Ep. 188 ~ Chris Smith, Racing the Tour Divide Legally Blind
Bikes or Death
Patrick Farnsworth
4.8 • 563 Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2024
⏱️ 129 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2000 Chris Smith was diagnosed with Stargardt's Disease, by 2009 he was declared legally blind. No longer able to drive he turned to the bike as a way to get to work 3 miles from his house. At the time he tipped the scales at over 300 lbs and the 3 mile ride to work was a real challenge, but Chris wasn't discouraged. He kept at it, joined friends for group rides, and eventually went on to earn a buckle at Leadville in 2019, to mark his 10th year of blindness. He went back the following 3 years, each time earning a buckle.
For his 15th anniversary of being declared legally blind he set his sites higher, much higher. After watching Ride The Divide he decided to take on the holy grail of bikepacking, the Tour Divide. An ambitious goal for anyone, but particularly so for Chris since he hadn't done a multi-day bikepacking trip, and he's blind. Undeterred, he hired a coach, and started training for the Grand Depart, only 8 months away.
It took him 47 days and 10 hours, he was the 2nd to last finisher, but nothing stopped Chris from accomplishing his goal, and after riding the Tour Divide, I doubt anything ever will.
Chris was riding to bring awareness to blindness and raising money for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Through his efforts he was able to raise $28,000 which will go to help finding cures for blindness diseases like his. You can find out more about Chris, and donate, on his website.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Bikes to Death podcast. As always, my name is Patrick, |
| 0:05.8 | and I am your host, and my guest today is Chris Smith, who just finished the tour divide. |
| 0:13.2 | For the fast racers, the race has been over for a while now, and some of them are actually on the |
| 0:20.0 | Colorado Trail race right now, |
| 0:22.4 | but Chris Smith just finished the tour to buy it about a week ago. |
| 0:26.4 | He did it in 47 days, 10 hours, and was second to last place. |
| 0:32.1 | And adding to his story, Chris was declared legally blind in 2009, |
| 0:41.9 | but he didn't let that stop him. In fact, it led to some amazing life transformations, challenges, and accomplishments. Chris's story on how he went from being |
| 0:50.9 | declared legally blind in 2009 to racing and completing the Tour Divide in 2024 |
| 0:58.1 | is the topic and conversation of today's episode. |
| 1:02.3 | But before we get into it, let's take a moment to thank the people that made today's episode |
| 1:06.4 | possible, starting with our latest batch of patrons. |
| 1:10.1 | So this week, we'd like to thank Nathaniel Ray for signing up to be a sustaining member of the Bikes for Death podcast. |
| 1:16.9 | And if you would like to help support the show and these episodes, a great way to do that is on Patreon. |
| 1:23.5 | You can find all the information at patreon.com forward slash Bikes for Debt. |
| 1:31.9 | All right, everybody. |
| 1:33.0 | Well, today on the podcast, I got Shane Hits from the Red Granite Grindr to talk about, well, a couple of events. |
| 1:39.3 | We're going to be discussing a couple of events that you're promoting there in the area. |
| 1:43.3 | Shane, welcome back on the podcast. You've been on before we did an episode together. So welcome back. Hey, thanks, Patrick. And I think it's worth mentioning right off the top that you and I did record a podcast about the Red Granite Grindriner that we're going to be talking about today. So for anybody who's interested in learning even more information, you can go back in the archives and find that one. |
| 2:02.6 | But for people who aren't familiar, Shane, what is the red granite grinder? |
| 2:08.3 | So it's a gravel adventure race. |
| 2:11.1 | So with the emphasis on adventure, because we use a lot of private land sections that go off of the gravel roads. |
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