Free bikes, races make it big cycling day

MURRAY — The gigantic smiles on the faces of kids as they rolled out of the parking lot with shiny new bicycles told the entire story.

With more than 1,000 youngsters from a variety of organizations across the valley strapping on a new helmet and peddling away on a new set of wheels, it would be hard to call the inaugural Bikes For Kids event anything but a success.

The organization, which will try to replicate the giveaway each year, had the charity work as its primary goal. But the day's events were hardly limited to handing out the new rides.

Dave Zabriskie, a Salt Lake native and one of the world's top cyclists, returned to the Wasatch Front just a week after placing second in the time trial at the world championships in Austria. He spoke at a VIP dinner Friday night and followed that up with a 50k bike ride along the west side of the valley for a select group of fund-raisers.

"This is great," Zabriskie said. "Bicycling has meant so much to me. It's my life, really. So when they got in touch with me and asked if I'd be interested in helping them with this I really wanted to do it."

The last couple of months have been hectic for the national time trial champion. In addition to a heavy competition schedule, which has taken him from France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere to California, South Carolina and now back to Utah, Zabriskie has had to deal with the doping allegations which have overshadowed his sport and implicated his close friend and training partner Floyd Landis. Just a day or two after racing in Austria, Zabriskie's father-in-law passed away and he attended the funeral in California this week before flying to Salt Lake City for the Bike For Kids event.

"I really wanted to be here," he said. "This is pretty cool. I hope these bikes help some of these kids the way they helped me."

While not wanting to get too deep into the events that have damaged the reputation of Landis and the sport, Zabriskie said questions about the steroids and doping problems are needed.

"We need to talk about it," he said. "That's the only way to make it go away, to talk about it and to expose it. That's the thing with cycling, while we definitely have a problem in the sport, we test for it and when we find something, we deal with and make it public. We don't tolerate it. None of the big sports will talk about it and make the test results public. That's why it's a problem for them but they just don't want to deal with it."