Local cyclist invited to race in Europe

Marshall Opel meets Levi Leipheimer after winning bronze in California race

By DAVID ERICKSON / Whitefish Pilot

A Whitefish High School senior is on an all-expense-paid trip to Europe to compete with the U.S. National Junior cycling team.

Marshall Opel said he wasn’t expecting to be asked to join the team.

“It was totally out of the blue,” he said. “I just got an e-mail from the national team director asking me to be on the team. He just wanted good guys to go over to Europe and represent the U.S. well.”

The director, Ben Sharp, scouted Opel from the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Opel will spend more than two weeks in Switzerland and Belgium with five other young cyclists competing against teams from all over Europe.

“I’m stoked,” Opel said. “We’ll start off with a few single-day races in Belgium, then we’ll do a four-day stage race in Switzerland.”

Because he’s never raced internationally, Opel can’t make a prediction about how well his team will fare against the European competition on fairly hilly terrain. He said he already knows the five other cyclists from meeting them at other races.

Last Sunday, Opel won the Bronze medal in the 2008 USA Cycling National Championships in Orange County, Calif. Opel said the race was about 70 miles long in the foothills of outside of Irvine. He competed with about 140 other cyclists. The gold medalist will be on Opel’s team in Europe.

This past July, Opel won his division at the Cascade Cycling Classic in Bend, Ore. Also competing and winning his division at the event was Butte native Levi Leipheimer. Opel had a chance to talk with the famous cyclist and took his picture with him.

“I told him I was from Montana, and he was psyched to hear that because there’s not that many of us,” Opel said. “We also chatted a bit about the race.”

Leipheimer recently won the Bronze medal in the cycling Time Trial at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Opel said that while he admires Leipheimer, he is realistic about his chances of reaching the same level.

“It kind of depends on how the next couple of years go,” he said. “I don’t know if racing professionally is something that I’m going to be able to do.”

Opel, who started cycling competitively about four or five years ago, has been training almost every day for his European adventure.

“I’ve been riding with the boys all over the Flathead valley,” he said. “I don’t measure it by distance. I measure it by hours, and I do a few hours every day.”