ATHENS — Fresh from spending nearly a month in France racing in the Tour de France, cyclist Levi Leipheimer is used to not standing around, which makes his Olympic schedule a good fit. The Montana native and onetime Utah high school and University of Utah student will be among the first athletes to come and go from the Games.
His event, today's cycling road race, will award some of the first medals of these Olympic Games.
Leipheimer, 31, is one of five Americans entered in the 224.4-kilometer (about 147 miles) race that will twist through the streets in the center of Athens, passing near the Acropolis and many other ruins of antiquity. The race consists of 17 laps of a 13.2- kilometer circuit.
The Olympics is far from the pinnacle for world-class cyclists, who look at the Tour de France and other legendary stage races throughout Europe as their ultimate pursuits. But for Leipheimer, the Olympics was his first dream because skiing was his first sport. It was skiing that brought him to Utah when he was a high school senior. After showing promise as a junior ski racer in Montana, Levi's parents, Bob and Yvonne Leipheimer, sent him to Rowland Hall-St. Mark's, the private Salt Lake City school that stresses academics and skiing.
"His best event was downhill," remembers Olle Larssen, now semi-retired, who trained Leipheimer in skiing at Rowland Hall-St. Mark's.
"He was one of the very best athletes at his age. We recruited him as much as he recruited us."
Larssen remembers "a very driven, very self-motivated athlete. He would ski here and then he would go home to Montana and train on his bike. We didn't ever worry about him being in condition. He was also a very good student, just a role-model kid. He got all kinds of awards as a senior."
Leipheimer made friends in the Salt Lake-area cycling community and joined a number of teams, which kept him in Utah after he graduated from Rowland Hall-St. Mark's in 1991. He attended the University of Utah for two years while developing as a cyclist, winning, among other local races, the Snowbird Hill Climb and the annual 202-mile LotoJa race from Logan to Jackson, Wyo. He turned pro when he was 23 years old and has lived alternately in Spain and Santa Rosa, Calif., ever since.
Ryan Littlefield, a local racer who works at Contender Bicycles in Salt Lake City and was once a teammate, remembers Leipheimer as a hard worker more than anything else. "He's not one of those guys who just wows you with his talent; what he does is wow you with his work ethic," says Littlefield.
"A lot of people refer to him as a bulldog. He's worked hard to get where he's at."
Where he's at is near the top of the cycling world, not that far below the irrepressible Lance Armstrong. At last month's Tour de France, Leipheimer finished ninth overall while leading the Dutch Rabobank team. He was the top American in the Tour next to the Armstrong, the winner. In 2002, when Armstrong also won, Leipheimer finished eighth.
Ironically, it is because of Armstrong that Leipheimer is on the Olympic team. Only after Armstrong declined a spot on the U.S. squad did Leipheimer get the nod. "All year, there were rumors that Lance would pass on the Olympics," Leipheimer said Thursday as he met the international press in Athens. "I thought, 'well, we'll see.' "
But a month ago, halfway into the Tour de France, Armstrong made it official. Leipheimer was in his hotel room when he got the call that informed him he was an Olympian.
"It was just before the Pyrenees," he said, referring to the first mountain stage in this year's Tour. "It definitely helped my morale."
He is proud to be an Olympian. "As a skier, the Olympics is what I dreamed of," he said, "It might not be the greatest race in cycling, but it is another great race."
A one-day road race leaves a lot of things up to chance. That may be the main reason why Armstrong, who has failed twice before to medal in the Olympics, passed on Athens. "It's a crap shoot," said Leipheimer. "There's just a lot more chance involved."
Like the other U.S. cyclists entered in the road race, Leipheimer did not march in Friday night's opening ceremonies. "We're here to compete, that has to come first," he said. His wife, Odessa, is in Athens to watch her husband race as an Olympian, but after spending most of July watching their son in the Tour, parents Bob and Yvonne are back home in Butte, content to watch their famous cycling son on television.
E-mail: benson@desnews.com