At 8:30pm CDT on the eve of Leadville 2009, CogAndChain.com has declared a definitive winner.

It’s not Lance. Or Wein. Or Tinker, Levi, Brown, of any of the other riders. No, the winner of this year’s Leadville 100 is the sport of mountain biking and American cycling in general.

While it may sound trite, it’s also remarkably apt. In the US, cycling lives in the shadows of the big 4 – football, baseball, basketball, and hockey – and the super-personalities that rule them. There are occasional moments when bicycles take the sports page by storm, but they’re few and far between. Greg Lemond created some interest during his career. But the majority of the cycling interest has been ushered in behind the back wheel of Lance Armstrong.

As I sit in my office, working my regular job and day dreaming about cycling, I’m only visited by a few others in our company who share my two-wheeled passion. The exception to that rule is during the Tour de France, when folks drop in to recap what Lance, Big George, Levi, or Alberto did during the day, mostly because they aren’t sure what the impact really was on the overall standings. But, today, I must have had two dozen visitors, all asking about what was going to happen tomorrow at Leadville.

I hope you got chills. This year’s Leadville 100 has the average, non-cycling American talking about a bike race!

The unfortunate reality is that most of those people can name a grand total of 1 professional cyclist. But that one pro has brought the same super-persona to cycling that we’re used to seeing in the other sports. The fact that he’s made appearances at US mountain bike races over the past few weeks is a massive win for any of us who grab a bike and hit the dirt in our spare time.

Mountain biking is definitely not mainstream in America and Lance can’t change that by himself, but he can certainly lend some momentum to the movement.

So, no matter who is on the podium tomorrow, anyone with dirty, knobby tires has won. The more attention mountain biking gets, the more people start riding the trails, and the greater the support for our sport will be. Here in Indianapolis, it’s going to be a great weekend. The Leadville coverage starts in just a few hours, we have a well promoted crit downtown in the late morning and early afternoon, and there’s a mountain bike race on Sunday in Logansport.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a few spectators at both of them this year. If we do, I’ll officially declare all of us winners.