DEBATE INTENSIFIES ON HOW MUCH TRAIL ACCESS TO GIVE E-BIKES

The sun was almost setting when 14-year-old Daniel Giffin crossed the finish line on his electric mountain bike last August, nearly the last in the pack of thousands of cyclists riding across the state of Iowa in the stifling late-summer heat.

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Beneath his teal helmet, patches of Daniel’s shaggy brown hair were loose from his 48th radiation treatment. His left foot and lower leg were weak from a cancerous tumor — once half the size of a human fist — lodged on the right side of his brain.

But with a slight assist from his bike’s motor, the Colorado Springs boy pedaled alongside his mom for 12 hours, stopping for ice cream and dancing on their bikes along the way. He was ready to quit, but pushed through the last 10 miles of Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Race Across Iowa, known to cyclists as RAGBRAI.

“I was like crazy wiped and I didn’t think I was gonna do it. But I put myself in a mindset and we just started listening to music, dancing. And so when I actually finished I was so happy,” Daniel told The Colorado Sun earlier this month, recounting his feat.

Then an older cyclist rode past him, turned and sneered: “Cheater!”

The young cyclist had just clocked 87 miles.

But the man’s comment didn’t get him down. For Daniel, already a veteran cyclist by the time he was diagnosed with cancer at age 11, an e-bike is just another tool allowing him to keep doing what he has always loved to do.

“I’m on an e-bike for specific reasons — it’s not just because I want a free ride. I push myself,” said Daniel, now 15 and undergoing chemotherapy treatments. “I’m here to try and do something that I wouldn’t normally do and just get out of my comfort zone.”