Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team's Tom Danielson

HP held an event in Fort Collins this week to showcase our products to our sales force. The event includes presentations from some of our higher profile customers, and since we've struck up a new partnership with Trek they came to Fort Collins along with Tom Danielson of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team. Our group at work was allowed to send one person to the event, and I lobbied hard to be that one person when I found out Tom Danielson was going to make an appearance. I won. As it turns out, one of the local bike shops took the opportunity to have Trek and Tom come into the shop, so I got to see them twice.

Most people probably do not know who Tom Danielson is. Yet. He's frequently considered America's next great stage racer. He won the Dodge Tour de Georgia this year, placed 8th in the Tour of Spain, and holds the record for riding up Mount Evans. Lance calls him GWH - the Great White Hope. Time will tell if he'll live up to his title.

The presentation at the bike shop was pretty good and I got there early enough to get a good spot. The disappointing thing was that the Trek representative didn't mention anything about the HP workstations they used. Hrmph! But I got some pictures:



Today I showed up to the HP event a little late because I had a meeting (which I ditched early in an attempt to make it on time). I stood at the back of the room so I could look around for a seat, and I noticed that Tom Danielson and the Discovery PR guy (Dan Osipow) were sitting behind the last row of chairs. What luck! It's not very often you get the chance to be around a pro cyclist when there aren't a bunch of other cycling fans around to mob them. I didn't really want to impose, but eventually I just had to say hello and get a picture. I think I was probably the only one in the room who recognized who they were. (Or maybe nobody else cared.)

Later I got Tom to sign his promo shot and one of our workstation chassis (a little something for the lab).


Michael Sagan (the senior designer at Trek's Advanced Concepts Group) was hanging out at the AMD booth so I went over to bullshit for a little while. It was interesting to hear about some of the considerations that go into designing their bikes. Cycling's governing body has a lot of rules that they have to follow in order for their bikes to be legal. For example, the downtube on their time trail bike can't be any wider than 80mm, otherwise it would be considered an illegal fairing. Also milling around was Scott Kasin, who played an important part in getting AMD to sponsor the Discovery Team. Now he lives in Carbondale, CO and runs a sports technology consulting company. Pretty sweet deal, because it gives him lots of time to train.

Here I am with Michael Sagan and one of Lance's time trial frames from the 2005 Tour de France:


More pictures on Flickr