Missile

[Silvergoat]

Re:

The said Camberwell carrot from Withnail and I. And as I type, I can smell the elixir of super-strength home grown cabbage wafting across from a feckless neighbour of ours two doors down. Get in the sea.

 

[M-Power]

Re: Re:

The said Camberwell carrot from Withnail and I. And as I type, I can smell the elixir of super-strength home grown cabbage wafting across from a feckless neighbour of ours two doors down. Get in the sea.

Strong Weed...the curse of bike mechanics too

 

[Silvergoat]

Re: Re:

The sad thing is, the big bike Cos never gave her a key ambassadorial/promo role after she hung up her race helmet. If she had been a guy, they most likely would have. Seems she was keen on a medical career too. It's no excuse of course but she clearly needed a decent income and took the wrong route.

Movie script, a book...or media career...hope she finds her niche. Most of the talented athletes that compete in our sport have no personality. It would be a shame if she gets shut out again.

Meanwhile, look at comeback kid Lance Armstrong post doping cheat scandal, working that publicity machine off the back of it. Sadly, there aren't enough women in cycling/mountain biking and someone like Missy could show them just how cool it could be.

 

[Retro Spud]

Re:

now that's a Carrot to be proud off ^^^ the real deal

 

[Silvergoat]

Re: Re:

The said Camberwell carrot from Withnail and I. And as I type, I can smell the elixir of super-strength home grown cabbage wafting across from a feckless neighbour of ours two doors down. Get in the sea.

Strong Weed...the curse of bike mechanics too

I'll bet.

 

[Silvergoat]

Re: Re:

now that's a Carrot to be proud off ^^^ the real deal

and then some...

 

[Silvergoat]

Re:

In pain from injuries and with no pension or medical insurance to help, may be the lure of weed to numb the pain and a way to earn quick easy money got the better of her...

MISSY GIOVE, AN X GAMES STAR'S CRIMINAL RIDE, by Chris Sweeney, Nov 2013

She was the fastest woman on a mountain bike and an X Games superstar. So why was Missy Giove driving across the country with hundreds of pounds of pot?

In her life as a downhill-mountain-bike racer – bombing down fire roads at speeds up to 60 mph and plowing through root-snarled chutes – Giove was the best-known and highest-paid athlete of her kind, thanks to an all-out (some would say reckless) race style. Her wild racing also led to plenty of injuries: She sustained at least 10 concussions and more than three dozen broken bones, including her heels, pelvis, and several vertebrae. "There were times I had a concussion and just didn't go to the doctor," she says now. "But, like, when I had a broken leg, a concussion, and a broken wrist – yeah, then I'd end up at the hospital."

Giove's willingness to race while injured caught up to her at the 2001 world championship in Vail. The day before, in practice, she carried too much speed off a drop, dislocated her shoulder, and knocked herself out on the handlebars. Against all reason, she raced the next day. Toward the bottom of the run, she again went over the handlebars "at the top of a ******* super-steep section," she says. The resulting brain hemorrhage sent her into a months-long daze of blinding pain. "I didn't want to open my eyes for, like, three months," she recalls.

In the years that followed, Giove suffered seizures and chronic headaches. She had always smoked pot recreationally, but her intake soared as she looked for an alternative to prescription painkillers. "Weed definitely helped," she says. "It was the smarter choice for pain control."

When life on the race circuit ended, Giove didn't have a retirement plan or steady medical insurance. But she did have friends with large quantities of pot that needed to be moved, and she jumped into the new venture with enthusiasm. "My first drug deal was 40 pounds of weed. Go big or go home, you know?" she says. "I knew that when I started, it was a commitment. You have to be comfortable with a lot of danger."

In those early days, Giove logged thousands of miles driving around the country, selling weed to small-time dealers. Sometimes she'd be instructed to collect bags of cash from a garbage can in the backyard of a suburban home. Other times she'd ride a dirt bike deep into the woods to deliver heaps of pot grown by "very talented hippies in the hills of California."

Around 2006, two years after she stopped racing, Giove linked up with Canori, a young Californian who built koi ponds in people's backyards on the side and had access to a pipeline of exotic pot strains, including God's Gift, Blue Dream, and OG Kush. She went from moving dozens of pounds per trip to hundreds of pounds. Giove's status as a world-famous extreme athlete was the perfect cover for someone who'd be driving consistently with a locked trailer in tow.

On a monthly basis, Giove made trips to a small apartment in Marin County. There, Canori's workers would load the trailer with custom-built, seven-foot-long wooden boxes packed with dry ice and weed. Giove's dirt bike, mountain bikes, and racing gear were then packed on top to create the illusion of an extreme athlete on the road. Each trip netted her upwards of $30,000, minus what she paid to couriers. But it wasn't just the money that appealed to Giove. "Honestly, I felt like Santa Claus," she says. "I was able to bring people medicine that had personally helped me. I was ******* great at selling weed."

 

[shogun]

Is it me or does she look really uncomfortable with those really wide bars?

In the interview she said she belted up her thumb (dislocated) and elbow pretty good in a practice crash. Having done similar I can relate that it's hard work just hanging on down a blown out downhill course afterwards.

She was absolutely hauling arse down the bottom of the course. With some strength training and a fair bit of familiarisation I reckon she'd actually get up in the top ten at least, on the faster courses particularly.

I think a big problem would be that her priors would make overseas visas pretty much impossible. She wouldn't get into Canada (a shame because I think she'd go well at MSA).