Tour de Beijing: Utahns Zabriskie, Leipheimer on Olympic team
The emotions of that development, however, didn't really hit him until he stopped for lunch one day about two weeks ago.
"I went into Chipotle for a burrito," he said, referring to one of the title sponsors to his Garmin-Chipotle squad, "when I realized how much I missed being with my team. It made me realize they'd be racing without me."
The injury, suffered when Zabriskie was caught behind several other crashing cyclists at the Giro d'Italia about seven weeks ago, has kept the three-time national time trial champion out of races since. What it hasn't done, though, is keep him from reaching one of his cycling goals.
Last week, Zabriskie — along with former Salt Lake resident and Rowland Hall-St. Mark's graduate Levi Leipheimer — was officially named to the U.S. Olympic cycling team.
"It's the first time I've ever opened a bottle of champagne for myself," Zabriskie said. "It's pretty cool. It's something I had as a goal for the last couple of years, so to be on the Olympic team, that's great."
Leipheimer, likewise, is not racing in the Tour de France this year. His new team, Astana, was excluded from the biggest race in the world because of past doping scandals — scandals that involved riders and directors no longer associated with the team.
And though both cyclists are still training hard, they will have relatively fresh legs compared to the Olympians who will have three weeks of hard riding in their recent past when the Olympics start. Those fresh legs, plus the exclusion from the Tour de France, may turn the Utah cyclists into favorites when the events are held.
To keep his competitive juices flowing, Leipheimer made a trip to Oregon last week for the Cascade Cycling Classic. The six-stage race showed the former Salt Lake resident — who was in the state training before leaving for Oregon — is in top form.
Leipheimer blazed a trail to a time-trial victory, taking the yellow jersey and never looking back. He ended the race atop the podium with Salt Lake pro Jeff Louder finishing second.
The Team Astana cyclist told the Bend (Ore.) Bulletin he is looking forward to the Olympics.
"Just training, that's all I can do right now," Leipheimer said. "Why I wanted to come to this race was to break up the training and get some racing in. It was a perfect race."
Recent comments
Its sad to know that Dave Z will be competing without the mustache...
DZ Fan | July 15, 2008 at 1:52 p.m.
I'm sorry to hear that Dave's 'stauche did not qualify...
Tom Selleck | July 15, 2008 at 9:43 a.m.
