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Chris Horner talks about his Olympic Experience

Olympic athlete and professional cyclist Chris Horner of Bend is back from London.  He was on the Olympic cycling team that just barely missed out on the Bronze medal.  

 

Horner says Saturday's race was a wild ride, where riders had to dodge spectators on the narrow 155 mile race.  In a live interview on the 1110 KBND morning news, Horner said there were one million spectators watching along the route.

 

(Question from 1110 KBND Host Lori Raab) "So this has been one of the craziest and most dangerous races you have ever been in?"

 

(Horner) "For dry weather, sunshine, perfect weather....absolutely.  It was unbelievable with the spectators, they were so huge and just spilling over onto the course and the course was so narrow to begin with and so they were just forcing the field of riders.  And we have 150 riders that normally we're used to fans running back off of the course.  But this is the Olympics so you have not only cycling fans there, but you have world Olympics fans, who don't know cycling, but they want to watch an Olympic event, so they don't know to run away!" (laughter) Tickets weren't required for much of the course, so hundreds of thousands of people line up to see the London Games up close.

 

Horner says he saw one guy taking a picture out two feet on the road. He didn't jump out of the way when the racers came through and smacked into a rider who then crashed into several other cyclists.  The impact sent the spectator into the crowd, knocking down several other fans in the process.

 

This weekend in Central Oregon, Horner is putting on a special local fundraiser to support "Live Strong".  It's called the "Cascade Gran Fondo" and it's a community ride, not a "race". For more details you can go to the westie: www.cascadegranfondo.com.

 

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