One of the things that got me interested in riding and racing bikes was the Coors Classic, back in the 80's. I saw a couple stages of that - one was the finish of a road race into Sacramento in 1986 (Greg LeMond had just won his first Tour), with a couple laps around the historic "Old Sacramento" part of town (cobblestones!!). I got within about 20 feet to Greg - awesome! He escaped the crowd (aka, me) by jumping a curb and riding away on the sidewalk.... The other stage was in San Francisco, around the Presidio (old army base, I believe). For that one, I was about two fans short of getting an autograph from Davis Phinney. He excused himself just before I got to him, saying that Connie was probably looking for him... I made up for it later, however, when I got Jeff Pierce's autograph at the bike expo. He had won that day's stage. What a cutie! Whew!

I was only 16 years old for the Coors' Sacramento stage, but it got the love and excitement of cycling into my blood and helped me to make that first step into the bike shop. Let's hope the Tour of Georgia can do the same for the next generation of bikees! Lance has already done so much for the sport already. There's much more awareness now.