a new
CHriS lane
by dan o’sulliVan
Story & Photo
Classic Champion
B
y now the fishing industry has seen the 2012 Bassmaster Classic results. Chris lane; a Guntersville, ala. resident, - for- merly from Florida - executed a wonder- fully gutsy game plan and won the biggest event in the sport. i don’t want to talk about the hows, the whys or even the whens. What i want to discuss is the who. i was standing there on the arena floor shooting images for advanced angler.com’s Classic raw cover- age throughout the three weigh-ins of the event. i was at the takeoffs in the morning, was at the Classic expo and was interviewing anglers at different points of the event. When i interviewed lane on the second day of the event; after he took the lead, he said that he had been dreaming about winning this event since he was a kid. of course; all of us dream about winning the Classic, the World Series, the Super Bowl, the daytona 500, the indy 500 or whatever; but, i got the impression that it was extremely vivid to him. He told me about the thought of putting his family into his boat and taking a victory lap around the arena and what that would mean to him. He also talked about it on camera during The Bassmaster Classic show on eSPN2 while he was on the water; so, it was a common theme. Then, as quickly as he entered into that conversa- tion, lane began to return to the fishing aspects of the day. He talked about how he had to focus, how the job
wasn’t done and how he had one more day to complete the task at hand. it was a random, kind of scattered interview that normally i would have tried to figure out a way to bring back to solely the topic at hand - fishing in the Bassmaster Classic. i didn’t this time, i wanted to hear what he had to say as he poured his plans, his faith, his love of family, his heart and his dreams out on the table for all to see.
I loved every minute of it. You see, the last three Classic champions we’ve had alton Jones at lake Hartwell in 2008, Skeet reese on the red river in 2009 and Kevin Vandam at lay
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