Steve Larsen

Its always odd when a former Pro cyclist suddenly dies. You of course start to wonder wether it was from a life of doping or not. Many people point the fingers to 'the dope' when this happens, but of course we are all humans, and we don't know when our clock is going to run out. Most likely these guys clocks simply ran out.

I grew up watching mountain biking on OLN back in 99. It was pretty cool to race all Sunday afternoon as a U15, then drive home and watch the World Cups and Norba races on TV while eating the post race meal of pizza. These were good times that I remember fondly.

Steve Larsen was one of the guys who was at the top of the Mountain Bike world in 1999. He didn't dominate, but he was always there, and did take the odd victory.

It was in early 2000 that the US chose its Olympic mountain bike team to go to Sydney(I think). But to most peoples surprise Steve Larsen wasn't selected. He was easily one of the top 5 guys who probably should have been chosen for the team, but sometimes life sucks like that. There was a lot of protests and angry people that he wasn't selected, but in the end of the day, Steve still didnt go.

Well, Steve didn't like this so much. For the rest of the 2000 year, and a lot of 2001, Steve Larsen pretty much destroyed every other mountain biker in the US. It was almost embarrassing just how much he dominated the races for the rest of the year. He especially took it out on the selected athletes for the US National team.

The rest of the cycling world couldnt help but notice this and slightly poked fun at this happening. For years I kept a ripped-out full page picture of Steve crossing the line at the Norba holding his bike over his head after a dominant victory. It was one thing that gave me goosebumps every time I saw the picture, knowing the back story.

It was a shock to everyone when Steve died last week while on a light run.