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Emily Batty’s new bike day, officially

On Jan. 20, Emily Batty could stop hiding. It wasn’t that no one knew where she was. A little less than two weeks before, she, her partner and manager Adam Morka, and their two dogs, Buddy and Bonnie, moved to the Victoria area. In a normal year, they’d be in Arizona or Maui at that time, riding and preparing for the cross country season ahead. With the pandemic making travel difficult, they instead headed west, where they could ride during the remaining winter months. That riding, however, had to be kept on the down-low.

In December, Batty announced that she and Trek, her bike sponsor of more than 12 years, would be parting ways. Up until that day in January, her new relationship with Canyon, which had been in the works for close to a year, was not yet public. But the two-time Olymian and 2021 Olympic hopeful needed to ride. “I picked the hours of that day that I’d go out in public carefully,” Batty said. She avoided the trails on weekends. “With the pandemic, the trails are so busy, which is an amazing thing.”

On that day in January, with the news of the new sponsorship public, Batty and Morka went on a ride. Batty was giddy. “It’s finally out in the open. I don’t have to hide the bike I’m riding anymore, dressed incognito,” she said. She had been enjoying pushing her new equipment, the Canyon Lux and Exceed, on the technical trails in the area. Now she could do so openly, getting in training volume for the start of the race season. At that time, she was looking toward the start of the World Cup series in May. The first race would be in Germany, which is also the home of her new bike sponsor.

Siobhan Kelly

A Canadian cyclocross racer flees Europe for home

When Siobhan Kelly started Waaslandcross Sint-Niklaas on Feb. 20, the clock was ticking not only for the penultimate cyclocross race of the pro circuit in

Belgium, but also for her race to get back home. The London, Ont., privateer, who races under Black Dog Racing, began planning her 2020-21 European campaign just after her previous season ended in January 2020. As the pandemic evolved throughout the past year, Kelly kept tweaking her plans. She arrived in Europe early this past November and raced consistently. She raced even after breaking her nose in late fall. “There was a very large van coming at me that took up the entire road,” she said. “It was either stay on the road and hit the van, or swerve out of the way and hit a sign. My nose broke my fall.” Emily Batty Kelly’s nose was completely better by February. That month, she got a visit from the police one evening. She had gotten official approval to stay in Belgium, but there was a mixup with her paperwork. The police arrived to make sure she had left the country. She was able to prove she could stay. Just before the Belgian cops paid Kelly a visit, she was looking into new travel measures that the Canadian government was proposing. Could she race right up until the end of the season by lining up at the event in Oostmalle on Feb. 21? No. If she attended the final race, she would be subject to the new travel rules upon returning home, complete with a stay in a quarantine hotel, said to cost $2,000. Instead, she made Waaslandcross her final race, and then headed home, arriving with hours to spare. Kelly said the Frankfurt airport, from where she flew to Toronto, was chaotic. Things were more argy-bargy there than at the start of a cyclocross race. “Plus, people were shouting in German,” she said. “It added to my confusion. I only kind of understand Dutch, but not German.” On the morning of Feb. 22, Kelly was in quarantine at her home in London. She had plans to work on her cyclocross bikes. “I’ll take the headsets apart today, so I can slowly bring them back to 100 per cent,” she said.

Delicately navigating initiation at Astana - Premier Tech

At the Astana - Premier Tech team training camp this past January, Benjamin Perry got a costume. He described it, as best as he could, as that of a priest or religious figure. It was part of an initiation. It came, inappropriately, with dark face paint. “I’m just going to throw this part of the outfit in the garbage,” Perry said to his new team about the blackface makeup, and then added a very Canadian apology. “I’m sorry, but if you are going to make me drink something or jump in the pool, I’m down. I’ll do it. I want to be all-in for the initiation, but I’m not going to put that makeup on.”

Near the end of 2020, Perry, who’s from St. Catharine’s, Ont., and lives in Girona, announced that he was joining Astana - Premier Tech. He only really knew two people on the Kazakhstan-based squad: Hugo Houle and Steve Bauer. Meeting his new teammates was a challenge at the camp in Benidorm, Spain, as members had to adhere to strict rules to limit contact. Perry had to ride and eat with the same small group throughout the duration of the camp. Still, the team did what it could to make new members feel welcome.

So Perry wore the costume that evening, sans makeup. At the team dinner, he got called up by fellow Canadian Houle for another part of the fun. The more senior rider gave Perry a belt with butter knife dangling from it. Perry had to stand on a chair and lower the knife into the mouth of a wine bottle. To do so, Perry had to make some pretty suggestive moves. He got the knife in the hole easily. “I thought, what does this say about me that I’m good at squatting and getting a knife into a wine bottle?” he said.—MP