Tara Llanes was on the phone from Boston?s Logan Airport. She had just bagged the Biker-Cross silver medal at the Winter X Games and was waiting to jet home to Southern California. Tara, now 23, has been racing mountain bikes for six years and BMX since she was a sprout. The five-foot, four-inch tall Newport Beach, California, girl has more experience than many pros on the mountain bike circuit, but she gives you the impression that every victory is her first one.
Tara: ?I can?t believe that I did so well. I was so sick, I thought I wasn?t going to race. I got food poisoning the day before the Biker-Cross. I thought I was going to die or something. I spent the whole day in bed with every blanket and sheet I could find in my hotel room. I was too weak to get out of bed.?
MBA: ?How did you end up at the starting line??
Tara: ?I kept thinking that I hadn?t come all this way to turn around and go home. I had to race. I got ready and went to the course the last afternoon of practice. I took one run and I was done for. I couldn?t hang onto my bike halfway down the course. I went straight back to my room and went to sleep.
?When my race was ready to stage, I was a little better, but I felt really weak. I just let it ride and tried to hang on. I didn?t think that I even had a chance to win?I just didn?t want to not race. There was a huge double that freaked a lot of the girls. I jumped it really far, and I think that?s where I moved up into second.?
MBA: ?What?s it like to race on a snow course??
Tara: ?Unpredictable. The harder the snow is, the easier it is to ride on. Once the snow gets hotter as the sun comes out, it gets soft and the ruts come out.?
MBA: ?That must have been why so many racers were crashing in the corners. Leigh Donovan is a great bike handler, and she went down pretty frequently.?
Tara: ?I saw a lot of that! [laughs] You know, the faster you go, the better it is. I think that it was harder for Leigh because it was her first time and she didn?t know that. When I first did the X Games, I was hitting my brakes all the time and getting all squirrely. Now I just close my eyes and let it go.?
MBA: ?The X Games are pretty looney. Mountain biking is hardly a winter sport.?
Tara: ?I know?I hate to be cold. I bought all this stuff at North Face this time. I knew I was going to be warm at the X Games. When I arrange my travel, I try to figure out the fewest days that I have to be cold.
?It?s so funny. People were asking us ?how do you make money racing on snow?? Like there is such a thing as professional mountain bike snow racing. I say, ?I don?t race this stuff. We never get a chance to practice. We just show up once a year and do this?.?
TARA?S EARLY DAYS
This time, Tara was speaking from her car phone on the way to her favorite BMX track at Coal Canyon. Her BMX racing career began early. She was a very talented athlete who was infamous for thrashing the boys at her local tracks. John Ker, MBA?s chief photographer, was editor of BMX Plus! magazine back then when the tiny rocket caught his eye.
?She was a fearless jumper,? says John, ?launching double and triple jumps at a time when only a few girls were willing to sky their bikes at all.?
During the heyday of BMX racing, Tara won district titles almost every year, won her age group at the U.S. nationals, bagged fourth at the ?93 World Championships in Michigan and went to the ?93 Worlds in Holland.
MBA: ?Do you race BMX to stay sharp for the dual slalom??
Tara: ?Even though I?m a mountain bike pro, I?ve always raced BMX. When there?s a break in the season, if I?m not at the track, then I?m out riding my motorcycle. It all helps out.?
MBA: ?You began racing mountain bikes when you were about 17, right??
Tara: ?Yeah, I was racing BMX for Haro and they wanted me to give it a try. I was pretty freaked out about it at first, but then I really got into it. I was a junior then and my first race was at the 1993 NORBA Finals at Mammoth. I got second place in the dual slalom. The next year, I turned pro. I wanted to be fast?as fast as the top girls like Missy. When I was 18, I lived in Durango. I moved out when I graduated from high school in ?95.?
MBA: ?That was a bold move. How did a girl right out of high school get the nerve to pull that off??
Tara: ?I went to Durango because, when I was getting into mountain biking, it was the place where it was happening. There were, like, eight world champions living there.
?A friend of mine, John Salemme, said we should move to Durango. He?d been renting a room at my mom?s house and we trained together. Neither of us had even seen Durango?or even Colorado. John was sort of like my trainer. We planned to live there, and when I graduated, we pulled up stakes and moved. He had this little old truck. We named it the Bronze Bomber.
?We got there on Halloween. Missy and Elke Brutsaert made us go out. Missy made me look so gross. My first day in Durango and I was gross.?
MBA: ?She?s a pretty dominant personality. Did you train with Missy??
Tara: ?Yeah! I was intimidated by Missy. She was fast and I wanted to be fast, so I rode with her, but I had a hard time trying to figure her out.?
MBA: ?That was when Tomac, the powerful Yeti team?almost all the big stars lived there. What was life like in beautiful Durango??
Tara: ?We had the easiest winter that year?it hardly ever snowed and we rode all the time. After that, the season started and we were about racing most of the time. When I came back, I found out that there was nothing to do except going to the movies and eating out.
?Rainy days are a Blockbuster day there. Most of us would never go outside. I would go ride every day in the mud. I remember one day in Colorado, Missy would say, ?What are you doing?? I?d say, like, ?I?m riding in the mud?what do you think we have to race in???
MBA: ?You were racing for Haro then. Were you just riding, eating and sleeping??
 Tara: ?Haro?s deal wasn?t a lot of money, so I worked at UPS for extra money. It was hard work, but I am not afraid of hard labor. I?d get up early in the morning and train, then go to work. Sure, I sent some boxes to Tennessee instead of L.A., but they liked me and how hard I worked.?
MBA: ?You live near L.A. now. What made you move back to California??
Tara: ?I love to dance! After a while, I wanted to go out, and there was nothing to do in Durango. I wanted to move back to L.A.?
MBA: ?Wasn?t it then when your career took a big slide? I remember talking to you at the Mammoth National in ?97 and you were pretty down.?
Tara: ?I was going really well. I got fifth at the ?94 Junior Worlds at Vail for Haro and got seventh overall in the NORBA Downhill National Championship series. I was getting good results. In ?96, I almost got a deal with Yeti. I had two other written offers then that alI I had to do was sign. I talked with John Parker and he was sure that Yeti could do something for me. John said Yeti was worried about my Arnette [eyewear] contract. Yeti had a Dragon sponsorship. Parker made a deal with Arnette and I canceled the two other proposals. Then some guy from Schwinn said the sunglass conflict was a problem and they bailed. I didn?t have a ride.?
BASKETBALL CHAMP
Tara: ?After that happened with Yeti, I thought it was all over. I was going to move back home with my mom, go back to school and take a basketball scholarship.?
MBA: ?Hold on there?basketball? There aren?t too many five-foot-something girls with college basketball scholarships!?
Tara: ?I was recruited because I grew up with basketball. My classmates all figured that I would play basketball?they were shocked that I went to ride bikes. I was going through my things yesterday and found a bag full of all these letters from colleges like BYU and the University of Hawaii, and I wondered where I would have been if I had stuck with basketball instead of trying out bikes.?
MBA: ?I knew that you liked to play, but who?d have thought that you were a draft choice? How did a depressed 19-year-old get hooked up with a powerful team like Specialized??
Tara: ?I didn?t want anything to do with mountain bikes, but my mom told me to call Eric Carter. I finally did. Eric was racing for Rotec and Bill Thomas, the team manager once when I was racing BMX and he was at ProForx. He remembered me four years later! That year, I was driving around all over the place racing a Rotec?I wasn?t getting paid to fly. Then I broke my collarbone at the Washington national. I was so bummed. I had a lousy year and I figured that nobody would hire me again after I broke my collarbone.?
?Mikki Douglass was racing for Specialized then. She was the biggest help of all the people I have ridden with. Mikki was an amazing person to look up to. She was my competition, but she would tell me what I was doing wrong, where to put my weight and things like that. She let me stay at her house in Washington while I was recovering. Her parents were nice to me. I did a lot of thinking there. I thought. ?How could I help Rotec?? Then  I went to [NORBA?S race announcer] Peter Graves and asked if I could help with the announcing. He liked the idea and that?s when Specialized noticed me.?
MBA: ?Was that your first contact with the team??
Tara: ?No. Earlier that season, I remember I was on my wind trainer warming up at Mammoth and this lady was looking at me in the distance while I was joking around and acting really funny. Later I found out that it was Sandy Egger, the team manager from Specialized who was was looking for new talent. I felt so stupid!?
?After I started announcing, Steve Moser, the Specialized team wrench, came up to me and said, ?Hey, do you know what you are doing next year? Maybe you could ride for Specialized.? I was like, ?Oh my gosh! You?re from Specialized. It would be great!?
?At the finals in Park City, Utah, Specialized was going to interview me for the team. Sandy came back from the team truck and told me I had the job?that hearing me on the mic at the announcing booth was enough of an interview for them.?
MBA: ?What is it like, racing for an international team like Specialized??
Tara: ?There is so much more happening on a bigger team. Haro was really good to me, but they could only do so much. Now, if I want a bike, I can have a special one made. There is so much support available to me, but still, I can do my own thing pretty much. It really is just me and Sandy. She is so helpful. Still, I can?t really believe it.?
MBA: ?What?s it like racing alongside the Euros??
Tara: ?The thing between the Euros and us is funny. Gert Jan Theunise trains Bart Brentjens and Marga Fullana. They always joke about us Americans, but we all really get along. Gert really knows what it means to run a world-class team. When you come back from a race or a training session, he has lunch waiting. Everything is planned and ready. Team meetings and mechanics are all organized?all I have to do is ride my bike.?
MBA: ?Now that your ducks are all in a row, what do you want to accomplish this season??
Tara: ?Right off the bat, I want to win the World Championships in the dual, and I want to win the overall title in the World Cup dual.?
MBA: ?What about the downhill??
Tara: ?I really want to do well in the World Cup. I feel that I can get higher than top ten overall in the World Cup downhill.?
MBA: ?I?d like to see you worry some of the top girls out there.?
Tara: ?Oh, I agree with you totally! I want all the girls to believe that I?m a factor this year.?
|