Cycling in America...

I have now found that the general population of America doesn’t care about bike racing very much, but this is something that most of us (who race bikes and or follow the sport) have known for years. Look people, cycling in America is about the biggest fringe sport that there is. There are things though, that give me some hope that folks in America can enjoy the sport. The US Pro championships that are held in Philadelphia every year is one bastion of light. Hundreds of thousands of people turn out to watch the guys and gals race every year. People line the route just about from start to finish, with of course high concentrations of people at the start/finish, and on The Wall (the big climb over in Manayunk that the riders have to scale just about every lap, and where most of the race carnage takes place). A relatively new race, the San Francisco GP is another one that draws crowds, but it has been in trouble. There are costs for local police that keep running up, the city doesn’t like to close down the streets all day, so as a function of this, they dropped their women’s race this year in San Francisco, which is another shot to women’s racing in America. Then there is the semi-local to me, Charlotte Downtown Criterium that they’ve had the past couple of years. I wasn’t able to go this year, but last year, there were about 20,000 people out watching the race, and with a prize list of $125,000 for the men, and $50,000 for the women, the racers turn out in droves for this one. Centered in downtown Charlotte, I can say that this is one race worth attending. They covered it live on local TV last year for the last 30 minutes, had overhead helicopter shots and everything. It was pretty sweet, and I can only hope that it continues.

The thing that does bring me down about racing is doping. I’m getting sick of hearing about it, sick of hearing about who is on dope, who isn’t, who got busted, who hasn’t gotten busted, and so on and so forth. Then the arguments start on the cycling websites that I frequent, and all too often, the news of cycling events going on around the world get drowned out by the doping talk. Most recent of course was Armstrong’s urine samples from the 1999 Tour were analyzed and found to have EPO in them. The test for EPO is in question, especially regarding 6 year old urine samples, and coincidentally enough, there is nothing Armstrong can do to defend himself in this situation, because the remainder of the samples used to “show” he used EPO in 1999 were used up in the testing, or they didn’t have enough left over to complete further tests on, and they were destroyed. Yeah, pin someone up against a wall without a way to prove their innocence, that’s pretty nice, and just follows along the French journalist path that has been to take down Armstrong ever since he started winning le Tour in 1999. Then there is Tyler Hamilton who is still fighting his blood doping charge in the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) just last week from a year ago. On one hand, I hope he gets off, I seriously do. On the other hand, if he was cheating, then he should be thrown to the wolves. Everyday, there is a new doping story, and everyday, you have people arguing for and against the accused doper. It’s an endless stupid cycle, and essentially, I want clean sport just as much as the next guy, but can we just report on the races, and have doping as a side note? Doping in cycling has been going on as long as there has been professional cycling, and it will continue forever I’m certain of that. The pressure to perform for most of these guys, too high, and they will do what they need to do to remain in the professional peloton. In America a lot of times, if you compete in cycling, you’re most of the time, a little more well off than the common person, you are most likely upper middle class and or higher. In Europe, cycling is seen as a way for the lower class folks to get off of the farms, and break out, and possibly make some money and not have to work menial jobs and labor for the rest of their lives. It’s a way to crawl out of poverty for them. So, they will do what they need to do to remain a professional cyclist, and to remain on a team, and to get paid possibly a little more than their brethren working in a factory in Europe somewhere. Even then, a lot of pro cyclists don’t get paid too much money, and seldom will they have health insurance or other benefits that normal workers might have. This plight for American pros is even worse. You can have a pro team in America and essentially “pay” your riders little to nothing. Let’s just say the vast majority of American pro riders don’t make a livable wage riding bikes for a living.

I still love it though, still love it especially on the local level that I compete at (well, not so much this year, but in year’s past and all). I still love being on the bike, I still love hanging out with the people that I’ve met over the years, and still love the sport itself. I do get disillusioned with all of the talk of doping, and we’ve even had a few cases of it on the local level in North Carolina. One of my teammates got busted for it last year, though he maintains his innocence, and he doesn’t have the cash reserves to prove his innocence, so he is serving a 2 year suspension. Another guy from Chapel Hill, Randy Dreyer got busted for taking diet pills, and is also serving a 2 year suspension. While I sort of feel bad for my former teammate, Dreyer, good riddance. That guy is an asshole of an unimagined magnitude. I have never in my life met someone so cocky and such an asshole that there is nobody that I personally know that likes the little sawed off bitch. And that’s being nice. But I digress, him not being around for 2 years is a good thing indeed.

Where am I going with this? Don’t know really. Next season, I’ll be back riding and racing again, and I hope to “get the band back together.” Meaning, we’ll start getting more folks to come out and race with us again, as Jason has promised. Get people to take road trips on the weekend, and just get a large group of folks together to hang out with, goof off with, and have a good time again. This year, a lot of that was lost, and even the year before. People falling out of the sport, moving away, and doing other things with their time. Used to be that we’d all roll down to some races, and we’d have 3 or 4 hotel rooms all next to each other, people jam packed into them like sardines, and telling jokes, farting, watching TV, making fun of one another, especially making fun of Curtis, and just generally have a great time. That’s been lacking, and maybe we can get some of it back. The camaraderie, that was the BEST thing about racing in the past, and I hope it can be like that again, because I miss it. I still love racing, but having the friends and people around, well, that was bar none the best part of the weekend. I could have bad races, but having good people around, that more than made up for it. Maybe we can get Graham, Jason, Joel, Scott, Matt, Jeremy, Jason Mc, Johnny Wall, Steve-O, and others to come on back out. I’m sure that I can convince some of them to get back out there, and I think that would make a huge difference, besides, they miss it, they just don’t know it.