Cycling Illustrated Issue 2 Fall 2013 by Cycling Illustrated

Young Talent

R ISI NG

America’s

PLUS

Fall 2013

ISSUE

Mark Cavendish

on world championships, tour victories and being the fastest man on the road

THE PERFECTIONIST

Director’s Cut

The Voices of American Cycling

Women’s Cycling Coalition

Jedi Masters

INSIDE t he I S S U E

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ISSUE 2

Fall 2013

Table of

CONTENTS 6

Founder’s Note

Founders

Contributors

Starting Line 12

“

“If I ride, I only win 90% of the races. If you put the best team to work with me, I win 100% of the races.” MARK CAVENDISH

Going all out for the ‘W’

pg 18

What 14 16

4 | cyclingillustrated.com «

Wheels for Reals

Carbon hoops for your next big race

Dear Cycling Fans

From the desk of the Women’s Cycling Association

Fish Eye A 180º Photo Essay

Where 28

pg 80

The Attack

Back in Action A short chat with Rory Sutherland

36 38

40 50

pg 36

Send the Kids to Europe

pg 58

Jim Miller on USA Cycling’s development programs

Choosing the Right Team

Who should you race with next year?

Director’s Cut

What are the most important decisions you make as the leader of your organization?

Leave the Scratches

Alex Kostelnik and 2020 Cycle

pg 84

Photographer’s Choice

A photo essay

How 58 60 62

Black Magic

The dark art of buying carbon wheels

3 Ways to Boost Your Fitness this Winter Getting the Shots

Photo Motos at the Tour of California

Who 66

70 76 80

The Gravity Side

Brian Lopes on bike skills, doping, and not being a douche.

Jedi Masters

35+ and still crushing

The Up and Comers

Today’s interviews with tomorrow’s champions

The Perfectionist

Mark Cavendish on world championships, tour victories and being the fastest man on the road

The Ringmasters

Voices of American Cycling

Wonder Women

Women Racers Alison Powers and Lauren Hall

In Loving Memory

A tribute to Chris “Cono” Contreras and Jackie Dunn

Junior Talent Rising

Future pros grow in Northern California’s development teams

Connect with Cycling Illustrated Connect with us to stay updated on the biggest news, names and races in cycling. cyclingillustrated.com /cycillustrated /cyclingillustrated » cyclingillustrated.com | 5

founder’s note

“

Success is difficult to achieve without commitment, character, and tenacity. BRANDON “BJ” HALE

From

SCRATCH Dear Readers:

As we prepare for the transition into winter, this marks the last issue of 2013. With our second issue, we bring you a new look, a new website, and a collection of talented writers. Still, we have chosen to hold on to the two things that deﬁned us as in our inaugural issue: a dedication to new and emerging voices in literature, and a forum for writers. The print and literary publishing world is changing. As writers, we need spaces to express our thoughts, and as people we crave connection with others. As relationships become less personal, writing has evolved as a way to connect in fellowship. At Cycling Illustrated, we do not simply cover cycling. We understand relationships often depend on reciprocity, and we are committed to providing a space for athletes to express themselves and to connect with their fans. Through the years, I have learned that true quality is a result of merging talent and commitment. Our busy lives have allowed some of us to hide behind our talent and to become less committed. This extends to all areas of our work, relationships, and even sports. In the retail world, true quality never goes on sale because of the investment involved. The same holds true in all aspects of life. True quality requires sacriﬁce and commitment. Talent, on the other hand, is a gift, and with that gift comes potential. The potential to be great relies on the ability to be committed to the talent. 6 | cyclingillustrated.com «

Still, some of the most unintentional people remain the most talented. Talented people can float by on broken pieces and fool an indiscriminate eye into thinking they are committed, but there is a huge difference. When talented people camouflage their lack of commitment, they do not use their talent to its full potential. Have you been trying to bring down the giant with a lack of commitment? Success is difficult to achieve without commitment, character, and tenacity. Lack of commitment denies whatever success is headed your way. You must fully engage, and become fully invested, to obtain something you want. If you never fully engage and throw your whole self at your dream, you will never achieve that dream. As far as blessings go, you will catch some crumbs that fall from the master’s table because you are there, but you will never receive the real blessing that comes from being committed. You will only benefit because you are in the right place at the right time. If you join in the connectivity of commitment with the universe you will receive the blessings your heart desires. I truly hope you enjoy this issue of Cycling Illustrated, as our commitment to you, the reader, is “true quality.” Respectfully, Brandon “BJ” Hale Founder

Connect with Cycling Illustrated Connect with us to stay updated on the biggest news, names and races in cycling.

cyclingillustrated.com

/cycillustrated

/cyclingillustrated

Meet Our

FOUNDERS DANNY MUNSON

He captures some of your most precious moments. He paints a picture that tells a story. He is a photographer who records memories, events, time, and people through a camera. His images demonstrate the emotional value of his work, and allow the observer to see, touch, and feel the power of photography and how it can impact lives.

@DMunsonPhoto

BRIAN HODES

Brian’s travels in 2013 so far have taken him to France, Turkey, Canada, Argentina and throughout the United States. He has photographed some of the most prestigious cycling events around the world. Brian’s images are timeless. He turns every click of the camera into a ﬁne work of art. Because he immerses himself in the moment, his images document the events he shoots and the emotions surrounding them.

@veloimages

TODD MACMILLAN

California native Todd MacMillan grew up mountain biking in the hills of the Monterey Peninsula. He developed his photography and graphic design skills while attending college at UCSB. In a quest to meld his passion for cycling with his knowledge of computers and photography, he helped Cycling Illustrated develop the original idea, and built the Cycling Illustrated website.

todd@notfarnow.com » cyclingillustrated.com | 7

contributors GARY TINGLEY Gary Tingley, M.S., is a Southern California based professional licensed USA Cycling Level 2 / Certiﬁed Power-based Training Coach (CPBT). Working with competitive athlete clients from across the nation, over the past 7 years he has coached elite and masters racing cyclists to 12 USA Cycling Masters National and California State / District individual and team time trial championship titles, including course records, and world, national and state podium placings in UCI and USCF road, criterium and time trial events. For more information on personal coaching and training programs, visit http://garytingley.com or call (619) 721-3058.

SETH DAVIDSON Seth won the ﬁrst USCF race he ever entered, the Bloor Road to Blue Bluff Time Trial in Austin, Texas, in 1984. His racing career has had little in the way of success since that time. Seth writes the not-particularly-popular blog, Cycling in the South Bay, and practices law on the side. His upcoming book, cleverly named after the blog, will be published later this year.

BUILT BY CYCLISTS, WITH CYCLISTS AND FOR CYCLISTS

CHRIS LYMAN Chris Lyman lives in Northern California with one wife, two dogs, two bikes and not enough wine. He’s a PR guy by day and cat 1, two-time masters national time trial champion on weekends, racing for the Folsom Bike Cycling Team.

KEVIN HUNTER Kevin Hunter is a freelance writer and public relations consultant who lives in Long Beach, CA. For more than 25 years, Hunter has worked for numerous media outlets that include the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. Hunter is an avid cyclist and his other hobbies include running, crosstraining, reading, and listening to music. He is often seen spending way too much time at a local coffeehouse.

ANGELICA DIXON A full-time physical therapist and professional cycling photographer. In the cycling world, although primarily a photographer, she occasionally tries to write about it. She is married to a 45+ racer, Travis Dixon. With 4 kids, they squeeze in local NM races, and travel as often as possible to follow the national pro cycling scene.

JASON HARROD Jason resides in Northern California, Marin to be exact. He works for a living, but lives to ride, read, write, and spend time with his family. He is a mountain biker ﬁrst, a road biker by circumstance, and a ‘cross racer because it hurts and there is often beer involved. When he is not behind a desk punching buttons to support his brood or riding a bicycle, he can be found on the local softball diamond coaching his daughter’s traveling team. She is a wicked short stop. His son is a badass swimmer and water polo player. He loves his wife.

GRETA NEIMANAS A quirky, candy loving, tall sock wearing, tattooed, car and roller dancer playing bikes with @ExergyTWENTY16, and the @USParalympics national cycling teams.

ERIC DAVIS Eric Davis is a cat 2 cyclist with Bay Areabased, SquadraSF. When he is not riding or racing his bike (or thinking about riding or racing his bike) he can be found spending time with his lovely wife, Bronwen, and their cavalcade of furrry four-legged critters at home.

TRAVIS DIXON Travis Dixon lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his lovely wife Angelica and their four kids. Travis races as a cat 2 in NM, but likes to play with his peer group in regional and national masters races. A physical therapist for over 20 years, he manages a therapy department at a rehab hospital, which can be a good thing, because at his age you never know when you might need a room there!

JoE SILVA JoE Silva has been covering professional cycling, both online and in print, for the better part of ten years. He lives in Athens, GA where he produces the weekly music program Just Off The Radar for Georgia Public Broadcasting. He can be found online at JustOffTheRadar.com

@The_JoESilva

IAN PIKE The man with the mullet. His favorite piece of punctuation is the semi-colon and his favorite bike race is the madison.

@FullFlavorPike

ROBIN FARINA Robin began her cycling career over 10 years ago after graduating from the University of Tennessee. Currently, she races professionally for NOW and Novartis for MS, is the 2011 national road race champion, and a 2012 Olympic long team member. Robin owns an elite coaching company where she trains cyclists and triathletes of all levels. She co-owns Uptown Cycles in Charlotte, NC, one of the premier bike shop/ training centers in the country. When not on the bike, her time is spent helping the Women’s Cycling Association grow and become a global movement for women’s equality in sport and life.

SCOT HINCKLEYDANIELSON A reformed corporate car guy and current bike shop guy in the Pacific Northwest. Scot’s little slice of the cycling world is filled with commuters, bicycle campers, and bicycle tourists. He’s never owned any carbon fiber or spandex, but owns his fair share of wool and steel. Currently trying to fashion a bike mount for his fly fishing rod.

SEAN BURKE Sean is the head coach and owner of Crank Cycling. Sean has been a USAC certiﬁed coach since 2002, has degrees in nutrition and exercise physiology, and has taught college level exercise physiology, exercise testing, nutrition, and sports nutrition. When he’s not coaching or teaching, he enjoys international travel both with and without his bicycle. Sean has raced mountain bikes, road bikes, and even done a few ‘cross races, but mostly he sticks to the track on race days. He and his wife have 13 bikes between the two of them, and they ride them as often as possible.

TRINA JACOBSON Trina Jacobson is a mother and works in sales. She’s also a cat 1 road racer known as Quads of Fast Destruction. The native Texan still uses “y’all,” though she lives in San Diego.

@MommaRides

MARISOL FRANCO Marisol teaches high-school Spanish at High Tech High in Chula Vista, California. She translates on the side so that English speakers don’t miss out on great things written in Spanish.

LAURA MESEGUER Laura studied media studies at university and she has a degree in marketing and sport law. She worked for the press Agency Agencia EFE and worked in communications in two different companies for 3 years. Right now, she’s chief editor of Pedalier Pro magazine and a Eurosport reporter for the Cuelta a Espana. Laura works in commications and protocol for the cyclotourist race Mallorca312. She writes for the Festina microsite “This is Our Sport” and collaborates with other international publications.

@Laura_Meseguer

FOUNDER, PUBLISHER, AND CEO

ART DIRECTOR, MAGAZINE

Brandon Hale

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS, MAGAZINE

CO-FOUNDERS Danny Munson Brian Hodes Todd MacMillan

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Brandon Hale

CREATIVE DIRECTOR, MAGAZINE Brandon Hale

COPY EDITOR Ian Pike

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Hilary Hale Brandon Hale Brain Hodes Danny Munson

Jennifer Hood

Amy Hood Julie Mack Boyce

CINEMATOGRAPHERS/ VIDEO EDITORS Todd MacMillan Brandon Hale

ACCOUNTING Hilary Hale

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Danny Munson Brian Hodes Todd MacMillan Weldon Weaver

Todd MacMillan

COVER Brian Hodes Rider : Mark Cavendish Where: San Luis, Argentina

CONTRIBUTORS Seth Davidson, Gary Tingley, Scot Hinckley-Danielson, Sean Burke, Brandon Hale Ian Pike, Kevin Hunter, Chris Lyman, JoE Silva, Trina Jacobson, Marisol Franco, Angelica Dixon, Travis Dixon, Eric Davis, Greta Neimanas, Laura Meseguer, Jason Harrod, Robin Farina

DIRECTOR OF SALES AND DIGITAL MEDIA Linda Bush

SALES Jim Stewart Dawn Lindeman Sam An Linda Bush

ART DIRECTORS, WEB Todd MacMillan, Web

To Our Readers: Cycling Illustrated ™ Invites you to share your reactions to our latest stories. Send your correspondence to Editor, Cycling Illustrated ™ The Magazine P.O. Box 3187, Tustin, CA 92718 or to info@cyclingillustrated.com. This magazine accepts freelance contributors. However, unsolicited materials cannot be returned, and Cycling Illustrated ™ accepts no responsibility for loss or damage of unsolicited materials.

Cycling Illustrated™ P.O. Box 3187, Tustin, CA 92781 cyclingillustrated.com ©2013 Cycling Illustrated ™ All rights reserved. No part of the periodical may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written consent of the copyright owner. Views expressed herein are those of the authors, advertisers, and athletes. They do not necessarily reﬂect those of the ownership or management of the magazine.

ADVERTISERS: For inquiries, Please contact Brandon Hale at bj@cyclingillustrated.com.

Apology In our first issue, we wrongly credited Matt Freeman with writing the story Rolling Legends when the article was written by Kirk Bausch.

» cyclingillustrated.com | 9

Photos By Danny Munson

Thank you for reading the fastest growing cycling news source in the world.

BUILT BY CYCLISTS, WITH CYCLISTS, AND FOR CYCLISTS. Tayler Wiles signing the premiere issue of Cycling Illustrated

At Cycling Illustrated, we take you behind the scenes. We share with you many voices from the peloton. We enable you to make an emotional connection with the fans. With us, you’re able to grow your own fan base that will support your sport as you use this platform to tell your story.

While you are visiting us online, please make sure to: ➜ Visit our forums and get in on the conversation ➜ Post status updates ➜ Connect with people from the community ➜ Add friends ➜ Share videos and images

“Cycling Illustrated is the magician of cycling news. It is a quickmoving, entertaining, and a respected source of media. Cycling Illustrated connects with athletes like no other digital or print publication. For cycling fans, this site is like ﬁnding a national treasure.” - S. Smith, CI Reader

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More of Seth on the site Seth Davidson is writes a column regularly on Cycling Illustrated under the moniker, “Wankmeister.” Draw your own conclusions. Visit cyclingillustrated.com to check out his irreverant, hilarious-yet-informative news updates and cycling lessons. Fragile and sensative readers beware, nothing is sacred when Wankmeister is blogging...

ATTACK GOING ALL OUT FOR THE ‘W’

love it when a rider attacks. The conﬁdence, the commitment, and the sense of purpose all coalesce into a single decision, and the rider ﬂings herself out into the wind, alone, chained only by how much speed she can generate with her own lungs and legs.

The U.S. now has not one, but two Whether the attack succeeds or fails, major pro stage races. Century and whether you watch it launch from rides, group rides, Strava, and bike within the peloton or from the side commuting are activities so common of the road, it’s always an adrenaline and numerous that the only people rush. In the first phase of the attack, unaware are those whose hands are the rider is charging on adrenaline buried deep in their … sand. and aggression. In the second phase, she finds her Cycling Illustrated, rhythm and beats By Seth Davidson with its second the pedals. In the Photo By Danny Munson print edition, is third phase, she’s still in the first hurting like a phase of its attack. The adrenadog, her face contorted with the effort. line and force of the acceleration In the last phase, if she makes it to have sent it clear in a daring and the line, there’s the smile that comes suspenseful move. As we sit in the from deep inside, and it’s a smile that pack and watch CI power away, everyone who watches gets to smile some of us have decided to move up along with, too. a few slots and get ready to bridge. Cycling Illustrated has attacked. It’s too exciting, and the potential is They’ve summoned the will, looked too great to just sit and watch this at the competition, judged what’s great solo attack ride away from the left to race and the condition of the field without some additional legs in road, and decided “Now!” Powthe fray. ered by countless people for whom However it turns out, we don’t want bicycles are no longer just news, but to be the ones who say, “We let it are now mainstream news, CI has, ride away.” with this second print edition, made its bid for the win. I hope you’ll come with us. It’s windy and a long way to the finish, There are so many great reasons but this feels like the move that’s gofor CI to have attacked. Bike racing ing to stick. And win, lose, or draw, is part of the summer news cycle it’s gonna be fun. now. People watch the Tour early in the morning, or demand that their Facebook friends keep a tight lip until they’ve had a chance to watch it after work, or, best of all, they turn their summer vacation into a We don’t want live Tour de France experience. The local bike racing scene across America has more races, more racers, and more people wanting to know the “who, what, when, where, and why” behind competition on bicycles.

“

to be the ones who say, “We let it ride away.” SETH DAVIDSON

» cyclingillustrated.com | 13

WHEELS FOR REALS Carbon hoops for your next big race Compiled By The C.I. Editors

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❶ Mercury S5 Carbon Clincher MSRP $1,799

Light enough to be considered climbing wheels, stiffer than most deep section rims, and equally aero thanks to our new wide rim proﬁle. You may have seen these wheels in action during the Tour of California, or even on your local road rides. The S5 is an excellent choice when you are looking to PR in your next tri, win the sprint in a crit, or beat your buddy to the city limit sign. ➜ 20/24 Sapim Race Spokes ➜ 22mm width, 29mm depth ➜ Sapim Polyax aluminum self-locking nipple ➜ Fully Serviceable ➜ Mercury hub with oversized axle ➜ Shimano/Sram and Campy compatible ➜ Handbuilt in the USA ➜ 1,490g clincher 14 | cyclingillustrated.com «

❷ Novatec R5 MSRP TBD

A potent blend of deep profile aerodynamics and nimble handling. The wide hypertoroid profile and 50mm cross section allows for impressive straight line performance while minimizing deflection in cross winds.

❹ Karbon Speed XA MSRP ~$1,600

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A literal carbon copy of the expensive brands you wish you could afford. They are made in the same factories, have the same toroidal U-shape, and can be custom built with your choice of high-end hubs. You no longer have to spend thousands of dollars to have the best wheels. We’ve removed the middleman to deliver the highest quality product at the lowest possible price.

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The new Metron disc is built on our Metron spoked chassis for lighter weight, which also allows the wheel to be trued. It is both faster and stiffer due to the new PRA preload adjustable hub.

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➜ Brake track width (center): 21.5mm ➜ Bearings: Japanese steel ➜ Max tire pressure: 125psi / 8.62bars ➜ <1,500g tubular, <1,550g clincher » cyclingillustrated.com | 15

Photos By Brian Hodes

what

16 | cyclingillustrated.com ÂŤ

FROM THE DESK OF

AN OPEN LETTER

T HE

WCA

WCA_TWEET

he Women’s Cycling Association (WCA) started much like the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) did forty years ago. A small group of professional women cyclists met in a hotel restaurant after the Philly Cycling Classic on June 2, 2013. Representatives from most teams came with the intentions of creating equality for women’s cycling by gaining more media exposure at races, lobbying for equal prize purses, and creating a minimum salary structure that would allow women to focus on the sport of cycling as a viable career.

The outcome of that meeting created a strong bond between women from the professional peloton who have put team allegiances behind us in order to propel the sport of women’s cycling forward. Since that initial meeting, we have created the WCA to be an organization that anyone who supports women’s cycling and wants to see its advancement can join or be a supporter. In a few short months, we have met several times and gained the attention of the media and the sport’s governing bodies. We have strong momentum now after the meeting held the morning of the criterium of the Cascade Cycling Classic, which over twenty-five riders and one team director attended. The fire and passion these women and the cycling community have shown towards the WCA proves that now is the time to take action and not back down on our initiatives. Over the past year, time and time again the women’s peloton has been treated with less respect than our male counterparts. UCI president Pat McQuaid’s assessment that women’s cycling has “not developed enough” to instate a minimum salary shows that nothing will be done unless the riders themselves go to bat for change. After racing in the Amgen Tour of California Women’s Time Trial this year, and leaving that race with mixed emotions, I knew it was time to take the next step and that having a unified voice for women professional cyclists was absolutely mandatory. Why don’t the biggest tours in the USA

have a women’s race? If you are going to give us one stage with video coverage, it shouldn’t be cut off in the heat of the moment for the last rider of the men’s tour to be covered. These are issues that have to be addressed and solutions created. That is what the WCA is all about. The WCA doesn’t expect to have all the answers or solutions by the beginning of the 2014 season. With the momentum gaining and the resources joining our forces, I have no doubt that we will create a movement that will provide a stable infrastructure for future female cyclists to have a sustainable career path in cycling, grow a development grassroots program to put more women on bikes, and ensure the governing bodies of cycling work in tandem with the WCA to ensure equality in women’s professional cycling. The WCA encourages you to join our movement, by visiting www.womenscyclingassocition.org and becoming a member or supporter. Thank you for your interest in the WCA! Follow our twitter @wca_tweet and Women’s Cycling Association Facebook page to take part in our journey for equality.

President, the Women’s Cycling Association

The WCA MISSION S TAT E M E N T

To develop, maintain, and support a network of women cyclists and supporters of women’s cycling. The WCA will work to advance the interests of women cyclists by developing and advancing policies with governing bodies and engaging in media outreach. » cyclingillustrated.com | 17

what Tour of California 2013

FISH

EYE A 180°

ore than just photojournalism, this is cycling photography that captures passion, pain, artistry, and creativity on race day. This unique, rights-managed stock photo collection offers distinctive, stunning, one-of-a-kind images personally selected by the artists who shot them.

18 | cyclingillustrated.com «

©BRIAN HODES

Âť cyclingillustrated.com | 19

2013 Merco Credit Union Cycling Classic Downtown Grand Prix. ©DANNY MUNSON

20 | cyclingillustrated.com «

Redlands 2013 ©BRIAN HODES

» cyclingillustrated.com | 21

what 2013 Tour de Murrieta Stage Two Grand Prix. ©DANNY MUNSON

22 | cyclingillustrated.com «

2013 San Dimas Stage One GMR TT. ©DANNY MUNSON

» cyclingillustrated.com | 23

what

Cascade Cycling Classic 2013 ©BRIAN HODES

24 | cyclingillustrated.com «

Merco Credit Union Cycling Classic Downtown Grand Prix ©DANNY MUNSON

» cyclingillustrated.com | 25

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A short chat with Rory Sutherland

ustralian rider Rory Sutherland has returned to European racing after a long absence, during which he rode as a part of the Blue Train with the UnitedHealthcare Cycling Team. His performance with the Pro Continental team was strong, collecting wins at Nature Valley, Redlands, Cascade, Beauce, and Gila. He joined Team Saxo-Tinkoff in 2013, showing he still has what it takes to compete in the Continental Circuits as a part of the ProTeam’s roster. Sutherland took a few minutes to answer some questions for Cycling Illustrated about his climb back towards the top tier of bicycle racing. Interview By Brandon Hale Photo By Brian Hodes 28 | cyclingillustrated.com «

Cycling Illustrated: What has been the main difference between riding in Europe this season with SaxoTinkoff and riding domestically with UnitedHealthcare?

Obviously, there are major differences in the race program. I am now riding in some of the biggest races in the world, which are harder and longer than those in the USA. CI: How was the adjustment for you and your family upon moving to Europe?

The adjustment was not that bad, honestly. We have spent time in Europe the past few years, so it was not a complete unknown. We moved to Girona in November so that we could be truly settled before the racing began. Our daughter was born there in March and our son thrives in school. My wife is happy to have these experiences in Europe while we have the opportunity to do so. CI: In 2013, you were top six in the Klasika Primavera and had top ten finishes at the Tour of Turkey and the Circuit de la Sarthe. Are you satisfied with this result,

considering it’s your first year back in Europe?

Yes and no. While it is nice to get some recognition that you are going in the right direction, one always hopes for continued results. The season is far from over and I look forward to opportunities in the races to come. CI: What is the hardest thing about being a pro on the world’s biggest stage?

The length of the season and the time away from my family are two things that can be difﬁcult. As far as racing goes, the depth of talent in the European peloton is incredible, and makes for hard racing. CI: Can you give us an example in your cycling career when you pushed through ultimate pain to sacrifice for your team?

Well, that is basically my job description for each and every race! We have great leaders on our team, and I do all that I can to ensure a team victory. CI: Which of your accomplishments means the most to you? Why?

I had a couple of great races last August in Utah and Colorado. The team

worked so hard for me in each case, and I was thrilled to be able to deliver the victory for them. CI: What is your philosophy regarding cycling and youth development?

I think looking after our cycling youth is incredibly important, though our priorities are often skewed. We should ﬁrst be concerned with their education and how to encourage them to make good choices in life and in sport. CI: What kind of things do you enjoy doing off the bike?

Spending time with my family is most important to me. We have a 4-year-old and a 4-month-old, and it is difﬁcult to spend a lot of time with them during the season. CI: Any words of advice for young riders that are aspiring to get to the next level?

Do the hard work the right way and don’t burn bridges! They should also set a good example for those who follow them.

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TEAM HINCAPIE 30 | cyclingillustrated.com ÂŤ

Jim Miller on USA Cycling’s development programs

im Miller, as vice president of Athletics for USA Cycling, has been organizing USAC junior and U23 programs for years. He’s responsible for the names that we are continually seeing in the race headlines in the US and in Europe. His role has grown more administrative over the years, but, as Miller put it, “My heart is still on the road with the juniors, U23’s, and women.” Miller has created hugely successful programs that produced riders like Tejay van Garderen and Kristen Armstrong. His path to where he is today was not planned, or so he told Cycling Illustrated in a recent interview: “I was racing pro in the 90’s, living out of a car in the US and Europe, and scraping together a living. I began coaching when a friend asked for my help. I soon realized in the late 90’s that I was a better coach than a racer, and that’s when I gave myself over to coaching full-time. In 2001, USAC contacted me to take over the women’s program, which would become the T-Mobile women’s team.” T-Mobile was an incredibly successful team, and it was this success that lead

to a progression of Miller’s role with USAC.

“We’ve been able to develop a good rider identiﬁcation program where we can gather and keep a “Our programs consistently put database on these young riders out top-level riders in the US and and track them as they develop. Europe, and I would argue that We start when they are 14, 15, or the women’s team 16 years old and over the last decade introduce them to By Travis Dixon is one of the top 2 Europe. The phiIllustrations By Valerie Rustad or 3 programs in losophy there is to the world. “ steadily expose them to the highest level Miller takes a certain pride in of racing in the world, which hapthe success of his programs, and pens to be in Europe, and letting rightfully so, but as the interview the racers adapt to it. Racing in continued it became clear that it Europe is hard. You go to a junior wasn’t about him, it’s always about race and there will be 150 riders of the athletes. the same talent, all racing junior gears, and racing on roads they’ll CYCLING ILLUSTRATED: With be racing on for the next 30 years.” the success of the junior, U23, and women’s road teams, is there a general philosophy you follow when working with these young athletes in order to reach that end goal?

CI: With the different age groups that you have going to Europe, are there different expectations for what these riders learn and what they get

out of these experiences?

“With the 15-16 group, we do 3-4 week camps, and always in the summer so they don’t miss school. It’s more of a touchy-feely experience to learn about Europe. For example, this is how you get food, this is how you say ‘sandwich’, how to ride a pace line, how to ride through a caravan, how to take a feed from a soigneur at the side of the road. For the 17-18’s, we’ll develop a rider development plan which is more individualized. This is where we work with the rider and his trade team trainers and coaches to develop their training and racing programs. It’s only events like the World Championships and Nations Cups that we put together a team to try to win, and that is when we can be involved with team dynamics, tactics, hierarchy, etc. Basically, in the 5-7 years that we have these athletes, it’s about rider develop» cyclingillustrated.com | 31

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“

Racing in Europe is hard. You go to a junior race and there will be 150 riders of the same talent, all racing junior gears, and racing on roads they’ll be racing on for the next 30 years.” - Jim Miller

32 | cyclingillustrated.com «

ment and working with their trade teams to make sure the riders have what they need in order to progress along this continuum towards that ultimate goal of being a top-tier rider. We are in a unique situation where we don’t have to answer to sponsors. We can do what is right for the athlete all the time. For us, it doesn’t matter if they are with us or their trade team provided they are on this path of progression.” CI: Along that line of not having to answer to sponsors, aside from results, how do you measure the success of your programs?

“Results always count, but they’re not the only metric. We measure the number of graduates that come out of the U23 program and move onto ProTour teams and Pro Continental teams in Europe or the US. These kids are successful and making a living racing their bikes. But some go to college and become something else, doctors, lawyers, etc. There’s a story that I have told a number of times. If I leave the names out nobody thinks about it

until the very end when I throw the names in. But I personally coached two kids from when they were 14 years old on. They were both on the national team. One went on to a World Tour team. One got hired by a Continental team ,but also went through the University of Colorado pre-med program and got accepted to Washington University in St Louis, which is one of the most prestigious medical universities in America. In the end, I always ask everybody, ‘which kid do you think is more successful?’ Nobody can really say who it is, but the two kids were Tejay van Garderen and a kid named Chris Stockburger. Both are insanely successful in their own right. One did it in cycling and one didn’t. I can’t say that I am more or less proud of either of them.” CI: So, your programs ideally develop a person, not just a top rider. Is that accurate?

“Yeah, I think thats how you have to look at it because they are people at the end of the day.” CI: And you are teaching them structure.

You are teaching them the work involved to reach a goal, and it just so happens that Stockbuger took those lessons and that work ethic and turned it into medical school. Tejay took it to bike racing. That’s an incredible metric, to use your term, to measure success. Ok, getting back to racing. You are asking these groups of kids to come together for certain races on unfamiliar roads and they are going against organized teams on their home turf. How do the US kids do?

“Well, to tell you the truth, we made it our turf. This year we relocated all of our European bases into one facility in the Limburg region of the Netherlands, near Maastricht. We’ve been racing in this area and on all the roads in Holland, Belgium, and France since 1999. So, our team directors know the roads and they know the in’s and out’s of the races. A majority of these kids coming up from 15-16, 17, 18, U23’s; they know more about these roads than they do about American racing. I guess the whole point of that is

that I think they do ﬁne. I think we run as professional a team as anybody. The goal is that they feel comfortable in Europe and they feel like they can be in Europe and want to be in Europe. And thats where you can make your roots, so then thats where the next team comes from, and they feel comfortable, and it just makes it work. “We try to progress them along the way. With the U23’s, we’re trying to accomplish something. We’re there to win races. We work on a lot of strategy and tactics. 17 and 18 is a lot of development, of course, but more based on the how-to of winning races: how to ride in cross winds, how to read races, how to protect a lead, these kinds of things. When they become U23’s, you don’t have to teach then that. Then you are just working on strategy and tactics all the time. 15 and 16 is even less intense as far as the pressure goes. It’s really hand holding and an introduction to Europe. We try to make it fun and as comfortable as possible, so that the kids want to come back

and they want to be part of this. But part of this process is that 15, 16, 17 to U23, the pressure and expectations get slowly ratcheted up, and, before they know it, they have their own expectations and they expect to win.” CI: You mentioned earlier that there is a component to all of this that is not just the racing, which is obviously what there are there for, but they need to get used to the cultural differences. It sounds like there is another progression right alongside the racing expectations.

“Back in the 90’s, you went to Europe to race in March and you came back in October and thats why it was so difﬁcult for Americans to compete, because it was such a massive commitment to get in and then to get out of Europe. There were the different languages, and the different cultures, and that makes it really tough. But the way that this progresses is that the time you are there as a 15-16 year old is really short. About the time you’re getting homesick and you’ve been challenged enough,

you’re on a plane going home. So, you don’t really get to that burnt out phase. The 17 and 18’s, we deﬁnitely stretch the amount of time that they are there. You are talking, maybe, 3-5 week blocks, but they may be more frequent than they were for the 15 and 16’s. And then with the U23’s, its where you start getting into longer blocks of 4-7 weeks with a lot of racing. But at that point they are familiar with the area. They are familiar with the languages and the cultures. They are well versed in ﬁnding food and social life. It’s just easier at that point when you are spending more time there. And the setup there is good. We have a service course there just like a pro team does. We have 5 caravan cars. The hotel we stay in is set up for long term stays, as opposed to vacationers. The place has done a super job of making it ‘Team USA,’ and making it home base. Everyone who works there speaks English. It’s just easy and a comfortable place to be. And the Netherlands, in general, the people speak fantastic English. Our base » cyclingillustrated.com | 33

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“

It’s discipline. It’s time management. It’s about following this goal-oriented process. It’s about work ethic and discipline. If you can collect these characteristics from our programs then you can be successful no matter what you do.” - Jim Miller 34 | cyclingillustrated.com «

for the last 12 years had been in the heart of Flanders, where the people are...of a heartier soul...if you will. They speak Flemish, Dutch, or French, but they don’t necessarily want to speak English. So, I think the new location is just a little bit more American friendly.” CI: These kids are coming in as the ‘outsiders.’ Is there added pressure? Are they welcomed? Do they have to fight harder for respect?

“In Europe, in bike racing, you deﬁnitely have to earn your place. There’s no question about it. You have 150 kids in a race, and all 150 kids are trying to earn their place. But that’s part of it. That’s part of the education.” CI: Does wearing the US colors create an added challenge for these athletes?

“I think it goes a lot of ways. In the last 10 years, you’ve seen such a rise of the AngloSaxons in the sport of cycling. It went from being a predominantly western european sport to Great Britain, Australia, and the USA

really stepping up and taking control. From that end, I think there’s a lot more respect from the peloton when you wear the USA, Australian, or British flag when even 15 years ago that didn’t exist. You were just immediately put to the back of the field. But also, at the same time, because we are a wealthier nation, the perception in Europe is that we have what we have and anything we possibly want, and now we’re coming in to take what they have. Nobody is going to give you anything in Europe, especially with a US flag on your back. So, you have to go in there and fight for it and earn it if you want it.” CI: Who should we be keeping an eye on from this group of riders?

“Well, some of these guys everyone knows about, like Lawson Craddock and Nate Brown. Nobody knows Tanner Putt’s name yet, but next year he’ll be 22, and he’s an absolute beast on the bike. Behind him you have some really talented kids. You have TJ Eisenhart, Greg Daniel, Alex Darville. Behind that

generation you have Logan Owen, Geoffrey Curran, and many more. You know, the great thing about America is that we’re just reloading. We don’t have to go through a rebuilding phase. We can just reload and ﬁre again.” CI: What is the message that you really want these kids to take from their experience with the national team?

“Well, I think it’s probably everything that I try to teach when I coach. It’s discipline. It’s time management. It’s about following this goal-oriented process. It’s about work ethic and discipline. If you can collect these characteristics from our programs then you can be successful no matter what you do. And, you know, these are things that I expect of myself. These are things that I expect of anyone I coach. These are things that I expect of anybody that rides in a team that I am part of. And when they leave, and we’ve done our job right, then I think we showed them and taught them these characteristics.”

Photo By Danny Munson

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Choosing the

RIGHT TEAM By Sean Burke

s coaches, we are trusted advisors to our athletes. We help them become the ﬁttest athletes they can be. We go over races, tactics, and techniques to help them get the results they want. We frequently advise them in other areas that affect their training and racing. Getting results and enjoying the sport requires more than just training and racing smart. The environment in which you race and train is an important factor, and this is the time of year where many cyclists contemplate one of the most important aspects of that environment: the team.

A professional cyclist’s primary motivation is to earn a paycheck for racing a bicycle, but even a pro looks beyond the financial payoff. Mark Cavendish moved from Team Sky to Omega Pharma –QuickStep in 2013, and the move was most likely not motivated by money. The prolific sprinter chose to transfer to a team that would better support him in TDF finishing sprints, 36 | cyclingillustrated.com «

rather than a team that was focused on a GC win. Amateur riders sometimes fail to follow Cavendish’s example, and choose to go to the team with the biggest “paycheck” rather than the team that is best for the athlete’s style, personality, and goals. At Crank Cycling, only a small portion of the riders we train get a monthly paycheck, but

Photo By Brian Hodes many of our athletes join teams where they are provided with equipment, team kits, and paid entry fees. We’ve seen many riders “shop around” each off-season in an attempt to get themselves on a team with the biggest ﬁnancial payoff rather than choose a team based on how the team is going to help them meet their athletic goals. For some riders, the goal is to get to the biggest races in the country, where they can show their stuff and possibly make the move to a professional team. For others, the goal is to win a regional or state championship, get on the podium at a local race, or just to have fun and enjoy the camaraderie of a team. Whatever your goals are, you should keep them in mind when choosing your team. Put these goals before the offer of a few hundred dollars in free kit. For our young up and coming riders, the primary concern is often, “Will the team get me into the biggest races where I can test myself against the best riders in the country?” It doesn’t make sense to race for a team that gets you a bike and some ﬂashy kits if that team is going to concentrate on the local crit scene; not when where you really want to be racing is at Cascade, Tour of the Gila, and the Philly Cycling Classic. A similar concern for our masters racers is going to be if the team wants to have a presence at the regional championships, the stage races, the grueling road races, or the local crit series. There

is no right or wrong answer here, as long as the team goals match up with the rider’s goals. If you prefer to do the long, hilly road races, but your team is going to concentrate on criteriums, then it may not be the best team for you. For amateur riders, another major concern is if your team has local riders that you can train with on a regular basis. Much has been made of the fact that Richie Porte and Chris Froome spend many hours training together. Not only do they push each other in training, they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and can sometimes communicate almost telepathically during a race. Those many hours spent riding together lead to close friendships, and riders are certain to ride much harder for a close friend and training partner than for someone who just happens to race in the same colors. Sometimes you’ll play the workhorse and sometimes you’ll get to be the leader, but a team that trains together races together. A team that doesn’t train together is frequently just a group of guys in matching jerseys. The importance of joining a team that you can train with leads into our next important consideration, and that is to join a team with people whom you like personally. Personalities are important in bike racing, and you are going to be spending countless hours with your teammates. You may even wind up spending more time with your teammates and training

partners than you do with your significant other! I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a “super team” of local hotshots that never seems to get results. Stick around long enough and you’ll even see some of these teams arguing with each other underneath the team tent. I’ve seen very talented riders that don’t mesh well with the rest of the team, so that not a single other rider on the team wants to work hard and sacrifice his race to help that teammate. Once again, a group of riders wearing the same kit does not make a team, especially in amateur racing. Choose a team that is made of people whom you like and who like you. You may spend so much time training and racing with your teammates that you don’t want or need to see them outside of cycling, but you’ll enjoy all of that time much more if you choose a team of racers with whom you would spend time outside of the sport. Most teams offer some financial benefits for members. These could be actual paychecks for elite riders; the aforementioned free bikes, free kits, and race entries; or even just a discount at the sponsoring bike shop. Always be aware that you never get something for nothing. There are going to be team commitments of some sort, so be sure that you are ready and willing to make good on your end of the deal. Another way to look at it is, “Ask not what your team can do for you, but what you can do for your team.” You may be expected to exclusively patronize and promote a particular

bike shop. There may be required races, clinics, or volunteer work, and you won’t always be able to race just for yourself. You’ll need to be a good teammate and work selﬂessly for your team on some occasions. Before you join any team, you’ll need to make sure you know what is expected of you, and that you are willing to live up on those expectations. This can be a hard question, but be honest with yourself. If you aren’t ready to make good on those commitments, it may not be the right team for you. Choosing a team can be a big decision, even for an amateur racer. Racers spend hundreds of hours each year training and racing, and most amateur racers spend thousands of dollars each year on the sport. It can be tempting to join the biggest team, the one with the star riders, or the team that provides the most schwag. But focusing only on these points can be a mistake. The most important questions to ask are, “What are my goals and how can this team help me reach them? Will I enjoy spending time with my future teammates? Am I ready and willing to fulﬁll my commitments to the team?” You may want a team that will help propel you into a career as a pro racer, or you may simply want camaraderie and a carpool to the local race. Choosing the right team can help you have a fun, successful season; while choosing the wrong one can lead to catastrophe. There is no right team, there is only the right team for you. » cyclingillustrated.com | 37

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DIRECTOR’S

W hat are the most important decisions you make as the L E A D E R of your organization?

F IV E H O N E S T A N S W A SURVEY Compiled By Brandon Hale

38 | cyclingillustrated.com «

U E S T IO N

ERS

ONO COULTER // VANDERKITTEN

THE A N S W E R

Photo By Brian Hodes

O N E B IG

“Most important decisions I make as leader of Vanderkitten Athletics pertain to ensuring there is a platform for our dedicated, audacious team of female athletes to excel. This encompasses optimizing equipment, training environment, attitude, and the atmosphere of the team. A major part of the job is communicating with race organizers to set up a race schedule to encompass events that showcase women’s cycling and give our athletes a chance to pursue their goals while generating exposure for the team sponsors.” Then, there is communication with the riders, helping them through rough moments, and keeping their heads in the game. Past that, it is logistics (travel,

stafﬁng, entries, housing) and ﬁguring out how to pay for it all on a small budget. Maintaining communication with sponsors and supporters to keep everyone informed on the team’s progress is important. Most of what happens at this level is more about feeling good than measurable marketing value, and you can’t feel good about it if you don’t know! Finally, there is managing equipment and supplies. and dealing with problems--like broken bikes, wheels, etc.--as the they arise. Almost all the riders on Get Crackin’ are trying to advance in the sport with very limited resources and support. Everything I can get for them means more money for them to have better nutrition at home, or money for little things that the team can’t supply.”

URT STOCKTON // NOW

THE A N S W E R

Photo By Todd MacMillan

Photo By Scott Dworkin

AUL ABRAHAMS // CASHCALL

R THE A N S W E R

THE A N S W E R

OY KNICKMAN // GET CRACKIN’

“Every single decision is important to our team. Decisions that might seem small and do not require a great deal of thought can sometimes change the direction of your intended path. My decisions come from the mindset that I am here to help create the best environment possible for our sponsors, athletes, and staff members to achieve their respective goals. It is important to consider the 20 team sponsors, 12 athletes, and 5 staff members when making decisions that will affect them.”

“Team composition is the most important. Selecting guys who are not only talented, but also good guys who will work together to help one another is where it starts for me. Race schedule is next. As a development organization, we need to build a schedule that will actually develop the riders. Getting to local races is a start, but building a schedule with high-level, multi-day events that challenge the riders is key. Also, looking for opportunities for all the riders to shine throughout the year is important to keeping everyone motivated. The biggest events are where the strongest riders will be the supported leaders. Having earlyseason and regional race plans with the younger riders as leaders helps to teach the importance of the team and to build trust and loyalty in following the team plan and being selﬂess.”

“This is a bit of a loaded question. All of the decisions I make as the team director of the NOW and Novartis for MS team are important, and I have never thought of one as more important than another. There are so many facets involved in the running a professional cycling team: ➔ Race calendar scheduling, including team riders competing with the US national team ➔ Roster selection for the team and for individual events ➔ Travel scheduling ➔ Coordinating riders, vehicles, and equipment from one venue to another ➔ Race day schedule, from wake-up to dinner ➔ Lodging ➔ Sponsorship and equipment, right down to making sure each rider has the correct size shoes and that the team has enough 120mm stems ➔ Staying within budget and making any adjustments from one line item to another to stay in the black ➔ Social media The list goes on and on, and more attention is given some days to speciﬁc decisions. All decisions are vital to the smooth operation of a successful race team.”

“The most important decisions I make for our organization are related to hiring staff and athletes. Selecting the people that make up our team is a critical step in creating the culture we desire within our organization. Our athletes, mechanics, soigneurs, and directors all play an important role in creating and sustaining that culture.”

Photo By Brian Hodes

THE A N S W E R

Photo By Brian Hodes

ONAS CARNEY // OPTUM

» cyclingillustrated.com | 39

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Alex Kostelnik and 2020 Cycle

40 | cyclingillustrated.com ÂŤ

Meany just about 6 blocks from here, and then I went to Garﬁeld...”

hen I moved to Seattle’s Central District, I unwittingly struck gold when I stopped into the local bike shop to get a tune-up on my beloved 1998 Bontrager. Now, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the prevalence of cookiecutter shops with cookie-cutter bikes and cookie-cutter disgruntled employees is on the rise. They’re unwelcoming at best, and at worst they’re ﬂat-out intimidating and unpleasant to spend any amount of time in. 2020 Cycle is not this kind of shop. What it is, is the kind of shop you’d open if you and your friends were into bikes and genuinely wanted your shop to be a haven for the average cyclist. I’ve spent hours (and hours and hours) at 2020 over the past couple of years, sometimes getting great advice and sometimes just having a chat. Alex, Chris, and Daniel handle everything between the three of them, all while making it a really fun place to be. I ﬁnally sat down with Alex to do an informal interview/conversation because I think he and 2020 Cycle’s story is the type of thing that gets far too little attention in the world of bicycling. We hunkered down with some Mexican food from the truck across the street and this is what came of it.

Cycling Illustrated: So the thing I was thinking is that we should just start at the beginning and cover your background. By that, I mean your background with bicycles, and geographically, since I guess I’m trying to put the emphasis on the local thing.

ALEX KOSTELNIK: “Is that the question?” CI: Unfortunately. I guess it’s more of a lead that I’m hoping inspires an answer.

AK: “OK. I was born and raised in Seattle, about 8 blocks from here. Well, born 8 blocks from here, but I was raised in the Greenlake neighborhood. I bussed to the Central District from, like, ‘74 to ‘82. I went to T.T. Minor Elementary School, which is only 3 blocks from here. Now it’s a shitty charter school. Then I went to Kimble on Beacon Hill, and then I went to

CI: Oh yeah, I’ve seen that one! It’s nice. I still get excited when I know what someone’s talking about when it comes to Seattle stuff.

AK: “Jimi Hendrix!” CI: Is that his school?

AK: “Yeah.” CI: Oh, shit.

AK: “And Bruce Lee. Both of them. Kind of exciting.” CI: I thought you were going to say Bruce Springsteen, but then I remembered he’s from NJ.

believed the United States should disarm immediately and let ourselves be invaded so we could just stop oppressing the whole world. He wrote, ‘at least there will be no ash in our mouth.’” CI: That’s kind of when we were just starting to get into regime change, isn’t it?

AK: “Uh huh. The whole world was having a revolution until the assassinations started coming in, along with the heroin. But that’s another story. We’re still there. Worldwide revolution, I say. Oh yeah, Seattle... Well, I’ve always been here and my mom’s a very Northwest woman. She was jobless forever, which is probably why we never moved. I fell in love with this neighborhood because I spent my childhood years here, going to school. That’s why I wanted the shop here. Geographically, that’s where I’m coming from.”

AK: “Yeah, Thunder Road is somewhere else. Anyway, my last year I had this fantasy of being able to walk to school, so I petitioned the bussing program to let me go to my neighborhood school for the end of high school and I hated it. I CI: So you just honed in on the went to Roosevelt Central District, at the end and and that was I didn’t like it. I By Scot Hinckley-Danielson that? liked Garfield. Photos By Scot Hinckley-Danielson AK: “With good My mom grew associations and up in Everett. some knowledge She and my dad of what it was like; a good feel for met because my dad got a job at the neighborhood. When I saw Boeing. Not the normal kind of job there was an espresso shop and that at Boeing; he worked for Bill Boeing tavern had turned into a Mexican personally. Bill had helicopters and corner store, and the junkies weren’t my dad flew the helicopters for, like, there any more, I was blown away. I his Cascade winter home. He’d fly saw the neighborhood was at a new them there so they could go to and point, that it was reviving, and so I from skiing in, like, 30 minutes. was inspired to have a business here. Multiple helicopters. Like limos, Plus, my girlfriend lived down the except they’re helicopters. And then street. I’ve always been southernhe decided that Bill and his friends facing as a Seattleite. When I was were all a bunch of martini clinking a kid, I had black friends. I didn’t freaks. They were really conservahave to pretend I did later and tive. My dad was really outspoken wonder who they were. I’ve been and really liberal. When my dad kind of psychologically primed for was in his early 30s, he wrote a this neighborhood since way back. I manifesto on his portable typewriter just never left, really.” where he espoused his beliefs--this was in 1962--and he said that he CI: And bike-wise?

AK: “It’s sort of an accident; I’m not obsessed with bikes because I’m environmentally conscious or anything, I just never got a car.” CI: Still?

AK: “Yeah, I’ve never owned a car my whole life. To this day, 44 years, no car. I’ve borrowed them, I’ve rented them, I have a license.” CI: I guess when you live in a city, or here, which isn’t exactly downtown, but it’s still packed in enough to where you can get around.

AK: “Yeah, you can easily get by without a car. It’s not bad. You can do it. I’ve done it my whole life. The thing about cars is that I don’t think they’re evil, I just think that there’s too many of them and they’re treated like appliances. They’re taken for granted and overused. The great thing about not owning a car is that everyone you know has six of them. They’re everywhere. You’re tripping over them, so it’s not hard to get access to one. Once you can get over that crackhead mentality of crying because you don’t have a car at your disposal and overindulging it by taking it three blocks to go to the store. It just gets out of hand. My friend Carl, he has a Crown Victoria that he only uses for special occasions when he wants to have a “car” experience. It’s the way you’d say, “Oh, I’m gonna fly my light aircraft today.” It’s a gas guzzler, an ex-cop-car. But he said, “I don’t care if gas is $20 per gallon, I can flex my ankle and fly up a hill at 60mph and be like god.” It’s just become mundane because it’s overused, but it’s actually this fantastic experience as long as you keep it special.” CI: I guess it’s hard to keep that mindset on a commuting basis, you know. Because when you commute, the most mundane

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morning as I’m going into work.” CI: As you’re going into work?! Into work? Weird, OK, so REI was out the window and you just...?

AK: “I threw caution to the wind. I took out two credit cards. I had NO money to start with.” CI: Two credit cards?! Holy crap. So, you just signed a lease and bought inventory with the credit cards?

AK: “Yeah, like 8 tubes, a Redline frame, a pile of used bikes that my neighbor had in his yard, a pot for tea, and a record player. Then I bought a ﬁreplace. That was the next purchase. One of those fake ones with the fake ﬂames. Most of the time we were just sitting around with the neighbors chatting, listening to records, and drinking tea. It was just a hang out. That’s how I got started. I paid my start-up expenses. I paid off the credit cards in 6 months.” CI: So you signed the lease, and then you didn’t even have the money to pay next month’s rent unless you made it?

AK: “Yup, and I did. I started repairing bikes. I sold that whole pile of used bikes. I remember watching it shrink. I think we still sell the most used bikes of any shop I know.” CI: Do you remember the first thing you sold? Was it a repair, or an actual thing?

“

I threw caution to the wind. I took out two credit cards. I had NO money to start with.” 42 | cyclingillustrated.com «

of all activities, you’re crawling along with the entire city.

CI: And then you just decided to do your own thing and open up 2020?

AK: “Yeah, so I’m a non-car-owning Seattleite who owns a bike shop because I was a mechanic for so long that I ﬁnally decided to quit complaining and have the shop that I kept saying could be so cool, instead of being an unsatisﬁed smart-ass.”

AK: “Yeah, that was the end of me being somebody else’s employee....”

CI: Where did you work before? I know you were at Velo...

AK: “I was at Velo, U-District Cycle, then at Montlake, REI. REI was actually the last bike job I had, and that was in 2005.”

(At this point Alex gets a phone call to let him know that the house he and his wife have made an offer on will be theirs. Well, almost, because they have to do an inspection. Anyway, it was a jubilant scene. Good stuff.) CI: OK, so you gave up the health insurance and steady paycheck and whatever at REI...

AK: “...And my bags being searched every

AK: “The first thing I did was, well, there was this old black guy who came in and I cut him a slice of cake that my sister had made. Then we sat down and talked about religion and the neighborhood. So, the first thing I sold was a friendship, I guess. Then I sold an inner tube, and then a really nice Bianchi touring bike that was fairly trashed. It was old, from the 80s. Anyway, that first customer is still a friend of mine. He’s actually playing a show here in a week and a half. He’s in a band called Your Heart Breaks. He’s also the manager of a metal band. He even has his own TV show he does called Boating With Clyde. He takes people out on Lake Washington and interviews them in his rowboat. Super cool dude.” CI: When did you finally get an employee?

AK: “I started out with a co-worker from

REI, and I had never hired somebody in my life. I was never a boss before and I didn’t do the best job. But, in all fairness, neither did she. I fired her and she threw the keys at me. We made up later to acquaintance level. So, that was my first employee and that was probably 9 or 10 months in. I did everything myself at first. I was closed on weekends so I could sleep. I ran everything by myself. I had a spiral-bound notebook that I kept everything in. All repairs, everyone’s phone numbers, everything.” CI: Your hours seem reasonable now, but were you just open all day when you first started?

AK: “The days weren’t long officially, but I would stay over by myself after we were closed. I had to be closed just to breathe and catch up on repairs. That was almost every night and every morning. So, after I’d been open for a year, because I’d been successful, I put a sign on my door that said “gone fishing” and I went to Hawaii. I just split and totally flipped out on the beach because I’d been working non-stop for a whole year. Just shut the shop for 8 days.” CI: Now that your store’s been open for awhile, who do you think it caters to? Or do you think that it caters to anybody in particular?

AK: “We cater to moms with duct-taped Burley trailers with their kids inside on their way to Montessori school. People who ride in the rain, in the snow. It’s those people. Then it radiates out from there. If you were going to make a tree, the trunk of the tree is them. We’re super practical commuter people, me included. But when we started out, we were doing a TON of ﬁxies because that was right in the middle of the ﬁxie craze. We were building a pair of Velocity wheels every day, in all the crazy colors. We were getting all the crazy single-speed frames. We were converting bikes to single-speed. We had all those kids here. It was before people started turning them into trials trick bikes, which they seem to now. It was a completely different sort of culture, I think. That kind of came and went, and we moved away from it when you could buy Velocity wheels at 7/11 because it was just everywhere. It wasn’t what we wanted to make

our life-bread. It would be like basing your life on wide-leg pants or something.” CI: Something that could just up and disappear.

AK: “So we very heavily dug into putting the call out to all of our commuter people, and sort of reconﬁgured as a commuter shop, and we’ve been that way ever since.” CI: It does seem like part of the vibe of the shop is “if it works, it’s good,” if that makes any sense.

AK: “Yeah, totally. It reﬂects our personalities. Like, I can’t sell bikes that Chris and Daniel don’t like. They won’t sell them. They’re to-

tally stubborn. So, we have to have things we understand and believe in. What we believe in is practical stuff. Wearing normal shoes, dressing in wool rather than spandex. It’s what we already do, so it just reﬂects our personalities. The shop is very much a personal enterprise for the three of us. We’re not trying to be something else, I mean, except for the crazy ﬁxie thing that happened in 2006. We kinda got swept into that.” CI: I’ve seen bikes in here for repair that are wicked expensive racing bikes on the other side of the rack from bikes that are being given a few extra years on

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learned that from working with really mean mechanics for the last 20 years. People who would make customers cry.” CI: And we’ve all either had experiences with those people or heard about them.

AK: “I worked with them. I worked with a guy once who would make people beg for their bikes back. He wouldn’t let them have them back so he could ﬁnish telling them what was wrong with their bikes. Everyone in the store would hide, and customers would be crying. After seeing all that, I decided that there’s no such thing as a bad bike. If someone cares about it, then that’s his special ride, and I don’t need to know anything more. Torturing customers is just not something that needs to happen, there’s no reason for it.” CI: So tell me about all the used bikes. My favorite at the moment is the Roberts (a beautiful, hand-made, lugged frame. Gorgeous).

AK: “We like to keep the patina, always. Have you seen Antiques Roadshow? What’s the first mistake you can make with an Empire Era chair? Refinish it. Don’t do it. Don’t refinish it. Leave the scratches. You want to see the history. We do that with all these bikes. We get the guts good so it won’t kill you and it won’t break. We guarantee every bike as if it’s new, and I don’t think anyone else does that. We back all of these 100%. Then you leave it funky. Why would you remove all the flavor?” CI: And then the big new thing is the Sealth. You had your shop for however many years and then you had the idea that you wanted to have your own frames.

“

That’s what’s so great. It’s never gonna be that expensive, and it’s never gonna be impossible. You can weld it, whatever, you can fix any bike. If we size up a customer and ask ourselves, “Does this person really care about this bike?” then OK, let’s fix it if the answer’s yes. I don’t care if there’s seaweed hanging off it.” 44 | cyclingillustrated.com «

their already long lives.

AK: “We’ll fix anything if it seems like a good idea, which is almost everything. Bikes are really simple. They’re fixable. There’s nothing to them. That’s what’s so great. It’s never gonna be that expensive, and it’s never gonna be impossible. You can weld it, whatever, you can fix any bike. If we size up a customer and ask ourselves, “Does this person really care about this bike?” then OK, let’s fix it if the answer’s yes. I don’t care if there’s seaweed hanging off it. We’ll quote them a price. We won’t tell them they need a new bike. I

AK: “The Sealth is patterned after my bike. I have a bike that was made for me by Dave Levy. He started TiCycles a long, long time ago. Dave is now onto 2 or 3 other ventures. He built me a CroMo touring bike in the 90s and it became my favorite bike. I rode it for 12 years straight. There were a couple of things about it that weren’t perfect. That’s the risk you take with a hand-made bike. With a known bike, it’s like a pair of Levi’s 501s; you know what you’re getting. With a custom bike, there are ways to go wrong, and my bike was a perfect example. He’s one of the best frame builders around, it’s not about that. It’s not about the quality of

the build. He made my headtube too steep, so whenever you put bags on the front, it would ﬂop to one side. It was a nightmare when I was using panniers in the front. He wanted to make it a sporty touring bike, and I now grit my teeth when I think of when he said that. It was too sporty. He made the bottom bracket too high, because he wanted it to be sporty. The only two things I changed for the Sealth are the bottom bracket height and a more relaxed head tube angle. Other than that, it’s a carbon copy of my bike. I’m making everyone ride my bike.” CI: So it’s a classic touring bike, as interpreted by Alex?

AK: “Yeah, and it started with me interpreting it to Dave, who mostly got it. Then I rode the shit out of it for 12 years and worked out every quirk. Then I ﬁxed the two things that always bothered me and that’s what everyone’s riding when they try the Sealth.” CI: What’s it like when you load it up?

AK: “It’s amazing. It likes a load. It’s itching for a load. It’s light, stiff, strong, and has a super long wheel base to keep it stable. The bottom bracket is the lowest in the industry, lower than most people would do. Your center of gravity gets nice and low. It takes a whole chain plus 5 more links to hook up the drive train. You gotta buy two chains. That’s how long the wheelbase is.” CI: How big a tire can you fit on it?

AK: “We’ve tried up to 45c and we haven’t found bigger ones to try yet. It’s fatter than hell. I bet you could even get a fender in without any problem.” CI: And it’s made in Seattle, right?

AK: “Hand-made by the guys at Bombus Bikes, designed by me, and the frame tubing is from Mississippi, union made by the United Steel Workers. I like to say that it’s a fair-trade-shadegrown-gay-whale-civil-rights-stop-the-war-bike. We’re trying to sell 10 per year. I’m not trying to set the world on ﬁre. Grant Petersen, that’s his job. To set the pace for a look, a feel, and style. He does it beautifully, and has for several decades, and I love what he does. It’s just not my style to tell people what’s cool. I’ve spent my life running from those people, though not from Grant, but the people who’ve said, “This

is what’s cool,” that’s the last thing those people ever said to me, because I’d just leave. I’m an outsider, but I don’t want to create a new inside from my outside. I don’t want a gang of me. And I don’t have huge needs. I don’t want goldplated spaghetti. I just want spaghetti.” CI: Tell me about the 2020/Fuel Cyclocross Team. You’ve never once told me about the team. I had to randomly find out, which is weird.

AK: “We have the weirdest relationship you’ve ever seen in the bike business. My friend Dani has a beautiful series of coffee shops here, and she also started High 5 Pie.” CI: I’ve had that, it’s delicious. I had the chocolate cream.

AK: “Absolutely, the apple’s good too. Sam, our team captain, came to me and he came to Dani and he said, “You’re my two favorite things in the Central District, so I want that to be the team.” He didn’t look at who could give him more money, or more exposure, or bike parts, or who was most dedicated to cyclocross. Sam is the kind of guy who comes here with a bottle of whiskey and we hang out talking Romanian politics and he loves going to Fuel to get coffee. It’s the weirdest sponsorship you’ve ever seen, and it’s just because some of us are good friends. That’s why I sponsor them. Plus, they’re an amazing team, they’re really competitive. They’re not assholes. They’re the nicest group of people who will ever kick your ass on a racetrack. They’ll bring their families. It’s diverse, full spectrum. They don’t live and breathe cyclocross racing. They’re super fun.” CI: Are there any other sort of local tie-ins that you like to do with the shop? Things you can do because you have a bike shop?

AK: “Music. We have shows from time to time. My life is deﬁned by mics and bikes. Recording music, producing music, and bicycles. I put on shows here because I’ve gotten older and I’m not trying to go to a bar and get laid any more. I really don’t go to shows anymore. I have my own speciﬁc, special shows here. They’re very one-off. Every one of them is like it’s the last one. It’s only friends, and it only costs like $5 to go to one. But I’m not a venue, you can only play here if you’re a » cyclingillustrated.com | 45

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“

The bike revival right now is a perfect storm. The great thing about a bike is that it’s perfect, and it’s been perfect for a long time. I like to say that a bike shows off its guts because it’s so proud of them, but a car hides them.”

friend of mine or you’re my favorite band. It’s not a normal venue. It’s a total community activity. It ties me into all of my neighbors and everybody around me. It’s not a normal bike shop thing to do.” CI: The last thing I’m going to hit you with is a two-fer. You can go whatever direction you want with this. Comparing the “olden days,” do you think bicycle culture is more diverse now? Less diverse? I seems that the range of bikes you can buy is starting to get narrowed down more and more.

AK: “I think there’s more people doing the same sort of stuff that we all did. There’s just 46 | cyclingillustrated.com «

more of it.” CI: Do you think there’s a lack of some new company doing something weird and new and cool for bikes?

AK: “When American industry re-tooled and re-found itself in the world of bikes in the latest bike revival, which has been up and down since about 1890, China had already come along. Game over. There was no reason to make it here anymore. Now you just have frame builders.” CI: I heard that Italians will buy more bikes than cars this year for the first time since World War II.

AK: “Well, we’re running out of fuel and

everybody wants to be back in the city again. So now they’re all happily riding through the towns and making their market stops. Housing is more dense, which also makes it great for bikes. The bike revival right now is a perfect storm. The great thing about a bike is that it’s perfect, and it’s been perfect for a long time. I like to say that a bike shows off its guts because it’s so proud of them, but a car hides them. The basic thing doesn’t need to change, people just need to ride them.” 2020 CYCLE 2020 E. Union Street Seattle, WA 98122 2020cycle.com

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P H OTO GR A PHE R ’S “An informative and in-depth look at the great themes and techniques of athletes and artists using two tools: a camera and a bike.” - Brandon Hale 50 | cyclingillustrated.com «

2012 Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah (left) ©BRIAN HODES

2013 Redlands Bicycle Classic Stage Three Sunset Loop Road Race (below) ©DANNY MUNSON

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2013 San Rafael Twilight Criterium ©DANNY MUNSON

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Montreal-Quebec GP 2011 (Quebec City) ©BRIAN HODES

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MRI Endurance training camp Palm Springs (right) ©DANNY MUNSON

49th Presidential Tour of Turkey (below) ©BRIAN HODES

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2013 Tour de Beace ©BRIAN HODES

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2013 Tulsa Tough River Parks Criterium ©DANNY MUNSON

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...there is a little bit of soul searching before running down to the local bike shop and picking up a set of carbon hoops. 58 | cyclingillustrated.com ÂŤ

Their philosophy regarding aerodynamics can be summed up like this, “Frontal area is the king of drag, then viscosity, and then turbulence.” If you have the time and the means, I suggest you give them a shout.

For the rest of us, there is a little bit of soul searching before running down to the local bike shop and picking up a set of carbon hoops. This can be broken down to the ‘know your customer’ rule, and you are the customer. Are you OCD? Are you lazy (outside of those weekly intervals, of course)? Do you have unlimited funds or a tight budget? Are you a serious or a casual racer? Straight poser? You must decide.

The dark art of buying carbon wheels

he constant hum and drum of carbon hoops has become commonplace. I personally have seen them in the wild, seen them on bikes ranging from $500.00 to $15,000.00, seen them under young and old alike. What was once the sight and sound of elite racers has become the latest status symbol of the masses, and for good reason…right? We all know the fastest and most efﬁcient upgrade a cyclist can make are wheels. The amount of weight one can shed, paired with the increased spin-up speed, multiplied by the lateral rigidity is easily worth the $2500.00 or $3000.00 that folks are willing to shell out for a pair of hoops. Or is it? Well, if you have yet to make the jump to carbon wheels and are looking for some practical and applicable information that might make your decision making process an easier one, this might just be the place for you. Originally this was to be about hard data, numbers, drag, yaw, you name it--a groundbreaking piece on the glaring performance differences, or not so tangible differences, between top dollar hoops and lower priced rims. If there is one thing that researching this article has taught me, or re-taught me, is that nothing is free. Data are proprietary in most cases and thus not for public consumption. Sure, there are a few pieces out there on the internet that compare and contrast different brands of wheels, but who is paying for that? It sure doesn’t say in the articles, and I saw no disclaimers. So, just maybe, measurable gains on performance might not be the best criteria for one to base his wheels of choice on. But if raw data blows your skirt up, I suggest checking out the folks at Faster (www.ride-faster.com). They are smart, helpful, have a load of wheels on hand to test for you, or they will test whatever wheels you want to send them.

wind swirls like a ﬂushing toilet, then maybe shallow section wheels are more in order. I can tell you this; deep section rims in a wicked cross wind are not a lot of fun, and, in fact, can be dangerous to the uninitiated. For hills, shallow seems the most efﬁcient route.

Now it’s time to talk budget. The “China carbon” revolution, and the companies that source their products from abroad, have lowered the price of entry so much so that outﬁtting your whip with a pair of carbon hoops is easy...and cheap...and almost mandatory. But is cheap the way to go? Sure, you can hit some auction site or pick up some blemished or overproduced hoops for a song, but please keep in mind that song may have a suspect warranty (if any) and will most certainly be lacking in customer service should something go wrong with your shiny new purchase.

The next logical step would be tubular vs. clincher. Seems a good place to start, no? Tubulars are supple, fast, extravagant, and expensive. The gluing process can be time consuming, messy, and difficult if you are new to Of course, there are the task. But if you are the name brands the type who likes to sit that all the sponsored By Jason Harrod in the garage in boxers racers are riding; those Photo By Danny Munson (or briefs) wearing an pricey gems that all of apron, sipping a nice us covet and wish we hoppy brew and smellcould afford. Brands ing glue fumes, tubulars might be the like Zipp, Mavic, and Campagnolo. route for you. For those of you who They are pretty, fast, and (for some) race on the road a handful of times a obtainable. But is there a downside? year, don’t mind swapping tires and Sure. Support. Yeah, okay, they may tubes from rim to rim, have a limited have a booth at some of the larger budget, an even more limited schedraces where a technician can true, ule, and prefer the ease of fixing a tighten, or fix whatever may be causflat by simply replacing a tube, then ing the malaise with your high-end clinchers might be the way to go. product. But, and there is always a but, if something goes wrong, the Are you a deep section or shallow likely route would be to bring your section type? This one is pretty expensive hoops to the LBS and have simple. It comes down to, well, wind them shipped back to the company and hills. If you are a time trailing to be fixed, and then shipped back machine who blasts off every day on to the LBS, and then back to you. a simple out and back, directly into Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot fun or away from the wind, deep section to me, and it certainly sounds like it wheels are for you. If you live in a would take a fair amount of time. flat and wide open area where the Time is precious for me and being

without my hoops is not something I long for.

Another route is the ‘direct to customer’(or DTC) brands, like Williams, Karbon Speed, and Neuvation; the beneﬁts of which are many. The downfalls are, well, perhaps a few grams. Cost is the ﬁrst glaring difference. In fact, in most cases, one could get two sets of DTC hoops for the same price of one set of name brand expensive wheels. And these DTC wheels are more than likely made in the same factories abroad that their more expensive brethren are, maybe even out of some of the same molds. And then there is support. I, personally, have purchased a few sets of DTC hoops. In one instance, while tightening the lock-ring on my cassette, the threads in the freehub body stripped. My fault? Likely. Faulty product? Possibly. But that was never even addressed. I called the manufacturer and a new freehub was sent out that day and in my greasy hands in time for me to hit my weekend ‘cross race. Free of charge. Ah, service. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. So, what hoops to buy? That is not for me to answer, nor am I trying to steer you in any given direction. That is up to you. My bikes represent my personality and I have a feeling yours do too. Remember, know your customer, and that customer is you. If you like shiny, pretty things and prancing around on top dollar hoops, please do so. If you are on a tight budget and can wrench, a pair of auction site blems could be your answer. If you are middle of the road and like a solid product with personal support then maybe a ‘direct to customer’ wheelset is just what the doctor ordered. Whatever you choose, remember performance can certainly be found in product, but if the engine is janky, no technology in the world will help. » cyclingillustrated.com | 59

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Ways to Boost Your Race Fitness This Winter

ow did your race season this year go? When you look back on it, would you call it a success? Setting next season’s highlevel race goals early in the off season will help to add structure and meaning to all the long hours in the saddle you are planning over the fall and winter.

Use a Power Meter and Training Peaks to Monitor your Training Load

Dr. Andrew Coggan created the Training Stress Score (TSS) and describes Training Stress Balance (TSB) as a rider’s form Create a Plan: Overreach and Adapt to being a combination of By Gary Tingley fitness and freshness. A Achieve your Fitness and Skills Goals Photo By Danny Munson rider’s fitness is brought Did you have a structured training program last year, or on by training stress, did you just ride through the season and hope for the best? and a rider’s freshness If the latter was your plan, this year it is time to consider building an is brought on by ample rest and annual training plan, and designing a specific off-season strategy that will recovery. If you find it difficult to time set the foundation for next year’s season. Incorporating skills work and the application of training stress and progressive, structured training rides will lay the groundwork for race-specific recovery, the balance and forecasting training in the early spring. Begin the design of your plan by working backward of these two elements is something from your “A” races next season. Incorporate base, build, and race preparation that a certified cycling coach can blocks into your plan. Ensure that recovery and rest is included, as well as any assist you with. Monitoring fitness and travel or vacation periods. Southern California riders can take advantage of a new freshness can be achieved by tracking off-season training program combining a training camp, power-based training Chronic Training Load (CTL), which plans using TrainingPeaks, skills clinics, and structured rides (details at http://bit. represents long-term training effects ly/15memiX) coached by USA Cycling Level 2 coaches Rob Panera and Gary of workouts done two weeks ago Tingley, and professional road cyclist Cody Stevenson. and on, and Acute Training Load (ATL), which represents short-term 60 | cyclingillustrated.com «

training effects of workouts done within the past two weeks. Using your power meter to measure your training load and leveraging TrainingPeaks tools to view your results, you’ll be able to track your Training Stress Balance, Chronic Training Load, and Acute Training Load. One strategy for application of training stress is to gradually ramp the application of Chronic Training Load while incorporating rest weeks when required. Once race season begins, your Chronic Training Load may plateau and drop prior to key events. Monitoring training stress and recovery can aid in the prevention of illness and is very useful in timing the application of a taper for your priority races.

Ride with Consistency and Use a Stationary Trainer Do you skip training days? Does work or family life

intervene? Inclement weather in the fall and winter months, along with reduced daylight hours, can add difﬁculty to consistent off-season training. There is a remedy: the stationary trainer. Embrace it. Use indoor training as your secret weapon. Set a time each day to train during the week, and stick to it. Make this a non-negotiable block of time. Make your 1 to 1.5 hour indoor trainer sessions meaningful by incorporating a variety of workouts to include level 3 and 4 (tempo and sub-threshold) work, short level 6 microbursts, and a couple of active recovery days as well. One of my favorite off-season workouts on the trainer is 1:20:00 in length and begins with a warm up for 15:00 with a couple of “pops” to get your legs ready. ➔ Start with 2 x 1:00 @100% FTP (Functional Threshold Power) and 100-110RPM with 1:00 easy between these two spin ups. ➔ Then, for the three main sets, complete 1 x 18:00 @ 90-102% FTP with a selfselected cadence. ➔ Then go easy for 5:00. ➔ Then 1 x 10:00 @ 95-102% FTP. ➔ Go easy for 4:00. ➔ Then 1 x 12:00 @ 90-98% FTP. ➔ Then recover, cooling down to make 1:20:00.

Trainer technology has come far in the last few years, with advances in resistance units and power measurement integration. If your ﬁrst introduction to a trainer was a lower cost magnetic unit, the technology and “road-like feel” has rapidly improved. Recommendations to look at for the new breed of trainers include the iPhone compatible $999 Wahoo Fitness KICKR with power measurement and the popular Kurt Kinetic Road Machine with Virtual Power.

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GETTING the SHOTS Photo motos at the Tour of California

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lex Dudley, head of the TOC’s photo motos, says, “Ultimately, the driver wants to help the photographer get the shot. It’s his job.” Sometimes, helping a photographer capture a particular image “may require bending a rule. It may require being someplace you’re not supposed to be. It may require being in a place you’re suppose to be, but being there longer than you should. A classic scenario is when the photographer sees a spot on the side of the road that he wants to set up for a picture and tells the driver to turn around and go back. That is the biggest no-no in the book! You don’t go the wrong way on the race course.”

Photo By Angelica Dixon

Dudley has been working for the Tour of California since its inception in 2006. Among his many roles in the position, Dudley has the important responsibility of matching up race photographers with the ten extremely skilled photo moto drivers. Knowing the drivers’ skills and personalities allows him to promote the best working partnerships on the road. Many of the drivers have off road experience, having no trouble driving up a hill or across a ditch to get a photographer where he wants to be. “I don’t want to take a driver who is easily taken advantage of and then have him be in a position of doing something wrong or making a mistake,” says Dudley. “That’s going to be dangerous for the driver, the photographer, or someone on the road. Getting those personalities together is important.” A bad photographer and driver combo can interfere with a photographer’s end product, and

make for a long day on the road for the driver. Historically, good matches have developed into working and established partnerships. Dudley, as a driver, is always the assigned driver for one of the great cycling photographers, Casey Gibson, anytime they are at the same race.

challenge. Sometimes, it’s weather, a fallen tree, or emergency vehicles trying to gain road access beyond the race. Dailey recalls that one of the biggest challenges in this year’s TOC was in stage ﬁve, when severe crosswinds, lasting for a period of three minutes, blew the peloton into multiple echelon formations. Quickly, Dailey had to deploy resources, that would normally protect one or two groups, across all six packs. This and many other unexpected scenarios are left for Dailey to solve on the road. All this adds to the complexity of keeping the caravan’s pace on schedule as support teams, sometimes 20 to 30 minutes up the road, begin the complicated process of changing local trafﬁc patterns depending on the arrival of racers and race vehicles.

Preparation, an experienced driving team, and the ability to anticipate the day of racing allow some of cycling’s most experienced photographers to capture the story of the Tour of California in images we see attached to race reports and our favorite magazines. For Dudley and his boss, Edward Dailey, preparation starts the night before a stage, followed by brieﬁngs the next morning, with anywhere from 50-100 drivers, well before the peloton rolls out of the startMuch like Dudley and Dailey theming position. As the race’s longtime selves, the moto drivers are highly “regulator,” Dailey oversees all the trained professionals vehicles on the road, at whose careers as pro time organizing close cycling moto drivers to 200 vehicles that are By Angelica Dixon started several years in- and outside of the before the Tour of rolling caravan. Dailey California developed. says that his bigger Their demonstrations of expertise, responsibility comes when “the race and word-of-mouth reputations, is in the heat of the moment,” which helped their careers progress to the includes racers, team cars, support pro cycling level. For starters, their vehicles, police cars, media cars, VIP driving skills must allow them to cars, photo motos, and race marshals, safely carry a passenger with heavy to name a few. “It’s like trying to gear through tactically demanding conduct thirteen different dances on situations. In the case of mountain a stage simultaneously. If I’m doing stages at the TOC, Dudley is often my job right, and the people that are faced with the issue of tight spaces with me are doing their jobs right, and his team of ten photo motos all thirteen of those groups--riders, maneuvering through hundreds of police, photo bikes, whatever--are fans and riders. able to do their jobs safely as they move down the road. And then the “You can’t put ten photographers riders have a great venue on which to on bikes,” he points out, “all taking compete.” pictures around three guys in the last 5k of a mountaintop ﬁnish.” In this Preparation and anticipation are situation, based on the skill level of key, but it’s the unexpected situations his drivers, Dudley can put on the road that often add the extra » cyclingillustrated.com | 63

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“

A combination of a true passion for driving a motorcycle, the road, and cycling itself motivate these individuals to put in the long hours during a race.

Photographers who are in Dudley’s ‘all access’ category are usually already with the drivers who have the higher skills to do this rotating maneuver up the climbs. The rest of the photo motos are sent up ahead to the ﬁnish. Dudley decides all of this well before the race even starts. The glamour of the job often blinds spectators to the skills and experience a photo moto must have to be at pro events. A combination of a true passion for driving a motorcycle, the road, and cycling itself motivate these individuals to put in the long hours during a race. When asked about a typical race day for a moto, Dave Wykoff, a race marshall for the TOC the last 64 | cyclingillustrated.com «

two years, states, “There is no easy stage. The length of our days depends on the length of the transfer to get to the (race) start. We usually stay the night in the same place as the finish, but not always. That means we are up around five or six AM to pack all our stuff and hit the road to find a place to have breakfast. We get to the start ninety minutes before the start of the race, so we have enough time to get staged, have our meetings for the day, and pack a lunch. Then, it’s however long the stage is. Then the trip to find the motel. Short answer: it’s a 10-12 hour day.” Working pro events is a side job these drivers make happen outside of their responsibilities to family and, usually, a full-time job. For many, they are available to work the races by using vacation time, often traveling great distances just to get to the event’s location. A majority of the moto drivers started off as race officials on a local level in the US and other countries. Many of them return as drivers to the same big races across the country, adding to the team’s ability to function as a highly efficient and professional group, and ultimately helping reduce the burden on the race organizers, especially as the TOC continues to grow in complexity each year. Dailey, a few years back, told the American Motorcycle Association that driving a motorcycle for a cycling event was one of the top dream jobs on motorcycles. To this day, he and Dudley would have to agree.

Photo By Angelica Dixon

two bikes, sometimes up to five if they have exceptional drivers, into a rotation that stays just in front of the climbing riders. The motorcycles, rotating clockwise, can circulate their photographers into view of the riders every fifteen seconds. Of course, Dudley adds that “you have to have photographers who aren’t holding up the drivers, asking, ‘Wait, wait. I haven’t got my pic yet.’ It’s hard when you have an idling motorcycle in first gear that wants to go faster than the climbing cyclist. That means you’ve got to slip the clutch, keep the bike on the road, not hit anybody, get your photographer his shots, and be aware of the fans.”

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that. [Laughs].”

The Gravity Side B E

CI: In the disciplines you race, it seems like you’re racing the mountain as much as the other racers. It’s more like you vs. nature, the force of gravity, and the slipperiness of dirt.

“Yeah...I like to think that it’s not just all fitness and horsepower. I like to rely on some bike skills. I was just talking to my buddy. He was up in Downieville this weekend. That’s an all-mountain race. His race was two days, and you have to ride the same bike both days. You can’t switch anything. They weigh your bike. The first day is a big XC race. It starts with a huge climb. For most people, probably a fifty- or sixtyminute climb, but it has some pretty technical downhill sections in it too. The next day is a downhill race, but it’s like forty-five-plus minutes long. The first half is a downhill course and the second half is basically a flat time trial.

B C

BRIAN LOPES ON BIKE SKILLS, DOPING, AND NOT BEING A DOUCHE.

I went and did a couple, rian Lopes’ palmares speak ofbutraces. it was no fun. There wasn’t any for themselves. The four-time world money to be made in it and I was my living racing mountain champion has been a pro since age seventeen making bikes at the time, so there was no and is an undisputed master of the gravity side way I was going to drop everything [race track], which is kind of of mountain bike racing. Flyin’ Brian, still and what they wanted me to do. Other crushing at 41 years old, took a few minutes out of his busy than that, I usually try to do some local road races. Last year I did a travel schedule to talk to Cycling Illustrated couple of masters races in Oregon. I about his decades of dominance on the dirt. Interview By Ian Pike enjoy doing an actual Photos By Danny Munson

Cycling Illustrated: Have you done any road racing?

BRIAN LOPES: “Yeah, I’ve done stuff on a local level. The only thing I’ve done larger than the local level is when I did a world cup track race in Mexico one time. A long time ago, I did some training on the track. The coach at the time for the US track team tried to get me to do a bunch 66 | cyclingillustrated.com «

road race more than I enjoy doing, like, a crit. To me, the crits are too much chaos. These guys will fucking kill you for a box of Powerbar primes, or something like

“Anyways, Levi [Leipheimer] raced and my friend was telling me that Levi made it to the top of the climb three or four minutes faster than Carl Decker, who won the XC and the downhill. I guess Levi killed everybody to the top, but then he crashed, and got a ﬂat, or something like that, when it got technical. [Laughs]. I’ve ridden with Levi in the dirt, and for a roadie, he’s OK. But it’s different, getting into the real competition, the real gnarly stuff.” CI: Changing gears, you’ve moved into fatherhood territory here. You have a son now. His name is “Maverick.” That’s an unusual name. Where’d you come up with that?

“My wife and I were trying to come up with names and we weren’t really ﬁnding anything that we were super stoked on. Then, I was out of town and I was talking to her. She was like, ‘I think I found a cool

name,’ and I was like, ‘what is it?’ and she told me, ‘Maverick,’ and I was like, ‘oh, yeah, I do like that!’ It just means an independent man who doesn’t adhere to conformity. I really liked that. I felt like it’s kind of how I am. [Laughs].” CI: You do have a reputation, at least on the internet, as a guy who will get up in someone’s grill, so to speak. Is that deserved?

“I think a lot of shit that people say on the internet is just that. I always laugh about it. I don’t even read blogs, chats, forums and all that shit. Half the people on there, they don’t know anything. Maybe not as much these days, but in the heyday of my racing career, when all I cared about was winning every race I entered and trying to win as many championships as I could [pauses]... CI: Do you think that people come after winners like that? It happens on the road. Anytime someone wins a race, it seems like people come out of the woodwork to say, ‘that guy’s such a dick!’ Being a champion paints a target on your back personally as well as professionally.

“I can see that. Even in other sports. Especially if you win a lot. Some people just want the underdog to win, or they get sick of seeing the same person do well over and over. That’s not to say that I’m painting myself as an angel, but people do form opinions when they don’t even know me. “When I was racing, I didn’t really like talking to anybody-my mechanic, my team manager, anybody. I was always trying to get focused and be in my zone. I don’t want to sign autographs and talk to people between race runs. That’s not the time or place for me to do

that. I’m sure there were plenty of times where people though, ‘that guy’s a dick. He wouldn’t talk to me.’ But, if you were the president of some big corporation, you wouldn’t have people just walking into your ofﬁce, talking to you while you’re trying to get things done.” CI: Here’s something that happens a lot on the road. Every time someone wins, people come out and accuse him of doping almost immediately. There have been some scandals in enduro racing lately, but they’re rare. If you Google “Brian Lopes,” there aren’t any editorials that pop up accusing you of doping. Why doesn’t this same thing happen on the dirt?

“Well, enduro racing has been around for a long time, but it’s just recently that it’s become real serious with the world series and stuff. That discipline requires some fitness, so doping could help, but the bottom line is that you still need to have skills to succeed. It’s like what I was talking about before at Downieville. Leipheimer was the strongest dude by far, but then he doesn’t have the skills to kill it on all the technical stuff. It’s even more so in the disciplines I always competed. You needed to be strong and powerful-and I’m sure there are some drugs out there that could help you--but if you don’t have the skill, there’s no drug that will help you with that. There has been some drug stuff in cross country, but it’s not too often have I ever heard of anything on the gravity side of things. I can see how, if you were a strong cross country guy, and you were always getting fifth and sixth and thinking ‘damn it! I’m so fit and so strong right now. What else can I do?’ and you find out later that all these guys were cheating, it would suck, for sure. But in gravity races, guys just don’t see

the beneﬁt. I mean, downhill isn’t even an endurance sport. A race is maybe four minutes long.” CI: Doping does happen though. What about the Belgian world champ who got popped for EPO?

“Filip Meirhaeghe?” CI: Yeah, that’s him.

“He rode for Specialized. He was a cross country world champ. He came back after he served his suspension and raced cross country again. He was still good. Not at the level from when he was doping. But he was still good. He wasn’t accepted by the mountain bike community, that’s for sure. I remember heckling Meirhaeghe at races because the DH and four cross races were at the same venues as the cross country races. We’d watch the XC and we’d heckle him: ‘DOPER! CHEATER!’” CI: That’s a very different culture than on the road. Look at Alberto Contador. They revoke his Tour de France title and two years later Team SaxoTinkoff welcomes him with open arms. To hear you tell it, mountain bikers are much more likely to be ostracized for doping. Do you think that makes a difference?

“I guess it’s less acceptable. Maybe if everybody was doping in mountain bike, and one guy got caught, everybody wouldn’t be so quick to point a finger. It’s a lot easier to point that finger and talk shit when you’re not doing the same things that the other guy is doing. “It’s funny, even just doing some of the group road rides around here. I laugh about how seriously some of these guys take bike racing. Fortyand fifty-year-old guys and it’s their life. Road racers in general don’t

“

I THINK A LOT OF S H I T T H AT P E O P L E S AY O N T H E I N T E R N E T I S J U S T T H A T. ” » cyclingillustrated.com | 67

“

who M O U N T A I N B I K I N G I S M O R E O F A C U LT U R E , LIKE SURFING OR SOMETHING.”

have a life. They have to spend so much time on their bikes that they don’t have any fun doing anything else. All they do is ride their bike for ﬁve hours a day and sleep. But, whatever, if you’re young and aspiring to be a pro, or if you are a pro and it’s your job, then that’s one thing. But then I see these guys who get up at four in the morning and they’re on their bikes by four-thirty so they can get their four hours in before work. I don’t even know how they do it. I would put money on it that there are shitloads of these dudes who are doing drugs, because holy shit they’re so fast! They should start testing more at masters races. They should do random tests.” CI: So, if pro mountain biking is so different than being a pro roadie, what does that mean for your career as a world champion mountain biker?

“You know, mountain biking is more of a culture, like surfing or something. There are tons of people who are into surfing who don’t care about competition at all. They just want to see somebody get barrelled, or see somebody shredding in a video, or they want to flip through a surfer magazine and see rad shots. That’s kind of like mountainbikes. There’s tons of people who don’t race and still make a living off mountainbiking. Doing video trips or photo shoots, just being, like, adventurers [laughs]. I don’t think you really see that 68 | cyclingillustrated.com «

with road cycling. I can’t think of anybody who just gets paid to be a road rider. Is there any cyclist out there who’s just paid to ride? The only thing I can think of is someone who is a product developer. It’s almost like people that are into road riding want the team kits and to look like they’re part of the team. People who ride mountain bikes want the opposite. They just want casual clothes. They don’t want a lot of logos all over them. They don’t like ﬂashy colors.” CI: What would you tell the guy who wants to try his first mountain bike race? Where should he start?

“I would say that doing an enduro race would be the most fun. That discipline is getting a lot of attention right now because the bike that you use for an enduro race, that’s kind of the main style of big being sold by big manufacturers right now. In enduro, you get to kind of experience everything. You’re gonna ride up hills. You’re gonna be on your bike for three or four hours. You’ll experience some exhilirating downhills. You get to ride with your buddies. The cool thing about enduro is it’s kind of the best of everything. Guys that do races like that, when they’re done riding, they’re drinking beer, chilling out, and just enjoying it. They’re not going to download their Garmins to see how many watts they pushed at the ﬁnish line.”

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who

JEDI

MASTERS

hen cyclists turn 35, they cross a magical barrier, earning the right to compete as “masters” racers. Unlike with golf and other sports, they aren’t considered “seniors.” Down in Mexico, they call them “veteranos” after a certain age, but the implication is the same. They’re seasoned veterans and ﬁercely competitive riders, able to throw down in some of the fastest, most grueling races in the States. Here, a few of these Jedi Masters dish on what it takes to live, train, race, and win championships after 35.

full-time jobs, but Easter proves otherwise. MICHAEL EASTER: 35-39 CRITERIUM CHAMPION Easter has been racing bicycles since he was When asked what his secret is to his continued sixteen years old. He’s had the good fortune to motivation and longevity in cycling, he quickly have worked with great coaches, raced across pointed out that the question and different disciplines, and has even answer can be applied to marriage traveled to Europe to race. It’s not By Trina or career: remember why you did surprising that someone with this Jacobson it in the ﬁrst place. For him, the much experience would continue simple answer is that racing is fun. to perform well once it was time The complicated answer is that to transition from elite to masters racing, but racing is his competitive outlet and cycling is results at thirty-eight years of age do not come a way for him to relieve stress, explore, and from experience alone. Actually, at thirtymethodically work towards a goal. eight, one would expect race performance to diminish due to age, family obligations, and Despite high motivation and endless opportu70 | cyclingillustrated.com «

Photo By Danny Munson

MIKE EASTER

Easter shares that to truly balance things, he has to look at the cycling season in its entirety, because it isn’t possible to be effective all season long. There are periods of high family activity which require him to dial back on the training. However, there are times when the calendar opens up for him to target bigger races. His guidelines to which races to target: be realistic in expectations, train effectively, and to “not get too out of shape,” because he doesn’t have the luxury of two-week training camps like the pros. Once lined up, he relies on his race experience, teammates, and the experience of other teams to get results. Sometimes, it lands him or a teammate on the podium, sometimes he’s just got to be ok with ﬁnishing with the pack. Either way, he goes home to his family and the master calendar of doctors appointments, basketball practice, and track meets--and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Photo By Danny Munson

nities to enjoy the sport of cycling in Southern California, there are limitations. Family time, work hours, and physical limitations force cyclists to ﬁnd a balance. If the scale tips too far toward cycling, it can have a negative effect on the quality of family life Easter strives to maintain. He prioritizes, with the help of his wife of fourteen years and a master calendar, his three children’s activities. If he slips into the selﬁshness that often plagues cyclist, his wife reminds him of what’s important. That said, she is supportive and is part of the required planning to be highly competitive at masters nats. Not only does it take a team to produce race results, it takes a team to plan around a demanding job as an FBI special agent, with three children and a dedicated spouse.

Talent runs deep in masters racing in Southern California. Nowhere else in the country have I experienced racing like this. JAMIE PAOLINETTI

JAMIE PAOLINETTI Since he gives his cycling as much priority as his JAMIE PAOLINETTI: 45-49 CRITERIUM CHAMPION career, when he schedules training time, he keeps Paolinetti began racing in 1986, worked his way up the appointment. Paolinetti was quick to say that to the professional ranks as part of one of the top he had it “easy” compared to his teammates with teams in North America, and made it to the podium families because he isn’t married and several times. Currently, Paolinetti is one doesn’t have children. However, as he of the most visible and active faces in the By Trina continued to talk about his teammates, masters peloton, even at fifty years old. Jacobson it was obvious that they have become Asked what his secret is to longevity in his family. Several of the men have been cycling, he shares that he took a couple racing together for years, share the same passion of breaks from racing, one of them over five years for cycling, and thus provide that familial support long, but he never stopped riding. His continued and dynamic one would receive through traditional interest and motivation for the sport is rooted in his family structures. passion for it. As a professional racer, he was lucky to combine his passion for cycling with a career. Even though Paolinetti is able to combine cycling and family, he knows when it’s time to dial back the Now, Paolinetti gives cycling as much prioritization training when something big in his career needs to his training and racing as he does other areas of more of his energies. Like Easter, he looks at the seahis life in order to continue to feed that passion. He son as a whole and trains specifically for the majority is an accomplished writer and director and considers of the types of races he’ll attend: criteriums. During himself lucky to have found a second career he is the times when he needs to focus more on his writpassionate about. His job at the Atwater Playhouse ing or directing, he continues to ride and is realistic and his involvement with a professional acting comin his expectations if he is able to attend a race. pany keep him busy seven days a week. He doesn’t have set work hours, other than scheduled classes, This approach to racing is present no matter if and often works off-hours. Most would find it difthe race is a local criterium or nationals. He and ficult to carve out time to train for something like a his team analyze the parameters of the race, such national championship race, but Paolinetti doesn’t.

as the course, the players, and the weather then discuss the best way for the team to win. From Paolinetti’s experience and racing savvy, he knows that working for one particular person lessens the team’s chances greatly. One thing has changed for each year Paolinetti has aged: his need for recovery has increased. He sees other masters racers putting in the same hours in the saddle year over year and he suggests that masters racers should train speciﬁcally for the event as well as their age. It would be easy for a new masters-aged cyclist to take a look at these two riders and become frustrated with his chances on Sunday. Both Easter and Paolinetti encourage those with less experience to join a team to learn racing tactics, to be realistic with their expectations, to be methodical and speciﬁc in their training, and to use the big teams’ strengths to their advantage. “Talent runs deep in masters racing in Southern California. Nowhere else in the country have I experienced racing like this,” Paolinetti explains. The competition may be stiff--just look at these two national champs--but there’s always room for another set of wheels in the peloton. » cyclingillustrated.com | 71

who JOHN O’DONNELL to me at all. Hitting a ball came easily, though anything for more than a couple of seconds made me tired. So, I think Washington State’s John there was a challenge O’Donnell played comBy Chris Lyman in doing something for petitive tennis through which I had zero talent. and after college, and turned to cycling as a way to stay in CI: What kind of racer are you? shape for tennis that didn’t involve Sneaky. Truth is, I have a small endaily pounding on a cement court. gine that I’ve done the best to build. He quickly realized that riding was Things have to go pretty right for more to his liking than hitting a me to get a result. I like it best when green ball, and that his back and it’s windy, because wind doesn’t knees didn’t have to be in a continuseem to like me very much. ous state of aching.

CLASS IN SESSION WITH JOHN “THE PROFESSOR” O’DONNELL

CI: What are your tools of the trade? A Raleigh Competition road bike from a couple of years ago. It’s a sleeper aero road frame, and it’s been a durable ride that’s seen me through a lot of crashing! I also ride a Cervelo P4 TT bike. Wired SRM’s on everything. Sometimes, I feel like I have an Atari attached to my bike, but the wired power meter has always been rock solid. Plus, the kids occasionally ask, ‘What’s that television on your bike?’ CI: Why do you ride, and what draws you to racing? I ride because I love to eat. They’d be burying me in a piano case if I didn’t ride. I was in husky sizes as a kid. Cycling and lots of dog walking help support my gelato habit. I’ve always been involved in competitive sport of some kind or another, so I guess racing is an extension of it. I really like the problem-solving aspect of it though, the supply side, demand side, and strategy side. Endurance sports don’t come naturally 72 | cyclingillustrated.com «

CI: Favorite race? My favorite race is the Baker City Classic Stage Race, though I missed it this year due to scheduling conﬂicts. I love the town, and the community is always really behind the race. The OBRA TT course is also fun in it’s own mind-numbing sort of way. It’s a great opportunity to be one with your thoughts. You can almost see the turnaround from the start, and that type of boredom is its own special challenge. CI: Biggest accomplishment on the bike? They’re few and far between, but I’d say the result of which I’m most proud is actually a second place in the OBRA TTT a few years back. Normally, second isn’t all that fun, but we were short a guy (something about lots of alcohol and strippers, but I never got the whole story). Three of us made the trip down and managed to still get within 30 seconds. To date, it’s the hardest hour I’ve ever ridden. I raced it with multiple-time 508 winner Michael Emde and all-around strong guy Shawn Ongers, and we were all pinned from start to ﬁnish. I don’t think we could have gone a second faster, so it was rewarding in its

Photo By Kirsten Reed

The coach, sneaky elite- and masters racer, and guru of all things aero dishes on bikes and racing.

own way. I’ve since been on the winning TTT team in Washington, but that day still stands out to me. Besides that, I’m always proud and shocked at any result I get, since I know that the sport never came easily to me. CI: Goals for rest of season? I’d like to do as well as I can in the two state TT’s (OR and WA), and then give Masters Nationals a crack. I started training really late this year, so I won’t actually be too burned out by season’s end. And I’m always looking for a reason to go to Bend! CI: People call you “The Professor” for your acute aero eye. What are three keys to going fast? Well, the basics are simple: (within

reason) bend over as far as you can, stick your arms out as far as you can, and duck your head. Voila! You’re 95% of the way there! Getting that ﬁnal 5% can be the tough part, and at the pointy end seconds matter. For ﬁguring out that part, I think it’s key to keep an open mind and constantly remember that you may not know what you think you know, and to use any and all tools available to makes the best decisions--always with an understanding that you may be wrong. CI: What are the differences between coaching a top pro like Rhae Shaw, versus an up-and-comer like Colin Gibson, compared to a weekend warrior

masters guy? You know, there are far more similarities than differences. The basics are really the same: you prescribe a training protocol rooted in sound physiological principles, observe how the athlete responds, and tweak from there. It’s an iterative process. Some folks are just starting from a higher ﬂoor and respond more quickly. The truly gifted athletes tend to respond pretty quickly and are able to keep responding to increased training load. I think sometimes the average weekend warrior is tempted to push past the point of diminishing returns, where his training becomes counter-productive, but that’s a whole different discussion.

GARY DOUVILLE would be both awesome and terrifying at the same time. CI: You have a garden and vegetable crop that would make a farmer jealous. What’s harder: growing great veggies or bike racing? I can train harder and longer and get faster on the bike, but I can’t for the life of me keep the slugs off my kale. The garden is rocking right now, though, and my wife is getting accustomed to the stench of steer manure. CI: The MRI/Monster Media Racing roster is filled with big personalities, but you’re a pretty low-key guy. How does that all work? My work is pretty intense and time consuming, and I get to channel (and consume!) a lot of my energy in the office. On the bike, I think I come across as being low-key, but the intensity and competitive spirit is still there. I’d like to think I have a pretty balanced approach that ensures aggressiveness and competitiveness while not coming across as disrespectful or “loud” on the bike. I think my personality matches up just fine with the team. The diversity of personalities and competitive strengths is good, healthy, and fun. There are many races a year, which gives everyone an opportunity to shine and go for the win. CI: Is it a team requirement to have tattoos? Do you have ink of carrots and tomatoes or some other vegetable? No veggie tats. I’m pretty sure that would get me kicked off the team! CI: Words of wisdom Friend and fellow competitor Mike Easter wrote this in a Cycling Illustrated race report earlier this year: “I knew Douville was not the quitting type. He probably has my childhood motto on his stem, ‘never, never, give up.’” I suppose these are

Photo By Danny Munson

races and time trials, and I like doing IT’S EASY BEING GREEN FOR GARY DOUVILLE wheelies and bunny hops. Gary has been on two wheels since he was three years old. His first bike CI: Favorite race? was a 1978 Yamaha I really enjoy the San Zinger 50CC motorcyDimas Stage Race. The cle, which still sits in his By Chris Lyman uphill time trial is unique father’s basement. Since and challenging, the road then, he’s graduated to race favors aggressive ridSouthern California’s seemingly ing and usually ends in a breakaway, ubiquitous Monster Media Racing and the criterium is fairly technical. It’s team, where he’s racked up impresalso early in the season, which favors sive results amid a roster of stars. riders like me whose fitness fades as the season progresses. Gary is green through and through, both on and off the bike. CI: Biggest accomplishment on the bike? I smashed the Solvang Century a CI: Tools of the trade? few years back. I think I still have My wife and I are surrounded by the Strava KOM, which is as sigbikes at home: our city and road nificant as any real trophy from any bikes, and my BMX, cyclo-cross, real event, right? mountain, and TT bikes. The “go to” machines are my Masi Evoluzione In cyclocross racing, there’s no road bike and Argon TT bike. We memory that approaches winning both wear JL Velo clothing, which is the elite district championship a few the best looking, best fitting, and lightyears back. In road racing, I’ve had est cycling clothing out there. so many near misses that I’ve lost count. Winning the Boulevard road CI: Why do you ride? What draws you race this year was pretty cool, but to racing? wins don’t come often, which is one I ride because it’s the only thing of the reasons why we keep trying! I’ve ever known, and certainly the only thing I’m any good at. I’m CI: Goals for the rest of the season? drawn to other athletic endeavors, Normally, I’d be coming off a midbut always come back to cycling as season break and getting spooled my comfort zone. up for Nationals. I just found out I’ll be in NYC on business that week, I train to stay fit and healthy and let off so I need to rethink my goals. Some steam. I race because I’m extremely cyclocross after skipping last season competitive and love to be challenged may be in order. by my peers. This drives a continuous self-improvement cycle that would be CI: If you could do a 100-mile ride with impossible without racing. any pro cyclist of any era, who would it be? CI: What kind of racer are you? Aaron Olson. I hope he stops makMy background is motocross, BMX, ing so much Handlebar coffee and downhill, and cross-country mountain spends more time on the bike. He’s biking. I didn’t start road racing until a beast even when he doesn’t train. my 30’s. Generally, I perform better That said, I think he may be old when the courses are hilly, long, or enough to race masters now. That technically challenging. I prefer road

his words of wisdom, but they resonate with me in many ways. Success requires a “can do” attitude and a

willingness to keep going when the going gets tough. Never, never, give up. Credit Easter on that one. » cyclingillustrated.com | 73

who HANS GOUWENS of us to sprint for silver. Besides that, I had a NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S HANS GOUWENS grew great spring this year and won the Tour of up in the Netherlands, where soccer and the Gila and Berkeley Hills Road Race. cycling were part of his daily life. Besides those two sports, Hans comGoals for rest of season? petitively ran the 1500, 3000, Some long, relaxing rides to By Chris Lyman and 5000 meters on the track. Tomales this fall. In 1987, he moved to the Bay Area after a backpacking trip Hailing from the Netherlands, how early did you in the Grand Canyon and decided to go throw a leg over a bike? back to school to start a physical therapy I can’t remember how young I was, but career. Today he lives in Marin with I do remember having a red bow on his family and rides on the ThirstyBear the right side of my handle bars as a Cycling Team’s 45+ squad. reminder to stay on that side of the road. I’m guessing I was four or five years old. Tools of the trade? TREK Madone SSL 6.9 for racing and You came to cycling from a competitive running a fleet of other stuff for the road, rain, background. Which sport do you like better? and dirt. Which is harder? I always enjoyed the competition of runWhy do you ride? What draws you to racing? ning because it is a true measure of who is I ride because it gives me a sense of freethe fittest athlete in the race: the strongest, dom and peace. I race because it was the fastest person almost always wins. Cycling next best thing after competitive running. is much more dynamic, and more of a After two knee surgeries, I had to stop runchess game. The race can be won or lost ning and made the switch to bike racing, by making the right or wrong decision in which seems to be the natural transition a matter of seconds. Running is harder for many of the riders on ThirstyBear. It’s because you are constantly on the edge of great to see how Chris Phipps, Tom Lyons, blowing up, while in bike racing there is a Chris Lundy, and Tanya Fredricks made chance to recover and give it another go the switch from running to cycling and to be at the front of the race. being really successful at it.

Favorite race and why? Despite getting beat at the line by Dirk Himley this past April, I would have to say Copperopolis, because it is a true test of strength and endurance. Biggest accomplishment on the bike? Making the ﬁnal selection going up the long ﬁnishing climb toward Mount Bachelor at the Nationals Road Championship in Bend last year. Kevin Metcalfe was able to ride away solo with 3 miles to go, which left ten 74 | cyclingillustrated.com «

If you could do a 100-mile ride with any pro cyclist of any era, who would it be? Andrew Talansky. He went from a collegiate level rider to a 10th place finish in his first Tour de France in less than 5 years. I would love to hear his perspective on today’s pro peloton and what kind of sacrifices he made to get to where he is now as a 24-year-old. Words to live by? If I can’t get there on a bike I’d rather not go.

Photo By Alex Chui

What kind of racer are you? Probably an all-rounder with a sub-par sprint. I do best in races of attrition.

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The Up and Comers talked to Cycling Illustrated about some of the things they are doing to make the leap from up-and-comers to elite cyclists. By Kevin Hunter

t seems like it was just last year that we celebrated another successful Summer Olympics. Believe it or not, 2016 is just around the corner. The next generation of American cyclists know this more than anyone. They have their sights set on Rio de Janeiro, while they train and race furiously, trying hard to make names for themselves on the national scene. Looking at some of the young riders making an impact, it’s easy to summarize that the sport is in great hands with this next generation of athletes.

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AG GE E A

GEOFFREY CURRAN H o m e t o w n Tustin, CA HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN CYCLING?

“My parents rode with a group out of Diedrich’s Coffee in Tustin and they have supported me ever since. My dad and I built up a steel Nishiki with downtube shifters to start. I tagged along for a few times and eventually decided to try a race when I was 14.” WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS YOU’VE LEARNED SINCE YOU’VE BEEN RACING?

“I have learned the aspects of professionalism. Racing is racing, and I learn how to be the best I can when I race. However, through the inﬂuence of directors and the national team, I have learned that professionalism can be more valuable than a resume.” WHERE WOULD YOU ULTIMATELY LIKE TO BE AS A CYCLIST? DO YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR TIME FRAME TO GET THERE?

“I would ultimately like to be a professional cyclist. I have invested a large amount of time in this endeavor and want to succeed in the sport. The usual channels are through U23 teams and the national team, graduating to a pro team around age 23 or 24.” IS THERE A POSSIBILITY THAT WE COULD SEE YOU IN THE SUMMER OLYMPICS IN 2016 AND BEYOND?

“I will be 20 in 2016. Unless I turn into Danny Van Poppel, I would look into the future a bit more.”

Photo By Danny Munson

JENNIFER VALENTE, TRAVIS MCCABE, DION SMITH, and GEOFFREY CURRAN

AG GE E A

JENNIFER VALENTE H o m e t o w n San Diego, CA HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN CYCLING?

“I’ve been around bikes my entire life. When I was younger, I rode around my neighborhood with my two brothers on mountain and BMX bikes. When I was 14, I took a kids’ class at the San Diego Velodrome and I loved it! After that I started to learn more about racing and cycling as a competitive sport, which just made me like it even more. I started racing on the track ﬁrst, then local crits as well. I haven’t looked back since.” YOU’VE BEEN ON A TEAR FOR THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS WITH A VARIETY OF WINS AND TOP 10 FINISHES. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HELP YOU KEEP UP THIS PACE?

“First, I’m always having fun and enjoying it along the way. Training is ongoing, racing is hard, travel can be stressful, but at the end of the day I love what I’m doing and the experiences that I’ve had. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Second, I have tried to always have something besides cycling in my life, like school and friends. If I have a bad race or really hard day, it gives me something else to think about.” WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS YOU’VE LEARNED SINCE YOU’VE BEEN RACING SO FAR?

“Time management was something I learned a lot about the past two years while ﬁnishing up high school and training full-time. However, the biggest thing, I think, is perseverance. My failures far outnumber the successes I’ve enjoyed. Being able to bounce back after a mental, emotional, or physical obstacle, which always seems to come at the most inconvenient time, is a challenge that is always there. I’m constantly looking forward, determined to overcome whatever presents itself next.” WHERE WOULD YOU ULTIMATELY LIKE TO BE AS A CYCLIST? DO YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR TIME FRAME TO GET THERE?

Photo By Danny Munson

“I want to be the best athlete that I can be. I will continue to push myself ’til then, however long it takes. Even after I’m done racing, I think that I will always enjoy riding and will always have an interest in bikes.” IS THERE A POSSIBILITY THAT WE COULD SEE YOU IN THE SUMMER OLYMPICS IN 2016 AND BEYOND?

“Every kid growing up wants to go to the Olympics. I was, and still am, the same. Having that dream become reality, however, is a process ﬁlled with hard work and dedication. Whether it’s in 2016, 2020, or after that, competing in the Olympics is certainly something I look forward to.”

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“

I think it is one of the most B R U TA L sports out there.” DION SMITH

DION SMITH H o m e t o w n Atlanta, GA HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN CYCLING?

“I ﬁrst got involved in cycling during my second year of high school when I was 14 years old. I played a lot of other sports before cycling, including soccer for 6 years, rugby for 4 years, a bit of running on the track, and also hockey for a bit. I enjoyed all of those sports but none really attracted me enough to take it to the next level. That’s when I joined the Massey High School cycling team. I think it is one of the most brutal sports out there. I like the fact that it is such a hard sport and is so challenging in so many ways. I

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think that is the main reason why I am still involved and always aim to improve.” YOU JUST WON A PRETTY BIG RACE ON YOUR BIRTHDAY. HOW IMPORTANT WAS THAT FOR YOU?

“Yes, I got my first big win on my birthday at the beginning of March on the last day of the Merco Cycling Classic. I was a bit surprised when I won, as it was a sprint finish and there were a few fast guys there, but I was just in the right position at the right time. It was really nice to get that win. It boosted my confidence and I think that sort of ‘broke the ice’ for me and was the

beginning of a pretty successful year so far.” WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS YOU’VE LEARNED SINCE YOU’VE BEEN RACING?

“To be disciplined, focused, and to suffer to succeed--but most important to have fun! Also, meeting and making connections with people. Sometimes cycling is all about who you know.” WHERE WOULD YOU ULTIMATELY LIKE TO BE AS A CYCLIST? DO YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR TIME FRAME TO GET THERE?

“The ultimate goal is making it to the

professional level. I’m 20 now, so I would like to think by 22 or 23 I will be at the top level and ready to start my professional career.” IS THERE A POSSIBILITY THAT WE COULD SEE YOU IN THE SUMMER OLYMPICS IN 2016 AND BEYOND?

“There could deﬁnitely be a possibility you will see me at the 2016 Rio Olympics. It would be a dream come true.” EDITOR’S NOTE: shortly after giving this interview, Smith signed a pro contract with Champion Systems. Congratulations, Dion!

Photo By Brian Hodes

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A G A AG GE E A G EE

TRAVIS MCCABE H o m e t o w n Prescott, AZ HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN CYCLING?

“I’ve always loved bikes since I was a kid, and I used to ride BMX bikes until I was a senior in high school. In high school, I ran cross country and track, and played soccer. Being from a small town, cycling was not very popular, although we had great mountain bike trails. At the end of my senior year, I began working at a local bike shop. The owners were both big roadies and kept telling me I should try cycling. So, thanks to my athletic trainer who gave me an old, 7-speed Cannondale CAAD 5 with downtube shifters, I began riding. I fell in love instantly and pretty much gave up on running, which wasn’t a great idea because I already had a scholarship for track the following year as a freshman in college. Once I came back from college, I decided I no longer loved running and wanted to see how far I could take cycling, I spent the next season doing every race I could in AZ and was able to go from a cat 5 to a cat 2 in one season.”

Photo By Danny Munson

YOU JUST WON THE CAT 1 MEN’S AMATEUR ROAD RACE OVER THE WEEKEND IN MADISON, WI. FOR YOUR FOURTH WIN OF THE YEAR. HOW BIG OF A WIN WAS THAT FOR YOU?

“Oh, man, it was huge! As a team we really wanted to come home with some red white and blue, and I’m just so proud that we were able to do it. Eric gave it everything he had on the last lap and he had complete faith in me to win. It’s just such an amazing feeling, being able to win any national championship. I would say it was the biggest win of this year!”

I went from a category 5 to a category 2. But I would say the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far aren’t so much about the bike as they are life lessons. Cycling has taught me so much in the past few years: self-control, commitment, proper work ethic, and how to maintain healthy relationships with friends and family. I believe that if I didn’t have such an amazing circle of support, I wouldn’t have the success I’ve had thus far.”

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS YOU’VE LEARNED SINCE YOU’VE BEEN RACING?

WHERE WOULD YOU ULTIMATELY LIKE TO BE AS A CYCLIST? DO YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR TIME FRAME TO GET THERE?

“My ﬁrst race was in 2007, but I didn’t fully commit until after my freshman year of college, where I was obligated to run. It wasn’t until the 2008/09 season where I fully committed myself to racing. That’s when

“As a cyclist I want to ultimately be over in Europe racing my bike and pushing myself to my limits. I really want to see how far I can push my physical abilities. I

am still quite young, and, although I’ve gotten into the sport a little later than some, I feel like I have a huge amount of untapped potential and I don’t want to waste any of it. If I could still be racing my bike 10 years from now and still be loving every day of it, then that would be my ultimate goal.” IS THERE A POSSIBILITY THAT WE COULD SEE YOU IN THE SUMMER OLYMPICS IN 2016 AND BEYOND?

“Ha! It has been a childhood dream to one day be in the Olympics! As far 2016, that is 3 years away, and I do believe anything is possible, but I doubt it. Let’s go for 2020!”

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interview in which they presented different race scenarios and you had to solve them.”

COVER STORY

THE P E R F E C TIONIST (Mark Cavendish)

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By Laura Meseguer Translated By Marisol Franco Photos By Brian Hodes

said Sebastian Weber, trainer for the T-Mobile team, as he analyzed lab results for the newly-arrived Mark Cavendish in 2006. Very few could have predicted back then that the “chubby little man,” which is how he believes others viewed him, would later become the best sprinter of his generation.

In the past Tour of Italy, he achieved his 100th professional victory, claiming ﬁve stage victories in the process. He elevated himself in Brescia with the red jersey and achieved one of the two remaining goals on his wish list: “When I became a professional, I made a list of objectives to complete during my career: to win Milan-San Remo, to be world champion, to win three points jerseys in the three grand tours, and to win the Belgian classic Gent-Wevelgem.” This last one has eluded him and his best position has been 17th in 2008 with the victory of Oscar Freire. REGARDING BICYCLES, DANCE AND A BANK “Looking back, I think that I have always been riding a bicycle,” says Mark Cavendish, born in 1985 on the Isle of Man. He began competing at age 11 in BMX and mountain bike. He was last in the ﬁrst race that he participated in. He still remembers how his mother laughed. “If I had the same bicycle as the rest, I would be able to compete with them,” he told her. For his birthday, he asked for a mountain bike, just in time for a race the next day. “I signed up and won.”

on world championships, tour victories and being the fastest man on the road

his is unacceptable,”

Years later, Weber set an ultimatum with the Etoile de Besseges as a test to determine his future with the team. Cavendish did not hesitate. At 14 and with a series of successes with the British team, he already knew that he was good. His veteran teammates, Andreas Klier and Servais Knaven, encouraged and reafﬁrmed him in this belief: “No one sees it because your lab results are terrible, but we see more. We think that you will be the ﬁrst rider on this team to win a stage.”

Years before, Rod Ellingworth, trainer for Team Sky, scanned the scoreboard that showed the test results for a young Mark Cavendish, who trained with the U23 British track team. “Those results were not where they should have been, but Rod knew to look beyond them. He liked my style and mentality. Fortunately, the tests included an

After a couple of years of competing on the Isle of Man, he began racing in Great Britain. In the under-14 National Championships, he won and met his mentor, Mike Kelly. Kelly encouraged him to try track racing. “In my ﬁrst track race I became a national champion. I won everything. I was invited to train with the U18 national program and I began competing with 16-year-olds when I was only 14.” Cavendish thinks about every detail of his

personal history. He takes his time to reflect. It seems like he has planned out his life on his own since he was a child. An adult child [with] one goal and one path. Suddenly, surprise hit as he naturally turned to cycling. “At fifteen years of age, I had to abandon my other great passion, ballroom dancing, which I had been competing in since the age of 8. I danced the Waltz, Quickstep, Latin, Rumba, Salsa and Cha Cha. I wanted to continue dancing when I began cycling; I even became British champion when I was still involved with dance. In the end I had to leave it because cycling competitions coincided with dance competitions.” Mike Kelly was the first to affirm that “this kid has something,” which was reaffirmed by Ellingworth and others despite his poor performance in the lab. British cycling at that time was limited to track racing, being among the best teams at Worlds and the Olympic Games. Road cycling was far from the successes that Sky currently enjoys, from Cavendish and from the young rising stars. Despite his development and the successes he achieved on the track, Cavendish decided at 14 that he would compete in tours and that he would do it with Team Telekom, “a very important team for sprints.” To do this, organized and vehement, he forged a plan: in 2004 he had to be competing in Belgium. This path required that he finish his studies in French the following year and begin in German. He would leave school a couple years later, at 16, in order to accomplish the jump into European cycling. “You don’t receive a contract with a European team for being good at the junior level, but rather for being a good amateur, and this required that I leave Great Britain.” His plan included working two years and saving as much as possible until he turned 18. “I worked in a bank, at the register and greeting the public. I liked it a lot. I am a perfectionist and I enjoyed balancing and working with accounts.” Just as he was prepared to leave for Europe, the U23 British team undid his plans. “They invited me to compete with them. It took a lot for me to make the decision after having laid out my plan. I ultimately saved all my money and moved to Manchester to train with them.”

He is a practical man, perfectionist, organized and methodical, almost to the point of obsession, as he admits.

It was at this point that he met Rod EIllingworth, whom Cavendish considers to be the best trainer in the world and who was his trainer up until last year, since Ellingworth currently works for Team Sky. “It was thanks to him that they could count on me. I began training late and I suffered a lot the first few months. I always fell behind in the training sessions. He vouched for me. Three months later, we competed in the first national series of the year and I won the first race,” he concludes, laughing.

“I participated in my first World Championships on the track and I became a world champion!”

2005: EASIER SAID THAN DONE More than a dream come true, when referring to Mark Cavendish, it is best to talk about words and actions, since not even Cavendish uses the word “dream” to describe his achievements and ambitions. He is a practical man, perfectionist, organized and methodical, almost to the point of obsession, as he admits. He expresses his emotion by opening his eyes wide, just as he does with his hands to emphasize the importance of a moment. “I participated in my first World Championships on the track and I became a world champion!” When he does not like something, he closes his eyes slightly, looks to both sides and tenses his jaw, as he does when he recalls his fall during the 2012 Tour of Italy, which was provoked by the Italian Roberto Ferrari: “I don’t like Ferrari at all. He has no respect for the lives of other riders.” In 2005, he finally had the opportunity to participate in the training camps of the T-Mobile team, previously Telekom. Heiko Salzwedel had been a trainer with the British team and was in charge of the subsidiary Sparkasse Team. Again, a plan: two years before he had already set his sights on being a part of this continental team. At the end of the year, the T-Mobile team hired him as stagiaire, beginning in August 2006. “The first months I raced at the front for Andreas Kloden and Michael Rogers despite being a sprinter. That was the team’s plan for stagiaires. Even so, I came in second in three stages of the Tour of Britain and won the points classification.” In 2007, there was a change in team leadership and the American businessman Bob Stapleton took charge. Changes arrived and Cavendish’s contract was in jeopardy. “They didn’t want to continue with me because they didn’t know 82 | cyclingillustrated.com «

me. I already had good offers from other teams at that point. My salary was reduced to the allowed minimum and they informed me that they would contract me for another year, even though the norm dictated that a neo-pro be kept for two years.” It was a difﬁcult time, says the Brit. Newly-arrived to the team with the Australian Adam Hansen, no one spoke to them. This was when Klier and Knaven took them in. “We had veterans share rooms with new arrivals; that’s how they created good friendships,” says Luuc Eisenga, who was the team’s press handler at the time. Lab results arrived and the ultimatum was given to Cavendish. The team would observe him in Etoile de Besseges. “I had to set the pace for Greipel in the sprint. At 500 meters from the ﬁnish I started and at 200 meters I separated myself. I turned around and no one came. I had inadvertently opened a 20-meter

gap between me and the peloton. Greipel was furious and reprimanded me for not working for him, but I had. Maybe if I had not done that I would have won the stage.” The next race was Scheldeprijs, in Belgium. The sports director, Allan Peiper, asked the team to work for Andre Greipel while giving Cavendish free reign. The test continued. “I spent the day responding to attacks. When the sprint was being prepared at the final kilometers, I stayed behind. Bernie [Eisel] came from preparing the train that would set the pace for Greipel. He saw me and told me to follow him. He took me to the front at two kilometers from the goal. In the final meters, I stayed behind Steegmans, who I ended up surpassing to achieve my first victory as a professional. From that moment on, I was always my team’s leader,” he stated.

THE LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE TOUR DE FRANCE In 2007, the Tour de France began in London. Cavendish wanted to be there even though it was his first year with the team. Before then, he proved himself in a World Tour race, La Volta to Catalonia, where he won two stages. “I then sent an e-mail to the team’s directors asking them to take me seriously. I had demonstrated that I could beat Pro Tour riders. I knew the finish in London and it would be great for a Brit to win that stage. And if I did not obtain the victory, I would at least know the level necessary to return the following year.” The experience in the Tour de France was not what Cavendish had wanted. He suffered a fall in the first two stages and he left the race at the eighth stage. “I fell in the first stage, I collided with a spectator and I cried all the way to the finish. It was a lesson. The following year I returned and won four stages.”

In 2008, with a new team sponsor and new name, High Road, Mark Cavendish’s love affair with the Tour de France began, winning 23 stages to date. “One of the few things that I regret in my career is having retired from that second Tour after winning four stages to prepare for the Beijing Olympics.” There, he would compete in the velodrome with Bradley Wiggins in the Madison. Beginning as favorites, they ended in ninth place. Wiggins was not in shape, and at the end of the competition they went their separate ways. “Who knows? Maybe I would have won one or two more stages in the Tour that year,” laments Cavendish. They did not speak for months. “Bradley is like my brother. We have known each other for years. We have raced together for several years. Sometimes we argue and jealousy arises, as happens with siblings, but we both know that if something were to happen we would be there for one another.” Then Wiggins ended the argument with this message: “Hello! Do you remember me?” “If Bradley wasn’t a cyclist he could make a living as a comedian,” concludes Cavendish. “Imagine. On the Tour de France podium, the first Brit raising his hands in victory and sporting the yellow jersey just as his teammate, also a Brit, sports the green jersey. And all that in the first British team in history.” This was the argument that Sky used to snatch Mark Cavendish after the dissolution of the HTC-Columbia team in 2012. “I am very patriotic and the goal convinced me.” Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France, but Cavendish, who had won green in 2011, ended up without the green jersey. “The 2012 Tour de France was not a disappointment because we won with Bradley, but it was at a personal level. I was drawn into their ambitious plan to win ‘the yellow,’ ‘the green’, the mountain stages, and the sprint stages. When I arrived at the Tour I knew that that would not be the case.” He achieved three victories without a leadout man. Many believe that this uncovered a new version of the English cyclist, but he affirms: “In 2008 I already won in this manner. I began to win races on my own and that was why

HTC built a team around me. What happened at the Tour last year was nothing new.” WHAT IS MARK CAVENDISH LIKE? Tristan Hoffman, his director at HTCColumbia, says that he has no filters. “He says what he thinks, and he expresses things just as he feels them.” “It’s true,” responds Cavendish. “But the camera presents an exaggerated version of me. All the emotions come out at the finish. That is what makes cycling so special: the fans, the press… they can feel your emotions immediately after the finish. You cannot hide.” His unrestrained sincerity has earned him the label of arrogant, although Rob Hayles, exprofessional British cyclist, with whom he won the gold in the Madison during Worlds in Los Angeles in 2005, believes the opposite. “He isn’t arrogant, but if someone asks him who the fastest rider is in the peloton, he will say that it’s him. He’s saying the truth and he’s being sincere.” His statements to and gestures towards the press have fed into this image, which is something that Cavendish sees very simply: “If you say what you’re thinking, you’ll never have to change your story. You don’t have to worry about changing any details. I don’t care if people like it or not.” The same applies to his peloton teammates. “I have a lot of friends in the peloton, but there are also riders who I don’t like and I know that they don’t like me either. It’s hard being a star. The great riders understand that pressure and better understand my personality. I have a great relationship with all of them.” AND CAVENDISH ARRIVES IN BELGIUM He sported the rainbow of his world championship jersey with Team Sky as he signed a 3-year contract. With the turn of events at the 2012 Tour de France, he sought a way to leave the team two seasons before he was scheduled to. “I knew the directors of the team because of my time with the British team and they knew me. The last thing they wanted was to keep me unhappy, especially given the money they were paying me.”

“If I ride, I only win 90% of the races. If you put the best team to work with me, I win 100% of the races.” After solving the legal issues behind of the situation, they contacted the team that Mark Cavendish had wanted to ride for for years: Omega Pharma – QuickStep. The attention from the international press, who loves internal team conﬂicts, focused on what could have been a leader battle between the Belgian Tom Boonen and Cavendish. “The concept of a rivalry implies respect. We were rivals at a certain point in our careers, but now we are teammates and the respect has always been there,” settles the Brit. In 2013, he has already achieved 13 victories – with Sky he achieved 15 in the entire season – and

his eyes light up when he talks about the team environment. “The Belgians are always smiling. It’s hard not to be happy on a team like that. We are always the last to leave the dinner table because we talk so much. We get by using Italian, French, Spanish, and English, and we laugh a lot.” An hour and a half after beginning the interview the recorder stops, but not before Mark Cavendish provides one more fact: “In 2009, I competed in 27 stages with a sprint ﬁnal and I came in ﬁrst in 25 and second in two.” He reiterates with an overwhelming security: “If I ride, I only win 90% of the races. If you put the best team to work with me, I win 100% of the races.” » cyclingillustrated.com | 83

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The field came across the finish line with [a bunch of] guys that had lapped the field earlier, and nobody sprinted, nobody raised his hands. I had no clue who won. It was chaos.”

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A M ER IC A N C

t’s May 2011 and much of the professional cycling world is focused on Lake Tahoe and the grand depart of the sixth edition of the Amgen Tour of California. Except there will be no start this year. A low pressure system from Alaska has sent ice and snowy weather to the site of stage 1 and the recent death of Leopard-Trek’s Wouter Weylandt has left the peloton wary of sketchy conditions. With a mass of fans gathered on site to see the riders off, it falls to a young Brad Sohner to make the ofﬁcial announcement.

Rewind back a few years earlier to a warm evening in Las Vegas, where thousands of fans line the course of the 2007 USA CRITS ﬁnal. Announcer Chad Andrews is about to send off a mass of the fastest men in the country, but ﬁrst he has to interview the event’s sponsor, Michael Ball of Rock Racing. And the event was being streamed live to the world over the Internet.

AMERICAN C F YC O S LI E “I was like, ‘What question canIN C I

“They sent me up there to break the news. I was like, 18, 19 years old maybe,” Brad Sohner remembers. “I never had to do anything like that. But, yeah, when they made the ofﬁcial call they were like, ‘Alright, go up there and announce it over the P.A.’, and I kind of had to gather myself a little bit before doing that.”

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during North Carolina’s Dilworth ask him in front of a family-friendly Criterium and started talking. crowd?’” Andrews remembers. “I mean, we’re in Vegas, but there are “It was probably 50 degrees, raining a lot of kids there. So I asked him like crazy, and everybody’s out there something benign, like, “What’s it like racing, and people to sponsor such a big were watching.” Anevent like this in Vegas?’ drews recalls. “I think It didn’t matter. It went By Joe Silva they had some music sideways anyway.” Photo By Danny Munson going on. So I thought, ‘I’ll just pick up the But neither colorful microphone and try to language, nor tired tell people what’s happening during athletes, nor unruly weather, nor the race.’” stressed out event promoters can be allowed to throw off Sohner or From there, Sohner and Andrews Andrews. As the masters of ceremologged a lot of hours on a lot of nies for cycling events big and small stages talking about the well known both commentators have met their and the unknown as they polished fair share of tricky situations, and their techniques. it’s their job to ensure that those in attendance have the best pro cycling “It took me awhile to get comfortexperience possible, despite the able talking over a microphone to a challenges. bunch of people, but it just kind of slowly grew on me.” Sohner says. “As a commentator, you’ve got to feel “One of the scariest parts of my cathe situation,” Andrews says. “If you reer was that initial moment of havfeel like it’s going wrong, you have ing to walk on stage when you ﬁrst to do your best to kind of make the start, and everyone staring at you. moment feel more seamless.” But the more races I did, the easier it got. One of the hardest things was While both Sohner and Andrews being a kid and being young. For normally cover different terrain a long time, I couldn’t rent a car, I within the sport, both announcers couldn’t check into hotels, so travegot their start by happenstance. ling was tough. I’d go to events and “I was working for an event services try to check in at a Holiday Inn, and company, setting up the stage and I’d be 16 or 17 and couldn’t do it.” sound system and fencing and all They both also had to ﬁnd the best that other stuff,” says Sohner. “That way to interact with athletes. was my summer job when I was 14. I was hanging out at the bike “I usually try never to do interviews race, just watching the pros, and the before a race, because I think the ridannouncer that was there thought I ers are so focused on racing that they had a good voice, and he said, ‘Hey seem detached during the interview.” kid, you should take a shot.’ He gave Andrews says. “And that never really me some PA tags and a microphone, looks good for the commentator or and just told me to read it like I was the bike racer. After the race they’re on radio or TV.” tired, they’re dead, and they want to get cleaned up and get out of their Andrews entry into the sport was kits. But we have to get that photo even more random. A long-time or that video interview for the fans cycling enthusiast and amateur racer, or whatever media are assembled, so he grabbed an unused microphone » cyclingillustrated.com | 85

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As a commentator, you’ve got to feel the situation,” Andrews says. “If you feel like it’s going wrong, you have to do your best to kind of make the moment feel more seamless.”

sometimes you’ve just kind of got to stop things and make sure that the riders are ready for the interview… make them comfortable so that they can tell their thoughts on how the race unfolded.” Thanks to the response he’s received and the mentoring he’s had from long-time fellow announcers like Dave Towle, Sohner has done many of the major stage races of in the U.S. Recently, however, he’s had the opportunity to call the Tour of Beijing and bring American-style cycling commentary to the people of China. “It was bizarre,” Sohner says. “I was up there with the microphone…a blond haired, blue-eyed kid, and after the stage I would have a line of people waiting to take pictures with me after the race. It was like instant celebrity. People wanted me to touch their babies and touch my hair! They had never seen a 6’3” white guy before. But I got a really warm reception, and that was a blast. That was deﬁnitely a good, new experience for me over the last couple of years.” Andrews’ most thrilling memories have come from one of the races he loves calling the most – the Athens Twilight Criterium. Taking place in front of nearly 30,000 people, this annual race through the darkened streets 86 | cyclingillustrated.com «

of Athens, GA brings a wonderful mix of high-speed and high-energy spectating. In 2007, however, a last lap crash left riders strewn all over the course, and nobody sure of the winner. “The field came across the finish line with [a bunch of] guys that had lapped the field earlier, and nobody sprinted, nobody raised his hands. I had no clue who won. It was chaos. That was probably the first race I ever did where there wasn’t any call at the finish line. But that’s what I love what about that criterium. It’s like a rock concert with bicycle racers and I have to keep my energy up for an hour and a half.” Both men log a lot of hours on the road throughout the season, cramming themselves onto crowded flights and into faceless hotel rooms in order to bring the sport into sharper focus for those who turn up to watch it live. But Sohner speaks for both of them when he says that, in general, he wouldn’t have it any other way: “I definitely love bike racing, and to be able to work in something that I’m passionate about is something that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to give up. You know, I get paid to travel around and talk about the sport that I love, and that’s pretty darn good.”

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Photo By Danny Munson

Women cyclists have to have two jobs: one as a cyclist and one to make money.”

88 | cyclingillustrated.com «

lison Powers, riding for NOW and Novartis for MS, is a friendly face in the peloton and a familiar face on the podium. Her resume is a list of a lot of 1s before some of the biggest races in the U.S. including national championships, the Women’s Prestige Cycling Series, and the NRC individual title. As a skier turned cyclist, Powers has been an athlete all her life. She is always one to watch for and never one to count out.

OMEN Favorite food? Meal?

“My favorite meal is deﬁnitely breakfast. My favorite type of food is fruit. Maybe it sounds crazy, but without fruit, I go crazy!” Favorite race?

“I really like the Cascade Cycling Classic and the Tour of California time trial. They’re both really pretty, and great events. My favorite race is Tulsa Tough. The organizers are super supportive of women’s cycling, the crowds are great, and the money is really good.”

“I needed the money. Women cyclists have to have two jobs: one as a cyclist and one to make money. I coached skiing for a while, but I didn’t really like the cold or being in ski boots all day. I decided to try coaching cycling and loved it.” Do you think coaching helps you as an athlete as well as your clients?

By Greta Neimanas

“I always enjoyed riding and racing mountain bikes, and used that as an off-season activity to cross train for skiing. A bad knee injury was the beginning of the end of my ski career. I grew up in Winter Park, Colorado, so mountain biking was always accessible from home.” What lessons or skills transferred from skiing to cycling?

“I learned how to be an athlete from skiing. I learned how to listen to my body, to give it what it needs.”

“Can I say none of them? I don’t like cities at all. I like mountains and rural places with no concrete or buildings.”

You’re always in the mix, always one to watch in every discipline: road racing, crits, and time trials. What’s your favorite? How would you describe yourself as a cyclist?

If you were not an athlete, what would you like to be?

“I’ve worked to be a good all-around racer. If I had to say, I’m strongest at time trialing, and worst at sprinting.”

Favorite city/country?

“I really enjoy coaching, which I do now, and teaching.” As a self-proclaimed coffee snob, what’s your all-time favorite shop and your “usual” drink?

“Espresso, and my favorite shop is Handlebar Coffee in Santa Barbara, owned by Aaron Olson and Kim Anderson.” You’re an alpine skier turned cyclist? What caused the switch?

Do you think races favor the all-arounder--the jack of all trades--or the specialist--the master of one?

“Good all-around riders were able to win both the time trial and road race this year at nationals. In the US, racing may favor the allarounder. In Europe, specialists can have bigger results, like Mara Abbott at the Giro Donne.” What motivated you to start coaching?

“It deﬁnitely helps my own cycling. I’m always thinking of fresh ideas to keep training fun for my athletes. The more I learn for them, the more I can apply to myself. I also put on a lot of skills clinics for people, and that helps keep my skills sharp.” Who has been most influential in your life or career? Why?

“My ﬁancé, Josh. We’ve been together for 6 years and I’ve been racing for 9. We met on a bike ride, actually, that a mutual friend set up. We ride together and I’m able to learn from him. He’s been super supportive and caring.” What do you feel has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?

“Financial hurdles and the lack of salaries for women cyclists. I’m lucky to have great support from my family and Josh. My coaching is now at a place that allows me to focus on racing rather than just paying rent.” Do you have a motto or words to live by? A life philosophy?

“Try to be a good person. People forget results but remember the person.” What is one thing you’d tell someone new to the sport? Advice you wish you’d had?

“Find a mentor. Anyone can ride, look at a power meter, and follow her coaching plan, but you need to ﬁnd a mentor to teach you how to race. My mentor was Sean Madson. We were on the same team and he was really helpful from the start. I’ve also had awesome teammates to learn from along the way.”

Photo By Brian Hodes

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auren Hall is another pro cyclist in the “exsoccer player” category, having played semi-pro soccer before throwing a leg over a bike. After experimenting in running, Hall was perilously close to becoming a triathlete before deciding to pursue cycling. She is now one to watch at the finish. This year alone, she’s racked up wins at Tour of the Gila, Nature Valley Grand Prix, and Cascade Cycling Classic, and an impressive 2nd place finish (to her Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies teammate, Jade Wilcoxson) in the national championship road race.

Favorite food or meal:

“My dad raised me on BBQ. We would take soccer trips and never, EVER eat at fast food joints like all the other kids. I was always jealous, but looking back the BBQ places were so much cooler and unique!” Favorite race:

“I love the Fleche Wallone and Flanders because of their history. Riding those cobbles and climbs is such an amazing feeling. In the US, Cascade is by far my favorite because Bend is such a cool town.” Favorite city/country:

“I don’t think I have a favorite city. I’ve enjoyed seeing all of the country and world via professional cycling. I love Italy, but America is my home.” If you were not an athlete, what would you like to be and why?

“I’ve always been an athlete. I grew up playing football with my older brothers, playing soccer since I could remember, running track, basketball, tennis. You name it, I want to play! My grandfather played for the ﬁrst 49ers team, so being an athlete is in my bloodline! I’ve always been active--running, water sports, hunting--so if I weren’t an athlete, I would probably be in the yard/garden or doing some sort of activity around the house.” You played soccer through college then transitioned out of the sport. What drew you to cycling rather than another sport?

“When I was in college, I always wanted to be a professional soccer player. I played semi-pro for a year in hopes of going pro, but it never

happened, so I was still staying active with running. My brother talked me into running a marathon in 2006, and from that marathon I wanted to try a triathlon. Off to the bike shop I went in 2007, bought a bike, got talked into the Tuesday group rides, and never quite made it to triathlons.” You’re always in the mix, always one to watch in races: road races, crits, and on the track as well. What’s your favorite discipline?

“Honestly, I don’t have a favorite. I love track racing: the speed, the banking, the feeling of the force pushing you into the track. I love the speed of crits as well. Road racing has taken me to more countries and bigger races, so maybe I’ll pick road if I have to.” Who has been most influential in your life or career? Why?

“My parents. My dad has always been supportive of my athletic career. He never missed a single basketball game, soccer game, or track meet. He came to all of the practices, picked me up late, was there in the rain and cold. Mom was always on the home front, always supporting me. When I talked to them about quitting my job and pursuing cycling as a fulltime career, they both stood behind me.” What do you feel has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?

“Me. I’m really good at giving myself a hard time. I’m hard headed, stubborn, and have to prove things to myself. Even when I win a race, I think about how I could’ve done things better.” Do you have a motto, words to live by, or a life philosophy?

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Even when I win a race, I think about how I could’ve done things better.” “‘There are no strangers in the world, just friends you haven’t met yet.’ That about sums me up. I’m a happy person, always smiling, you never know who needs that smile or just a hello from a happy person.” What is one thing you’d tell someone new to the sport? Maybe advice you wish you’d had?

“I would tell someone, this sport is a process, it takes time, don’t rush it. Also, have your circle--3 to 5 people--whom you trust, talk to, and listen to, no more.” Describe your best or happiest day on the bike:

“These days, I’ve been lucky to have many happy days on the bike: winning two national championships on the track last year within 20 minutes. Mara ﬁnishing the time trial at the Giro Rosa. Another highlight is the national road race, because it was such a team win.” Do you have “bucket list” race to compete in (or win)?

“I would like to see a women’s Tour de France. I think that would be an amazing experience. I’ll also continue to race world cups, and I would love to have the opportunity to race the world championships.”

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LOVING

MEMORY

Nothing strikes closer to the hearts of cyclists than fatal cycling accidents. While rare, they do happen, and can hang a specter over our lives and sport. In 2013, we mourn the loss of two racers from Southern California: Chris Contreras and Jackie Dunn. Cycling Illustrated wants to tell their stories, in hopes that we all might take the time everyday to be grateful and thankful for what we have, and to honor the lives of these two riders.

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CHRIS “CONO” CONTRERAS

Photo By Garry Souverain

February 25, 1965– May 27, 2013

o one could believe it when Chris Contreras died during the Memorial Day race in Dominguez Hills. We now, unfortunately, believe.

It would be comforting to know that he died because he was inexperienced, or the course was too dangerous, or because of equipment failure. Any of those things would make us feel more sanguine about racing. None of those scenarios was true.

a service rich in honesty and truth and real stories. His life presented without whitewash or apology. It was beautiful and it was moving.

What was equally beautiful was the way that our SoCal cycling community responded. Seamlessly, funds were set up, memorial rides Chris was pinched against a curb when his wheel planned, legal and ﬁnancial help donated, overlapped in a wide, echeloned and dedications were made at turn. He clipped a pedal, ﬂipped subsequent races and events. None By Seth Davidson his bike, hit a utility pole, and died. of it replaced Chris, but all of it At age 49, he left behind a lovely pointed to people who, whether wife, a teenage son, and a twothey knew him or not, saw a little bit of his fate year-old toddler. in their own lives, or in the lives of someone they loved. At his memorial service, more than three hundred people showed up to hear about his Numerous other bicycle riders have died in variegated life and to pay their respects. It was the last twelve months, some in races, some in

trafﬁc, and all through bad luck. Stalwarts of the SoCal racing scene like David Worthington and Andy Jessup, Jr. suffered horriﬁc injuries in accidents that have changed their outlook on bicycling forever, accidents from which they were lucky to escape with their lives. This, then, is the conundrum: how can something as wonderful as a bicycle be accompanied by so much death and terrible injury? Every person who’s been badly hurt, and every person who’s lost a friend or loved one, would put it more starkly: how can bicycling possibly be worth it? The answer, of course, is that it isn’t. If by “worth it” you mean “would I do it knowing it would result in catastrophe?” But since we’re not privileged to know the result until it actually

happens, “worth it” ends up meaning “how much risk can I live with?” Certainty in life is rare, but we know that eventually we’ll die. The choices we make about how we live can have a huge impact on the method and timing of our demise. Chris signed a waiver that said the thrill and satisfaction from pinning on a number and testing himself was worth the chance that it would be the last thing he ever did. And, crazily, it was. This bicycling thing we do, which often ﬂies in the face of good judgment and common sense, tells us inside that it’s worth it. And, as long as it does, who are we, like Chris, not to listen? » cyclingillustrated.com | 93

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the SoCal district championship, ackie Dunn crashed designed a kit in her memory and during a training race raced in her honor. Cat sixes, pro at the San Diego Veloracers, and former world champidrome in June. Her ons rode together in laps of silence death shortly thereafat the velodrome. Women came ter, a result of injuries out of the woodwork to race tosustained during the crash, rocked gether with an understanding that the cycling world in Southern Jackie would have wanted them to California. Despite the fact that keep on racing, because every race waiver menracing gave her such joy. tions the risk of “serious By Ian Pike injury and death,” or In short, the greater cycling something to that effect, community rallied around few bike racers think of that risk as Jackie’s memory, honoring her life a tangible reality because accidents in the only way that seemed right. like Jackie’s, or Chris Contreras’ For everyone who cried, two people just weeks before, are rare enough laughed over some anecdote about as to seem inconceivable. Jackie and her character. She was a colorful figure at any race, having Such a tragedy is monstrously unwhat Jens Voigt (in the now-famous fair, and so much harm could have Tour of California interview) come from Jackie’s death. Her called “confidence beyond reason” husband, Durward, had no better when it came to her racing. Jackie reason to hate the world. People Dunn raced three or four crits on from outside the cycling comSundays, jumping into men’s races munity could come away with the ready to win, despite the ridiculousmessage that cycling is dangerous, ly long odds against a solo woman and nothing more. Fear and sadwith no team and 100+ guys to ness could have broken hearts and contend with! A lot of cyclists could sapped the joy from many lives. have learned a thing or two about But Jackie’s story, in fact her life, self-respect from Jackie. does not end in sadness. It doesn’t There’s no doubt that Jackie’s end at all. It continues in beautiful, death tore a hole in the fabric flourishing hope. of the local community, but that Jackie’s memorial service at a local same community rushed to fill it church was standing room only. in. They piled on caring and love, The memorial ride in Coronado, and gave everything they had to California drew a crowd that made give in support of Durward as the local group rides look paltry by he fought off the darkness that comparison. A group of women, follows the loss of a loved one. with whom Jackie was supposed Speaking of him, there’s no way to contest the team pursuit at 94 | cyclingillustrated.com «

JACKIE DUNN

July 26, 1980 – June 19, 2013

to overstate the might of Durward Dunn’s character in choosing strength and hope instead of dissolving into bitterness. If anyone honors Jackie’s memory, it’s him. In standing proud and remembering her with love, Durward sets the example for courage in times of difficulty. He faces the impossible, finding meaning in that which is otherwise cruel and meaningless. He, Jackie’s friends, and the people from her various communities, by pouring out all the love they have to give, have overfilled the hole that Jackie left. Of course, it’s still a hole. An empty spot on the velodrome benches. A bike with no rider. Nothing could ever replace Jackie, but there’s power in the monument to her memory that’s been erected in the hearts and minds of everyone she ever knew. Jackie will always remind us that racing bikes is fun. Especially when it’s hard. She will always remind us that we’re the luckiest people in the world to have found something we love so much and to pursue it with gusto. She will always remind us that the community with which we surround ourselves is of infinite value; that the friendships we form on and off the bike are real and meaningful. Jackie will always remind us--then the wind is in our faces, in racing and in life--to pedal big circles and never quit.

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JUNIOR TALENT

RISING

TEAM SWIFT 96 | cyclingillustrated.com «

Photo By AbbiOrca.com

IN NORCAL

director of its junior development team. Junior development programs; such as Bear Development, headed by Stu Bone, Team Swift, led by former pro Laura Charameda; have all come to the fore in the past few years, taking a number of national titles and noteworthy results along the way.

JUNIOR TALENT

RISING

t the tender age of 16, Adrien Costa (Slipstream-Craddock Development Team) has amassed a collection of palmares that a rider several years his senior would envy. Along with his teammate, Zeke Mostov, the two have conspired to frustrate and disrupt the plans of many established teams and riders, most notably going 1st and 5th at the Pescadero Coastal Classic in May of this year. A quick glance at the results from Pescadero in the men’s pro/1/2 field reads like a who’s who in NorCal cycling: Roman Kilun, Eric Riggs, Shawn Rosenthal (Team Mike’s Bikes p/b Incase), Art Rand and Keith Hillier (MarcPro Strava), Philip Mooney (Jamis-Hagens Berman) and Logan Loader (Cash Call Mortgage). However, a closer look yields a number of other riders, not quite as familiar perhaps, representing junior teams such as Tieni Duro, Bear Development, and the Specialized Juniors Development Team. In fact, of the top five finishers, three riders are under 20 (Costa, Mostov, and Bear Development’s Tim Aiken), with two more young riders in the top 20--an impressive number in what is generally regarded as one of the toughest courses of the NCNCA district. As exceptional as Costa’s win was, it is hardly unique to see such a young rider competing among NorCal elites. “In the 26 years that I’ve been in this sport, NorCal continues to be one of the “hotbeds” for juniors, both in terms of racing and development,” cites Larry Nolan of Team Specialized Masters and

Riders such Jack Maddux (Team Specialized Juniors), Reese Levine (Tiene), Bryan Duke, Sam Cerutti, and Tommy Lucas (Bear Development) join Costa, Mostov and Aiken to form a solid group of juniors who compete at the highest level in NorCal and across the United States.

for young riders when she started the team, Charameda prides herself on being able to assemble a group of enthusiastic supporters and sponsors. Charameda, who is a coach herself, works with assistant coach, Troy Newton, to create training plans and race schedules. Newton, who is a Sonoma County sheriff ’s deputy, has been working for Team Swift for the past 8 years. “I like working with the level of riders where coaching and advice can have an exponential impact,” she says, elaborating on her approach to working with younger riders.

TIENI DURO: TEAM SWIFT: A SENSE OF FAMILY CREATING THE MOLD Like Team Swift, Tieni Duro prides Started in 1999, Team Swift is one itself on being open to all juniors, of the oldest junior development regardless of skill. As team DS Jason programs in NorCal. Headed by Kent explains, this ‘come one, come two-time US criterium champion all’ philosophy “helps create that and 1993 UCI World Championship sense of team and bronze medalist, Laura family,” since most of Charameda, the Santa the riders who join the Rosa team has been By Eric Davis program do so at an home to a number of early age, maturing current and former through the developpro riders. Among ment process. Not them: former Garmin only into successful bike racers, but rider, Steven Cozza, Tibco’s Lindsay also into mature and responsible Myers, and Ryan Eastman of the adults who will, it is hoped, give back Bontrager Development Team. to the program later on. The team strives to “provide unusual Kent aspires to create a sense of opportunities to help young athletes family among the riders and points develop athletic skills, but more to Mike’s Bikes p/b Incase’s Shawn significantly integrity, a strong work Rosenthal as the quintessential rider ethic, and the ability to prioritize that Tieni Duro seeks to develop. activities in order to meet specific Rosenthal, himself a successful bike goals,” notes Charameda. Adding, racer (most notably winning the Mt. “I am as proud of the big results as I Hamilton Road Race this year), has am of a new/young rider who might worked closely with the team as its finish his first big challenge.” coach, developing training programs, while balancing a full-time job and a With a roster ranging in ages 10-18, busy race schedule. the team takes a broad approach to training and racing, subsidizing Striking a balance between competicoaching and providing discounts on tive racing and the demands made equipment. Noting a lack of support

upon young riders is a theme that one hears time and time again, and Rosenthal is well aware of the dangers of pushing a rider too hard at such a young age. “I ﬁgure out ways to give training that is ﬂexible enough to allow for high school fun and ensure the workouts are open to adventurous, social rides,” Rosenthal states.

TEAM SPECIALIZED JUNIORS: THE “PLAN B” PHILOSOPHY Perhaps one of the most high proﬁle programs in NorCal, the Specialized Juniors Development Team has only been in existence since 2007, when Specialized Masters team director Larry Nolan decided that the masters program should give something back to the sport. Drawing upon 20 years of experience as a bike racer and coach, he was able to put together a program, and thus the Specialized Juniors team was born. The team, headed by the indefatigable Nolan and funded largely through contributions from the Northern California Cycling Federation (NCCF), a non-proﬁt organization founded to promote junior cycling, has become one of the most dominant teams in NorCal; with a roster containing such stand-out riders as Jack Maddux and former riders such as James Laberge of Team Mike’s Bikes p/b Incase and Eamon Lucas of Cal Giant. Nolan likes to say that Specialized Juniors Development Team is an elite racing team, but emphasises that the program is about more than just winning races. He stresses the need for balance in life. “It is about teaching these young men how to be successful in life,” he notes. He calls this, the “plan B” philosophy. Elaborating further, “Balance in life is critical. Juniors » cyclingillustrated.com | 97

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that hope to turn their passion into a profession gain valuable perspective when they line up the rest of their lives with similar importance as their cycling goals.” Photo By Jason Kent

TIENI DURO

“

I like working with the level of riders where coaching and advice can have an exponential impact” - Laura Charameda 98 | cyclingillustrated.com «

It is a philosophy that can be applied both on and off the course.

BEAR DEVELOPMENT: At 125 lbs, 18-year-old Tim Aiken is, by his admission, “not the sort of rider who is going to intimidate anyone in a crit.” Where he does intimidate however, is on the climbs, as is evident by his results at the aforementioned Pescadero and the similarly hilly Mt. Hamilton Road Race. The son of Stanford University professors and currently racing in Europe with the USA Cycling team, Aiken is one of the shining stars of juniors in NorCal. Joined by riders such as cat 1 Bryan Duke, Sam Cerutti, Matt Schaupp, and, until recently, Tobin Ortenblad, Aiken and the members of Bear Development have quickly risen to the top of the NorCal junior development scene. The team’s founder, Stu Bone, was inspired to break with many years of work in private equity

BEAR DEVELOPMENT

and to start a junior development team after meeting young riders on group rides in Santa Cruz. The team, then sponsored by Santa Cruz bike shop Spokesmen Bikes and featuring the young rider Tobin Ortenblad, was born in 2010. Stu Bone’s passion for cycling is apparent, especially when discussing the Bear team. But he is candid about his cycling credentials, stating, “I am a bike rider, not a bike racer. I do not have a history with bike racing. I wanted to surround these kids with people who did.”

Photo By Danny Munson

Photo By Keith Flood

TEAM SWIFT

development team and a U23 squad. Team members receive free coaching and equipment, much of it subsidized through a combination of private funding and community support. “We pay for everything,” Stu Bone notes. Adding that, “We believe in them and want to help them achieve their goals.”

Enter Rob Evans.

Team members are encouraged to race open category, but both Stu Bone and Evans like to stress that the goal is not on getting results, but rather on having fun and hopefully gaining skills for later on in life.

Evans is to Bear what Larry Nolan is to the Specialized Juniors. Like Nolan, Evans is an accomplished cyclist in his own right, although, as he states, “when I race with the Bear kids, I set aside my own aspirations and race for them, doing whatever it takes to get them the win.”

“Bear Team is chock full of good, fun kids who race hard, win races, and inspire people to want to help them,” Stu Bone says. Attempting to strike a balance between those riders who can and want to move onto the next level and those riders who may never be faced with these choices.

Evans, coach Chris Burnham, Julie Voilich, and Ben Jacques Maynes (Jamis-Hagens Berman) form the core that is the Bear Development management team. Like the Specialized Juniors, Bear Development exists as an “elite” team, nestled somewhere between a junior

“I am proud of the way that our kids treat one another. I am proud of their friendships and their sense of team. I am proud of the way they represent Bear,” says Bone, distilling the the substance of a successful junior development team down to its essence.