HppyBD SUSAN!
Susan DeMattei Lights Up The Room
It’s Susan Demo‘s forty, uh…well let’s not get specific….40+ bd today. Ides of October…easy to remember.
Susan, for those of you who aren’t followers of competition, is the only American that ever won an Olympic medal in mtn biking…
And ( thanks to alert reader/rider Adam Hunt) I found this cool story about her honey Dave Wiens in the NYTimes online...The mini-movie (despite those ‘god among men’ cliche shots) is nice and it’s true…DW is humble. And proud of being ‘ordinary’!
Dave once claimed he was ‘way too normal’ to be a win-at-all-costs champion like the podium dudes we all knew, who:
a) beat up their wife
b) took drugs
c) rode recklessly to gain advantage
Well, that stung a bit since I am (though it’s not my fault) born of that troubled tribe, too.
How often did I allow a pre-race slight, the merest ‘psyche-out’ like “your bike looks dirty” to fester, in order to feed a bit more fury in to pedals!
It is entirely wonderful that “normal” (hey, can we get a definition here?) people can take up sports for sheer joy, and excel for the pleasure of a job, er, an act, well performed (I still have trouble with the idea of sports-as-job, can’t ya tell?).
Susan, you said it best, his humility is genuine, “and he’s a stud”.
Dave , good on you for marryin’ the queen of the humble hard-working golden girls.
I am sure you and yr three boisterous boys will share a righteous fine birthday cake tonight. Hope it’s a nice dense chocolate, butter-not-crisco quarter-sheets calorie bomb.
P.S. I loved the comment about how Wiensy was skipping dessert in the month before Leadville! THAT is SUFFERING!
PS Do you think you could give me some humility lessons? I am getting a little uppity these days…
. With an RSS feed
BUY NOW!
Jacquie Phelan's Weblog 
I had the pleasure of meeting Susan and Dave when they toured New Zealand in 1993? with the DBR team. It was my first ever MTB race and it was kind of surreal to be riding with two of the best racers in the world that I had previously only read about in magazines.
What a nice, down-to-earth couple of Americans they were. Very friendly and approachable. It’s great to hear they are still together and have the kids to prove it.
Dave and Sue are awesome…Dave was kind enough to sign an old velonews from the early 90’s I had brought with me as I apologized to Sue for not having one for her to sign…Great blog.