He's won the silver medal in the Time Trial at the 2008 World Cycling Championships. 7th in the 2008 Olympic Time Trial. Four-time Canadian National Time Trial Champion. 1st overall in the 2007 UCI America Tour as well as the top podium position at the US Open Cycling Championships that year. And those are just the highlights of this relative late-comer to the world of competitive cycling (he was 22 in his first season of competitive cycling).
He's lived a life that could easily have been straight out of a Jon Krakauer
book.Svein is pronounced like "Swayne" and I hope everyone will quickly get to know how to say that right. When I saw his old Symmetrics team fold last year, I knew someone big would pick him up. He's landed firmly on two solid wheels this year with Garmin-Slipstream.
Svein is an incredible cyclist that we'll now get to watch in some truly epic bike races, like the Tour of California, Paris-Roubaix and yes, likely even the Tour de France.
He has a tattoo on his right forearm, saying something we should all consider as we look forward to this year's riding, training and racing: We will never be here again.
You can read a great write-up on Svein in the New York Times: Canadian Rider Has Made Unorthodox Climb to the Top
After reading the article, it seems a man like that is made to race Paris-Roubaix.
ReplyDeleteI'll be rooting for him.
I've stood beside the man (we were both racing the Canadian National Track Championships last year in Burnaby, BC - though me in the old-man Masters category, he of course racing Elite) and indeed he is built completely like a Paris-Roubaix specialist.
ReplyDeleteI sure hope Garmin-Slipstream selects him for the race this year - they'd be nuts not to. He's got the track experience to hammer it home in Roubaix if needed. A very worthy rider to pick up the mantle from Steve Bauer!
Hi Kev, it's interesting about that tattoo "I'll never be here again." because that's along the lines of what the Jerry Lewis retrospective on the Oscar's last night ended with. He wanted to do good deeds because he "would not be here again." Is there a more famous saying that both are refering to? Cheers! ps: the MapIt on Google function is really neat to use!
ReplyDelete