Chris Horner is Good and Fast

Christopher Horner is a champion American road racer several times over but intimidating to write about.  Chances are, if you’re a pro cyclist out there in the world and you tried winning a race on U.S. soil in the last 10 years or so, Chris Horner has kicked your butt.   Big talk?  Check the record.  Won Redlands-four times!  Sea Otter, Tour de Georgia, on and on.  He’s won just about everything in America, big races with serious competition.  No question, he can keep up on a bike.  But you know why ‘The Smiler’ (yeah, he’s been called that – we’ll talk about it in a minute) is a bit intimidating to write about?  Because he writes too.  And he’s good.  He can probably out-write most of the folks that have written about him.

Now he’s already got a pretty intense day job that we want him to stay focused on, so let’s not play this up too much.  But check out some of his past articles. Google ‘Freewheeling with Chris Horner’ sometime.  Engaging, entertaining, informative.  Those pieces are really very good, darn it.  Now once you’ve read them, consider this.  He wrote many of those during major competitions.  Writing while he was dead tired after having just pedaled his bike farther than most of us care to drive our cars.  Let’s think about this.  You ride a 150 mile-long stage – 5 to 6 hours of competitive pedaling.  No rain delays in this sport, the weather can seriously suck, tiring you out even more.  Once off the bike, you wash off the road grunge then try to pack away the biggest dinner imaginable –calories expended during stage races are akin to a NASA Shuttle fuel-burn. Then off to a massage.  Sounds like a luxury right?  It’s not.  Those leg muscles have likely generated enough lactic acid to eat through titanium.  This is more necessity than job perk.  Then, you figure out how to get a good night’s sleep, after you call home, brush your teeth, and Tweet your buds. Where the heck does he have time to write? He’s got to be fast.  But he’s also good.

On TV, road races can look so pleasant and serene.  The fan sees a very orderly peloton weaving through idyllic scenery, beautiful towns, country settings – you can almost hear the birds singing and smell the lavender fields.  It only seems to get a little hectic during some of those bunch sprints.  The cyclists, however, have a slightly different reality.  Crammed together on narrow roads with about 180 other riders going 50 to 60 kilometers an hour they have to contend with unforgiving curbs, fences, ditches, train tracks, pot holes, speed bumps, round-abouts, poorly discarded water bottles, unthinking fans and each other.  Obscured by the riders in front, one often has little or no time to avoid road hazards.  When the guy on your right is crowding you bad cause he’s got no where to go, your wheel is getting too familiar with the curb on your left, you’re pretty sure you can smell rubber burning from the bike wheels in front and behind you, it can be a bit stressful. This is a dangerous sport.  No seat belts, no roll bars, no air bags.  You can’t do this very long without breaking something.  Collar bones seem to be prime candidates for snapping, followed pretty closely by wrists, arms, hands, legs, knees, elbows – might as well just go ahead and name all the body parts.  Why do I bring all this up?  Simply to point out, that though Chris has had several bad spills and broken a few things throughout the years, it’s not because he’s uncoordinated or particularly unlucky.  It just ‘is-what-it-is’ in this sport.  You’re out there just about naked with a helmet on!  You’re gonna get hurt.  The list of most riders’ career injuries makes Evel Knievel seem like a pansy.

Now, I’ve never fractured my pelvis.  I think I can safely say that most of us work pretty hard to avoid that.  Some people don’t walk well afterwards.  That’s bad enough, but what if you also broke your hand at the same time, this after breaking 3 other bones in separate crashes requiring serious recovery in the same season? Here’s what I’d do after I got a good doctor to make sure I could walk again.  Find a Barcalounger, a wide screen TV, several cold beers (position them near the hand that works well), and unplug the phone.  This is an undeniable cause for a pity party.   One thing I probably wouldn’t do – not in September?   Decide then and there to compete in a major race just a few weeks away in mid October.  But that’s what the Yahoo Kid (we’ll talk about that in a minute) did.  After just one day on the couch he decides he’s going to finish the season where he should be, on his bike.  Chris Horner rode in the Giro dell’Emillia in early October, the G.P. Beghelli the very next day and then finished the season on a bike in the Giro di Lombardia on October 17th just like he told his team director he would. And he wasn’t just spinning for exercise mind you, with some cream puff competition.  He came in 12th place, beating the likes of Basso, Cunego, Ballan, Kirchen, Larrson, Gesink, Boom.  A star-studded field. At recovering from injuries – it’s good this guy is fast.

Now the Redneck (we’ll talk about that in a minute) born in 1971 turned pro in 1995.  He’s a veteran with a lot of experience who just happens to be riding with the power and enthusiasm of a young kid.  He’s excellent at all the cycling disciplines and shown that he is equally comfortable being ‘the guy’ or supporting ‘the guy’ on just about any given stage.  Such a bummer that he wasn’t in the Tour this past year. But looking ahead, he’s going to be a stable, solid, influential rider on this new Team RadioShack.  TRS is to be congratulated for signing him.  Not because a healthy Chris Horner is a great pick.  That’s a no brainer.  He’s gonna be fast, he’s gonna be good.  But TRS signed him before they could have known he was going to have this amazing recovery. That takes a little moxie and a lot of faith.

Okay, all these crazy nicknames?  The Smiler is certainly the easiest to understand.  Chris always seems to have a cheerful smile for everyone.  The Yahoo Kid?  That supposedly came about because he was always celebrating victories on the bike.  And Redneck?  You’re going to have to ask Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer about that one.  But one thing’s for sure, you have to have had an impact on the bike and also been pretty well liked in the peloton to have accumulated so many handles over time.  He helps this new team be a team.

So let’s recap.  Fast at writing?  He puts a lot of folks to shame when he puts fingers to keyboard – he’s really good.  Fast at healing?  I wish I could recover from a common cold as fast as he recovers from major, career-threatening injuries!  Extremely good.  Fast on a Bike? You could only dream of having experienced such success and still be so hungry for more.  On this last one, I gotta say better than good.  Way better than good.   Time for a new nickname I think.  How bout simply; ‘Good and Fast?’

By George Hurst, staff writer