summer in Longmont, a
victory that followed up his Category 4 state title in the same criterium
the previous year. Since then, he has raced in Category 2 races on the Front
Range. His best result this summer was 23rd out of 90 starters at the
Bannock Steet Criterium on Aug. 5 In Denver.

His Leadville finish felt slightly more rewarding, Taam joked.

"Before this race, long-term wise I was focused more on road racing, but
after Leadville it sort of made me re-think that, racing against guys of
that level," he said. "I think I'm going to see where I can take [mountain
biking] as well."

The sky is the limit, it seems.

Nate Peterson's e-mail address is npeterson at aspentimes.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://icycle.org/pipermail/flcc_icycle.org/attachments/20070816/da56a018/attachment.html