Girl On: Tara Llanes

Jul 12 2007 / Los Angeles, CA

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Tara Llanes has spent the last decade building an impressive career in mountain biking, taking two national championships in 4x, gold, silver and bronze medals at the X Games and the 2006 US National Downhill Championship.  The pursuit has left her bruised and bloodied at times, with injuries too numerous to count, but that's just part of the process if you want to make it to the podium -- something she first accomplished in 1994.

Where she is now is all the more impressive given she started her athletic career as a basketball player, and a good one at that, but after high school she sought a change and first turned to BMX racing, followed shortly by mountain bike racing -- a move that has paid off.  Now as she has hit her stride in mountain biking, she looks back to the past and has taken up BMX again, hoping to qualify for the Olympics as the sport debuts in Beijing next year.

Even as she battles injuries on her quest for Olympic qualification, Llanes still plans to compete in a few mountain bike races this season, so she very well end up with another championship in mountain biking to go along with any Olympic qualifying she is able to secure.

PHOTO GALLERY    Check out our photo gallery of Tara Llanes in action and having fun... View Gallery>

If the competing wasn't enough, Llanes keeps busy between contests holding skills clinics for women riders, finishing one just last week in New York.  Lat34 catches up with her as readies for her next BMX race in Victoria, BC, another important pre-Olympic event.

Lat34: So you wrote in your blog that you've been injured more in the last few months than you have in the last three years.  Why do you think that is and what's your current status?

Tara:  The status is I'm feeling better every day.  As far as the injuries...  Yeah it's fairly ridiculous the amount that I've been hurt lately.  I think a lot has to do with a couple of things.  The first is that I have been actively been pursuing for the last six months or so BMX.  BMX is going to be a new sport in the Olympics next year.  That's how I got started racing years ago and then I turned to mountain biking. 

USA Cycling approached me and said "Now that it's an Olympic event do think you'd want to try try and compete..." and I said no.  They kept talking to me, talking to me, until I entered a race and got fourth with the fastest girls that were there.  So that had me rethinking things.

With that said, racing BMX is completely different than racing mountain bikes.  With mountain biking, it's a full suspension bike, so i't has suspension in the front and the rear and you shift gears...  everything's flexible on a mountain bike.  You don't want a lot of moving -- you try to limit it as much as you can -- still it will flex.   Whereas the BMX bike is not forgiving in any way shape or form.  The bike is super stiff, it's smaller, the wheels are only 20" instead of 26" and basically it's really, really stiff...

A mountain bike is extremely forgiving... if you come up short on a jump, there's always something to save you.  But in BMX if you come up short on a jump, it's going to be pretty tough to save it.

Between the fact that the bike is so much smaller and that I haven't ridden competitive BMX in seven years that's been a really difficult thing...  It's been sort of a rude awakening.   

Lat34: But You're enjoying the challenge?

Tara:  I'm definitely enjoying it.  I do not enjoy crashing whatsoever, and I don't enjoy being injured.  But the challenge and when I am riding and feeling really good I think it's so much fun riding a BMX bike.  I haven't done it in years.  So that's been fantastic.

Lat34:  So to make it to the Olympic team there's some sort of a qualifying series?

Tara:  Exactly.  It's a whole series of races.  It's like a year and a half long process.  There are certain races that you need to go to and sort of chase points.

Lat34:  So where does that leave mountain biking?

Tara:  The mountain bike season starts pretty much in May-June and goes until mid-September.  So they're sort of intertwined right now, which makes things a little bit tricky, simply because I've got to go to certain BMX races and they may well be on the same weekend as my mountain bike races. 

Giant Bicycles is my bicycle sponsor so I talk to them about what races I'd like to do and they've been very lenient as far as letting me try and make the Olympic team.  Right now the mountain bike races that I am doing are the Jeep series -- it's an invitation-only series.  There are only three of them, so those are the three I'm concentrating on.  I did one World Cup event a few weeks ago so I could at least qualify to be on the mountain bike world championship team.

Lat34: That keeps you busy.

Tara:  I have my foot in a lot of different things this year.  This year is a lot different than past years.  The last ten years I've traveled so much that I kind of want a little bit of a break -- and I was like "Hey, what if I don't do as many mountain bike races, stay in the states a little but more, give BMX a try and make the Olympic team?"  And I've also been doing a lot of clinics on bike skills.  Last week I was in New York doing an all-girl demo camp.

Lat34:  What do you do in a normal clinic?

Tara:  You put on a Friday clinic and then a Saturday clinic and show the women different skills on their bike and how to do a lot of things they don't know how to do... a lot of things that I've learned throughout the years that are really helpful for the intermediate riders.

Lat34: What advice do you have for younger women who might be thinking about mountain biking?  You started with basketball then made the move...

Tara:  It's weird how I ended up in cycling.  It seems to me like a lot of people that are into cycling are not so good at ball and stick sports.  For me I got into it I think because I was really burned out on basketball and this whole team thing.  I had been playing since I was in sixth grade and I guess felt like "I don't want this to be it."  Granted, it wolld have been great to go to college and get a scholarship and have my school paid for....

For me, I felt like I wanted to explore.  Personallly I'm a very independent person and even though your're on a team, it's individual.  I'm not racing against any of my teammates.

I'm constantly trying to get more women into riding.  It's hard.  In my opinion you would think it'd be easier because it's a form of transportation.  It's not like you need a mountain of snow to do it.  If you have a bike, you can ride anywhere.  I am sort of dumbfounded as to how many people don't have bikes and don't use it as a form of transportation. 

I encourage anybody to go to their local bike shop to find out any information they can on trying to compete or just ride, ride on your local trails and see what you like to do because there are different forms of mountain biking.

The problem is people don't know enough about mountain biking.  They automatically think "Oh, I need to get all this gear" and you really don't.  You need a bike and a helmet and you go from there. 

Lat34:  It's a bicycle -- pretty much everyone learns how to ride a bike.  It's a rite of passage.

Tara:  Exactly.  Everybody has pictures of them on their first bike when they were a little kid.  I'm like, "when do people grow out of that?"  I don't understand it.

Lat34:  What's the gnarliest crash you've had?

Tara:  It was on my mountain bike.  I believe it was in 2002 and it was a race at Durango, Colorado.   I was leading the points going into the finals and we had five minutes left of practice and there were these two doubles at the bottom of the track.  None of the other girls were jumping them and I totlally knew that I could do them.

I jumped the first one a couple of times, then I looked to jump the first and the second...  The lip sort of kicked me forward. I went down pretty hard. 

I ended up breaking my left collarbone for the third time and I tore my PCL and MCL in my right knee and then I partially collapsed both my lungs.  That for me was by far the scariest. I had broken my collarbone before and that was old news.  Like I knew instantly that I broke it.  That was just no big deal.  I knew my knee was hurt and I couldn't sit up to look up at it.  I couldn't bend it or straighten it and it was just like "look at the watermelon."  But my lungs really scared me, because it felt like I had holes in them and I couldn't catch my breath, no matter how quick I was breathing. 

That was hard because it was all in the same crash.  I needed to use crutches because of my knew but I couldn't use crutches because my left collarbone is broken.

Lat34:  On your website you list an injury tally -- but I don't think it's been updated recently.  Do you know how many bones you've broken?

Tara:  No -- I don't know off the top of my head.  It's been way too many.  Just this year alone, because of being on the BMX bike, I've already broken my right wrist, gotten a concussion and then a  week later broke a bone in my left hand that has been taking forever to heal.  And then I was in Canada a few weeks ago and popped four ribs out.  That's so minor these days, it's ridiculous -- it shouldn't be, but it is....  When I got to the bottom I could tell something was wrong because I was coughing up some blood.  I flew home...

Lat34:  You flew home with four ribs popped out of place?

Tara:  Yeah, but they weren't broken.  That was good.  I have a really good chiropractor back here at home.  So he hooks me up and popped them back.  I've been going back for chiropractic treatment for three days a week since I got back from that trip.

Lat34  When's your next event?

Tara:  I leave on July 25.  I am going to the BMX World Championships in Victoria, BC.  If I were to go there and win that race I think I would be an automatic bid

Lat34:  What do you think your chances are?

Tara:  You know it's really hard to say.  Honestly, because of my injury tally...  when I 'm on my bike and I'm injury-free, I feel invincible.  It's been hard though -- these girls, they've gotten so much faster since I raced BMX.  Their skills are amazing.  So I've had some homework to catch up on, but I definitely fell like I've made some big leaps and bounds the past six months.  It's been hard with these setbacks I keep having.  When you break your wrist, you can't even ride.  Track time is priceless.  Right now my chances of winning -- that'd be tough.  At this point, I'd like to make the main event, which is the top eight, and then go from there.  I'm trying to be really realistic because I've got a lot of racing ahead of me.  Every country is going to be there.  There are some girls in Europe that ridiculously fast.

Lat34:  They take the sport much more seriously over there, don't they?

Tara:  Cycling and soccer there are like football and basketball here.   They just grew up in a different way.  When we go to World Cup races for mountain biking -- you'll be in some mountain in Austria and you're taking this van to the top and you see these 75, 80-year-old grandparents riding their bikes up the mountain.  I mean you're just looking at them in shock.  There's no mountain high enough, really, there's not.  These people come out in the thousands.  They get bussed in from different towns.    When they have a mountain bike race, it's a big huge event.  Cycling is alive and well in Europe and it's just amazing to see that.

Lat34:  You haven't had any urge to move across the pond to live there?

Tara:  I definitely have.  More so in the last couple of years than any.  When I first traveled to Europe... I used to hate it.  And throughout the years I have completely come to embrace it and to love it and to appreciate their way of life.  Everything over there is just .... relax.  You can do nothing but relax when you're over there because you're forced to, and I love it and I totally thought about living over there, without a doubt.

Lat34:  What's on Your IPod right now?

Tara:  I love music.  Let's see...  Angels & Airwaves, Anberlin, +44, Cascade, Citizen Cope, Timbaland , José González , John Butler Trio...   There's a ton of them. 

Lat34:  Which places you've visited are your favorites?

Tara:  These are in no particular order but the first one that came to mind is Austria.  The last, like, five times I've been there I've had some of  the most amazing times...  Austria, Australia, for sure.   I love the UK, even though half the year it's rainy.   France -- I really like it there.  I went to South Africa this year - it was amazing.  I love the Whistler, BC area.  I love Europe.

Lat34:  What are some of your top accomplishments in the sport?

Tara:  - 2006 US National Downhill Champion
- 2-time US National 4x Champion (2002 & 2004)
- I've medaled in five of the last seven world championships (with either silver or broze but the gold is eluding me - but I may get it this year).
- Back in the day, we were in the X Games...  The Winter X Games.  I have a gold, a silver and two bronze medal in the X Games.

Lat34:  Those are collector items now.  Unless the X Games adds Mountain Biking as a sport again, no one will ever win one again..

Tara:  That's true.  I never really thought about it like that.

Lat34:  Last question -- you mentioned on your blog that your website is going to be relaunched soon.  When can your fans see something?

Tara:  I'm really crossing fingers that we get something up in three weeks.  At least something!