Cycling racer Steve Larsen passed away at the age of 39 Tuesday night in an untimely death initially blamed on a heart attack. Now word comes that the autopsy found no evidence of a heart attack, but the exact cause remains under investigation. In any case, Larsen died too young and is a testament to carpe diem, or as my riding buddy Jim would say, carpe limitem (seize the trail!). He was a road racer, a mountain bike racer, a triathlete and a cyclocross racer, yet he died while running.
Larsen was a well-known competitor in his prime, raced with Lance Armstrong on the Motorola team, but I came to associate his name with a great mountain-biking race/cross country tire he designed for Maxxis called the Larsen TT (a second one was the Mimo; both were named after his kids). Larsen was a Davis, Calif. native who lived in Bend, OR, named recently by Mountain Bike Action as the best mountain biking town in America (yet he died while…). We wish his wife Carrie and 5 children well.