GT attempts to find, and reward, World's Greatest Sandbagger.

The theme of the week here at the squirt gun show is the ugly topic of sandbagging, and lives of those it touches.

Background:

Pro mountain bikers get all the love. Huge houses, tons of ladies, caviar for breakfast, golden showers. But what about the rest of us? The working men (and women)? The fast Cat 1 guys (and girls). Sure we might sniff the podium a little every now and then, maybe even get to go home with a new pair of gloves from the clearance bin for our 3rd place finish, but where's the gigantic financial windfall we deserve?

Well, this year, GT bicycles is there for us. They have decided to spread a little love around by creating a race series, and rewarding the fastest non-pro with a dope ass bike. That lucky pencil-pushing, cubicle-dweller that just happened to peak on the right day then gets flown to the next race in the series to defend his new dope-ass bike against another hungry pack of kinda-fast guys (and girls).

More information is at gtisgolden.com. They do a better job of explaining the contest than I do. Shocking, I know.

That bike is mine:

Sounds like a great idea, and the caboose of this race series is a New England classic, the Landmine at Wompatuck State Park. "I own Landmine, that bike is mine" I though. A few potential snafu's popped into my head though. USA Cycling has some convoluted rules about what category you can or can't race if you don't have a yearly license. This usually means the superfast roadie pros can't race against the super fast guys (or girls), they are forced to rip the legs off the sort-of-fast guys (or girls). I ran this scenario past GT and they assured me that mountain AND road pros were not allowed to compete for the bike.

Awesome. That bike is mine. Then the race season started and I realized I'm not fast. Well, maybe I am fast, but there plenty of faster dudes in the Cat 1 field. My main weaknesses seem to be temperatures over 60 degrees, stars and stripes jerseys, and guys named Greg. I have since given up on the Golden Bike. It was stupid, I didn't want it anyway. Dumb bike.

Update:

In the two months since I have realized that the stupidheads at GT will never give me their crapbike, there have been some interesting developments. A scenario that even my gigantic brain couldn't conceive has occurred. What if a World Cup* racer from France came to the US and bought a Cat 1 license? Well, he would win the stupid Golden Bike. Then he would go to the next race and win, then the next, then the next, then.... You see where this is going.

The Problem:

So in an effort to reward the fastest unsung, everyday, non-pro mountain biker; GT has actually managed to conduct a very effective search for the world's greatest sandbagger. Then they reward that sandbagger handsomely. I'm going to assume this was not their original intention. The irony of this is that he is French. Now us Americans have a little taste of what it is like for a hated foreigner (Lance Armstrong) to show up and win all our prizes.

Silver Lining:

It's not all bad though. With a $5000+ bike up for grabs, I have a feeling the fields are going to be deep at Landmine. This is probably the richest purse a Cat 1 race in New England has ever seen. Mid-Atlantic racers will make the journey, as will Canadians. A lot of these "non-regulars" that show up to race will be roadies. Wompatuck is not a roadie-friendly race. Long story short, we are going to see lots and lots of roadies cry. How sweet is that? We get to look forward to an entire week of race reports where roadies talk about how they didn't realize mountain biking was so difficult. I'm going to be running around the finish with a gigantic bucket, because we all know, nothing makes a better recovery drink than the tears of your vanquished foes.

*The angry internet masses are claiming this guy is an ex-World Cup racer, I haven't seen any proof. I have seen some impressive results from him as a member of the BH/Suntour team though.