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Ironman Hawaii 2008 Expo

The expo at Ironman Hawaii had its first full day today and it is quite a big larger than ever before. There are actually quite a few companies present who had never been in the official Ironman expo in Hawaii before. Plus it is a great place to run into various pros and industry folks.

Ironman Hawaii 2008 – the morning swim.

There are still 4 days to go until the 2008 Ironman Hawaii, but the venues are already busy as if the race where tomorrow. We went down to the swim start this morning and checked out the action there.

Andy Potts Interview

Some people think Potts can, like Luc van Lierde in 1996, win in his debut at Kona. Other people wonder if the tall, talented former University of Michigan NCAA swimmer is serious – or if this is just a scouting expedition.

Bennett and Norden victorious in Dallas

Greg Bennett held off Kona bound Andy Potts and a slew of ITU studs to capture the 2008 Toyota US Open Triathlon in Dallas, Texas. In the women’s race, Under 23 World Champion Lisa Norden of Sweden outran 2007 US Open Champion Sarah Haskins of the U.S. for the win.

Cunningham and Bentley win Longhorn 70.3

Richie Cunningham beat a stellar field at the 2008 Ironman Longhorn 70.3 in Austin, Texas and Lisa Bentley nabbed the women’s title. Five-time World Champion Simon Lessing finished 4th in his final pro race.

The year of Stephen Bayliss

2008 has been a very magical year for Stephen Bayliss with Ironman wins in South Africa and UK, and a bunch of other very fine results. He is currently getting ready for Kona and has even bigger plans for late November.

Brad Kahlefeldt checks in

After his win at the Bordeaux Grand Prix, Brad Kahlefeldt got his hip operated on and he checked in with Slowtwitch.com to give an update on his health and his coaching situation.

Industry faces at Interbike

Every year for 27 years the bicycle industry gathers somewhere in the American southwest to schmooze, sell, tout, brag, spy, gossip and swap lies at Interbike. Since the mid-1990s, the Mecca for North American capitalist, cycle-worshipping pilgrims has been Vegas. And what better nexus for this harmonic convergence, er, perfect storm of hope for a big score by entrepreneurs of two-wheel human-powered innovation and their target audience, bicycle nuts?

Interbike is 313,000 square feet of exhibit space and 660,000 square feet of floor space in the Sands Convention Center, 1,835 unique businesses, 22,974 expo attendees, 977 retailers, 486 media.

This edition of Interbike occurred in the very same week that some of Wall Street’s most formidable investment institutions collapsed like a house of cards and elite economists and Main Street were both in a tizzy. Still, and in part thanks to the 5-star demographics of multiport, Interbike remained in its bubble of well-being and enthusiasm for the elegant tools of their sport.

Here are a few of Interbike’s faces.

Meditation on Vegas

Las Vegas is Everyman’s cut-rate Babylon, wrote Alistair Cooke. Vegas—you must know in your bones even if you don’t think about it—is the most wickedly efficient, deviously designed and advanced engine to prime the capitalist pump ever devised.

Billionaire hotelier Steve Wynn gave everyone the blasphemous half-truth when he said: “Vegas is sort of how God would do it if he had money.” Rather, Vegas is how men who would be gods do it in order to get more money.

Vegas is a man-made mirage built in the land of natural mirages. As Norman Mailer wrote in The American Dream, “The night before I left Las Vegas, I walked out into the desert to look at the moon. There was a jeweled city on the horizon, spires rising into the night, but the jewels were diadems of electric and the spires were the neon of signs ten stories high.”

Famed architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown wrote a revolutionary treatise called Learning From Las Vegas 40 years ago praising the way the practical architecture of the casinos on the Strip played in perfect audacious tune to the blue collar id, the everyman dreams of fortune with neon signs three times taller than the low-slung boxes housing the money machines—the casinos chock a block with one armed bandits and baccarat tables. Elitist east coast architects harrumphed and lifted their pinkies in dismay, but soon enough the Yale School of Architecture and the rest of the design elite were studying the place and applying the lessons to buildings around the world.

Vegas is the Capital of Overreaching. It’s where a young, avenging Muhammad Ali punished a fading Floyd Patterson for perceived slights by raining down painful but non-knockout blows late into their heavyweight fight. It’s where Evel Knievel crashed out in 1968 trying to jump Caesars fountains on a big fat Harley with no suspension. It’s where Mike Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear trying to get DQ’d when he could not stand the humiliation of a resounding defeat. It’s where Hunter Thompson was drawn to mourn the death of the Sixties in a drug-crazed spree. It’s where unhinged personas like Britney Spears go to get married and divorced in a night

And it’s the home of casinos where entertainers that nobody knows are still alive can go out every night and find a nostalgic older audience seeking the reassurance of 40-year-old tunes. Perhaps the casino stages are the entertainment industry’s way of realizing Howard Hughes’ dream of cryogenically preserving bodies until a cure can be found.

And for those Cassandras looking for an augury of imminent ecological disaster, just go to nearby Lake Mead. Its water level down by 65 feet – half full with 5 trillion gallons of water to go — just as Vegas has virtually doubled to 1.9 million population in the past 20 years. Omnivorous Vegas has hatched plans for a $1 billion water pipeline to snatch water from not-so-nearby rivers and underground springs. All to keep the Bellagio’s 100-foot-high synchronized fountains reaching to the sky like rockets at timed intervals to the tune of Strauss waltzes.

Just as it appropriates water to keep all the world’s amenities flowing in “a habitat that won’t grow a tomato,” as Jason Love said, current Las Vegas appropriates the world’s greatest landmarks with its simulacrums of the Seven Wonders of the World. While environmentalists may damn Vegas for its insatiable appetite for energy and water, this Emerald City plunked down in the middle of a dead sea can counter: We make it up in saved jet fuel for tourists who might spend their life savings traveling to New York, Paris, Egypt, Venice and Rome.

It’s just according to plan that Vegas leaves most visitors knocked off their bearings and counting their shekels to make sure they have enough to catch a cab to McCarran on the final day.