BACKROADS • SEPTEMBER 2021
Page 6
O N T H E MAR K MARK BYERS
PHILLY When June came, I missed Philly. Not Independence Hall or the Liberty Bell, although they are magnificent. I don’t miss the city any more than I miss any city, which is not at all: I’m a country boy. I don’t miss cheesesteaks because I have a deli that makes the best in the world. No, the “Philly” I miss is a bicycle race the likes of which will never be seen again. From 1985 to 2005, it was the Corestates US Pro Championship and the list of winners was a who’s who of US Cycling. The inaugural race was won by Eric Heiden of the 7-11 Team, the squad that would introduce US professional cyclists to the world. I marshaled or officiated at the race many times after I became a moto official in 2000 and gained an insider’s appreciation for the race. Just to break in as a marshal, I had to prove myself. Philly was also the first professional bike race I ever worked as a
moto ref and the contrast of what I’d been doing to what I was expected to do there was stark: it was going from being an umpire of high school games to working the MLB playoffs. It was “The Show.” And what a show it was: 156 miles of racing over a 12.3 mile course that started on the Ben Franklin Parkway between the fountain at Logan Circle and the “Rocky Steps” of the art museum. It traveled out Kelly Drive, past the boathouses on the Schuylkill River. Downtown was cool, circling the fountain at peg-dragging speeds, but the real show was in Manayunk. Coming off Main Street in Manayunk, I made a right, then another onto a short cobblestone section under a train track, and then a hard, narrow left back onto Levering Avenue. And then, the “Manayunk Wall,” a steep climb of up to 17% grade in places that slowed the cyclists to a crawl and burned my clutch. The noise and smell of tens of thousands of spectators hit me like an auditory and olfactory barrier. People on The Wall had been there for hours, drinking, grilling, dancing, peeing…whatever. Beer literally ran down the gutters and that was the dominant odor, thank heaven. It was narrow and I’d either be picking my way past cyclists that were shelled off the back or be hemmed in by team cars, so it was nothing to have my mirrors rapping the knuckles of spectators leaning over the barriers. One group would erect a drilled PVC pipe as a shower and on hot days, many would dive under “Murphy’s Watering Hole” for a brief respite. One group held up a sign that said, “You honk, we drink” and I obliged them on each lap, possibly becoming the only sports official in Philly to ever be cheered. I’ve done a lot of pro races now, including the World Championships, and I still consider Philly’s Manayunk Wall the single greatest spectacle in bicycle racing.
Philly was a beautiful, psycho girlfriend of races one you loved and hated and couldn’t leave. Comms were always sketchy, as the promoter would get radios from the cheapest source. Many years we worked the race with Nextel flip-phones that doubled as walkie-talkies: the problem was that if the phone flipped closed on your handlebar mount, you’d lose the connection and have to reprogram it. On the “Fall from the Wall” as we dropped back to the river, we’d be doing sixty or seventy miles an hour down those rough streets, riding one-handed, using gloved hands to reprogram phones that had flipped closed. One time, a Philly cop made a big deal about the Fall from the Wall and the speeds we reached and laid down an ultimatum that anyone squealing tires would be removed from the race. That year, the Chief Official’s driver spun out their car in a turn coming off the wall…right in front of the cop who gave the lecture. He got pulled out of the race for a lap as penance. I wish I had the space to relate a few more stories, but mostly I wish that crazy, beautiful race still Continued on next page
