As you can probably imagine, any time my family sees anything biking related…they throw it my way. My dad came to me on Sunday about this recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that I found really interesting. Apparently, Falcon’s manager Thomas Dimitroff is an avid mountain biker.
While I was in high school and college, my dad [NFL coach and quarterback Tom Dimitroff] was vehemently opposed to me or him having a car payment. So I rode a bike all the time. I developed a fascination and love for two wheels. The guys on my college team had nice cars. So my bike had a name, “Steel Wind”.
Thomas has ridden in multiple locals including Vancouver and Tijuana but always comes home to the north Georgia mountains to get his fill of singletrack in the woods. At one point in time while he was an NFL scout in Colorado, he was actually racing expert level XC. Not bad for a full time NFL worker…
Some of my favorite quotes from the article:
I’ve had a lot of accidents, to be quite honest….My fork bottomed out, and I went over the handlebars and landed on my collarbone…I mustered up the strength to sit on my bike and coast down…It was a lesson in not to ride hard without someone with me.
There’s an adrenaline rush in mountain biking just like there’s on in football.
“I heard you’re a horrible golfer,” he said.
“I probably am,” I thought, “But do you want to get on a bike?”
It’s playoffs season (as Favre throws away another one), so I thought it was pretty fitting. Just goes to show that mountain biking can be just as obsessive for those in other professional sports arenas. It is also good to see mountain biking get some positive press locally from a recognizable figure in the city.
