YOUR SPACE: Springs man wins national clean car competition

Here's the dirt on Vincent Cano ...

There isn't any ... well, in his cars, that is.

He swept, scrubbed and sprayed it away.

The Colorado Springs native won a gold medal and $1,000 in National Car Rental's Clean Car Olympics in Orlando, Fla.

He was pitted against some of the nation's best bug-scraping, crumb-sucking, glass-cleaning jocks.

"I'm used to being picky about every little crack and crevice," says Cano, 28.

Contest preliminaries drew 2,000 National service agents ¬- those folks who wipe clean the crusty, catsup-stained evidence you guiltlessly leave behind because, after all, it's just a rental car.

Cano cleans about 30 cars a day at the company's Colorado Springs Airport hub.

He first won the state contest in Denver, then the regional meet in Texas to advance to the nationals.

The week before the Orlando finals, Cano's grandfather suddenly took ill and was on his death bed.

Cano admits he can be mercurial at times, but in this case it was in despair that he punched a sign outside the hospital to vent over losing the man who raised him. It fractured his hand and broke knuckles.

His swollen hand hurt like heck at the timed competition in Orlando, where he had 45 minutes total to rid three dirty rental cars of bugs, grime and litter.

"I kept telling myself it's only 45 minutes, I can suck it up. I had some help from upstairs," he says, referring to his grandpa.

Cano likes the bragging rights of victory. "I used to tease my boss that I was the best from here to Albuquerque. I talk a lot of crap around here."

He started detailing cars as a teen. It's more than a job - it's a lifestyle. "I clean up the breakroom here. I keep my house immaculate."

He has two daughters who don't live with him and two Chihuahuas that do. "My family can't believe I have dogs because of how anal I am with the cleanliness thing," he says.

Cano credits his kick boxing background with an edge in the clean-car ring.

"In martial arts, 90 percent of it is in your head," he says. "It either makes you or breaks you. A lot of times I'd get discouraged, I'd think, ‘Man, this guy is too good,' and lose."

He went to Florida confident of a win. He didn't take off his medal until he got home, which drew attention at the Orlando airport.

People asked him what sport his medal was in.

"I said, ‘I cleaned a few cars.' They didn't know what I was talking about," he says. "I kind of felt corny with the medal being that it was for a clean car olympics, but I figured, you know what, today's my day."

He doesn't wear the medal to work. It might get dirty.