Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

I wonder if Floyd Landis knows that the last time a billionaire put on a bike race in the US, the winner walked away with a cool $50,000? That, of course, would be the Donald Trump bankrolled Tour de Trump back in 1989 won by 7-Eleven hardguy Dag-Otto Lauritzen. Seventeen years later, the winner’s payola seems to have shrunk significantly.

The current billionaire to finance a stage race in the US big enough to entice serious Euro talent across the Atlantic is reclusive Denver-ite Philip F. Anschutz, the man primarily responsible for making the inaugural Tour of California a reality. Just take a peak at what this guy owns, it’s mind-boggling. And despite the relative frugality of this rendition’s prize-list, I think Anschutz’s AEG (Anschutz Entertainment Group, the owner of the Tour of California) will very likely be the means to a long-lasting, world-class stage race in the United States. I think the reason that events such as the Red Zinger Bicycle Classic, the Coors Classic, the Tour de Trump, and the Tour DuPont had a relatively short shelf life is that the title sponsors were not really invested in the long-term health of professional cycling. For Donald Trump, it was sheer vanity coupled with the appealing insanity of shutting down streets from Albany to Atlantic City (and particularly Manhattan) for a bike race. For the corporate entities, once their marketing goals were met they just pulled the plug and walked away leaving a race infrastructure without any cash to continue. What’s different this time around is that AEG is in the business of sports and entertainment, and they see a niche in the US waiting to be filled. And AEG is serious about sports and entertainment. Just peruse the abbreviated version of their empire:

AEG is one of the leading sports and entertainment presenters in the world. AEG, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation, owns or controls a collection of companies including facilities such as STAPLES Center, The Forum (as exclusive booking agent for sports and entertainment programming), Toyota Sports Center, NOKIA Theatre Times Square, NOKIA Theatre at Grand Prairie and London’s Manchester Evening News Arena; sports franchises including the Los Angeles Kings (NHL), Los Angeles Riptide (MLL), Manchester Monarchs (AHL), Reading Royals (ECHL), Chicago Fire, DC United, Houston 1836, Los Angeles Galaxy and (New York/New Jersey) Metrostars (MLS), two hockey franchises operated in Europe, the Hammarby (Sweden) Futbol Club and management of shares of the Los Angeles Lakers (NBA) and Los Angeles Sparks (WNBA) owned by Philip Anschutz; AEG Marketing, a sponsorship, sales, naming rights and consulting company; AEG Merchandising, a multi-faceted merchandising company; and AEG Creative, a full-service marketing and advertising agency. 

Cycling has already been a part AEG’s world since they also own the Home Depot Center, home to North America’s only(?) indoor velodrome. The junior and senior world track cycling championships have already taken place under their management (although Erik Saunders has some suggestions about amenities). And on top of that, the Anschutz empire includes film production companies, newspapers, and the largest chain of movie theaters in the US.

At the very least, AEG is committed to a $35,000,000 investment in professional cycling over the next 5 years. Just the technology alone in their TofC website has definitely set the standard for delivering detailed stage maps, live feeds, post-stage video and photos. Nobody, not even the Grand Tours, has anything comparable. And with the apparent success of this years’s event (based on huge attendence plus positive team feedback), hopefully AEG can leverage some better coverage on ESPN for future renditions. I think they have the muscle, if so inclined, to bump up daily coverage into a more palatable time slot than this year’s graveyard shift relegation. And please, whoever is reponsible for the ESPN2 coverage should spend some time watching Euro pro cycling, say on cycling.tv, for how a professional bike race should be covered: helicopter shots, onscreen graphics detailing who’s in the breaks, onscreen time-splits, and onscreen distance to the finish will do wonders. And while I would be perfectly content to watch live events such as Het Volk and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on my computer via cycling.tv, in order to cultivate the next generation of homegrown cycling talent in the US I think a marquee event readily accessible to the public is a must. I have no idea if USA Cycling was in attendence at the start and finish locations, but I surely hope they were there to facilitate the entry of young talent into the sport. I’m pretty sure several of our current Colorado-born professionals were bitten by the bike bug while watching the Red Zinger or Coors Classic, and here’s hoping that the TofC will have a likewise effect.

Image source: Sports Illustrated

Paul Sherwen on Eric Heiden:

USPRO is still around, and I actually rode the first ever event, in 1985. Eric Heiden beat me, I didn’t think that guy with the massive thighs and big ass could beat me on a climb like the Manayunk. Eric had just finished the Giro and won the Intergiro classification, even after riding a Grand Tour, he was a bloody big boy.

I wrote one fan letter in my life. If I had known Evel Knievel’s address it would have been two, but the solitary missive penned by me at the age of 12 found its way to Eric Heiden in the summer of 1980. I must not have been wired quite like other suburban New Jersey pre-teens, at least when it came to sporting devotion. I had given the all-American pastimes of baseball, football, and basketball hearty efforts and I rapidly realized I sucked at each respective discipline. Of the three, baseball was actually my most promising endeavor. However, the only way I could get on base was if I managed to get hit by a pitch. My Bad News Bears-esque coach actually encouraged me to crowd the plate and get beaned, because I could run the bases well if I managed to get to first, but I didn’t think the NY Mets would be looking for someone to get clocked by a pitch at least once a game. Football? I got manhandled, even in pee-wee leagues. Basketball? I didn’t feel like learning how to dribble with my left hand. Plus, there would be no skywalking in my future due to what’s probably (optimistically) my 8″ vertical leaping ability.

Besides having no apparent talent at these sports, what really turned me off was the team aspect. I didn’t like being dependent on other people to play. I really wanted something that I could master and pursue of my own devices. This was the mid-’70s, and I somehow managed to tune into what was going on in Southern California with BMX bikes and skateboards. I, too, started to light it up on 2 and 4 wheels inspired by the team Redline factory pros, Santa Monica Z-boys, and of course Evel Knievel. I didn’t stick with the skateboarding too much since (a) I lost lots of skin and (b) I didn’t have a city full of empty pools to invade like my west coast peers. On the other hand, I fell in love with bicycles. My friends and I would ride all over South Orange, NJ, mostly in search of a means to get huge air. I sought out flights of stairs to clear, I launched myself into the stratosphere from frighteningly high earthen ramps of our own construction, I set jumps on fire, I lined my friends up on the ground and jumped them, and I even dabbled with a friend’s backyard half-pipe.

Big air was intoxicating, but what really thrilled me was speed. There were a few pretty lengthy streets in town with steep grades, and I did my best to get in synch with the traffic lights so I could coast all the way to the bottom without stopping for those annoying red signals. While I was loathe to admit it, to both myself and to my friends, there was a seed planted in the back of my mind about the inevitability of trading in my BMX machine for a road bike if I wanted to really go fast. And while I didn’t realize it then, I was as perfectly located in northern NJ for launching a lifetime of competitive cycling as my Santa Monica breatheren were for skateboarding. There was still an elderly guy riding around town on a gorgeous, chrome track bike, a hold-over from the track racing heyday of Nutley and NYC, who piqued my attention; some of my long-distance BMX adventure rides along South Orange Ave. unknowingly brought me to the neighborhood once sporting the famed early 20th century cycling mecca: the Newark velodrome; thanks to a Sports Illustrated (yes, Sports Illustrated) article I became aware of the nearby Tour of Somerville; Pop Brennan’s bike shop was still up and running; I remember being mesmerized by Breaking Away when it hit the theaters in 1979; and my inner geek brought me to the library where I learned of European professional cycling via Bicycling magazine and the box scores and fine print of the New York Times. I don’t think too many 11 year old American kids knew about Bernard Hinault, Joop Zootemelk, Jock Boyer, a very young Greg Lemond, Bob Cook, the Stetinas, George Mount, Eddy Merckx, but I was absolutely captivated.

Image source (left): http://www.racelistings.com/gallery/picz.asp?iCat=31&iPic=110
Image source (center): http://www.memoire-du-cyclisme.net/
Image source (right): http://www.centerportcycles.com/pages/scrapbook/scrapbook03.html

And then along came the Heidens: Beth and Eric. I was utterly in awe of Eric Heiden’s Lake Placid exploits. You all know the story: 5 races - 5 gold medals. Eric and his sister Beth accounted for 6 of the USA’s 12 medals from Lake Placid. There was some kind of mystique about Eric Heiden which I found compelling: something about excelling in a sport which brought an outpouring of acclaim in the Netherlands and Norway but barely a ripple in America, an inhuman capacity for hard training, and a certain zen master quality which kept him grounded, grounded enough to totally walk away from fame and fortune. But what sealed the deal for me was watching him at the 1980 Olympic track cycling trials. They were actually on tv, likely only for the fact that Eric Heiden was competing. He didn’t make the team, and ultimately it would have been a moot point due to the boycott, but Eric Heiden brought attention to cycling (at least for me). That was the moment where it dawned on me that I should kiss BMX goodbye and buy a 10-speed. So I wrote him a letter and asked for an autograph. And Beth, too, because Eric didn’t have a monopoly on kicking ass on skates and bikes. Lest one forgets, Beth Heiden won the women’s world road cycling championship at Sallanches, France the summer after winning bronze on the ice at Lake Placid. Amazingly, the photo I cut out of Sports Illustrated accompanying my fawning fan mail made its way back to me not too long after I sent if off to Wisconsin.

Of course, the Eric Heiden mystique was a double-edged sword, particularly to sportswriters without any knowledge of cycling. I was looking over some early ’80s New York Times articles to flesh out my memory of Heiden, and the early press was brutal. A scant few months after Lake Placid lore and legend, Heiden lined up at New Jersey’s Tour of Nutley and Tour of Somerville criteriums only to generate these headlines in the sports sections: “No Gold for Heiden in Bike Race” and “Heiden Fails Again as Bauer Wins Race”. Ouch. Later that year, there was a very big money 75 mile circuit race in Manhattan encompassing Central Park and some surrounding city blocks. $15,000 bucks was up for grabs and the cream of American cycling showed up to compete. But look at the Times headline, “Spotlight Too Bright for Heiden”. While Bruce Donaghy narrowly outsprinted Dale Stetina for victory, it was Eric Heiden who was unwillingly made the center of attention even though he bailed half way through the race. The Manhattan Borough president cast adrift the day’s winners and instead called Heiden, already cleaned up and decked out in street clothes, up to the podium and declared the day to officially be “Eric Heiden Day”. Heiden was clearly embarassed and tried to shift the attention back to the rightful podium occupants, the guys who actually finished 1st-3rd, but to no avail.

The next year, 1981, Heiden took out a professional cycling license and embarked on a career which ultimately took him to the Giro, the Tour de France, and the inaugural Philly USPRO title. He paid his own way to compete professionally at two world championships (1982-Goodwood, England and 1985-Montello, Italy) as a teammate for dual Greg Lemond silver medal performances. All of these events, never mind the fact that Heiden then went through Stanford med school and is now a doctor, popped into my head when Eric Heiden made a brief cameo appearance on NBC’s Olympic tv coverage. I don’t know if Heiden has since been sucked into the saccharin NBC puff piece milieu, but I thought it telling that the announcers identified First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Barbara in the stands at the first night of speed skating and yet didn’t say a peep about Eric Heiden sitting there accompanying them, caught on camera gesticulating towards the action down on the oval. Not a word. And I’m sure Eric Heiden appreciates the gesture.

While perusing the VeloNews photo gallery chronicling the Amgen Tour of California’s Official Athletes’ Presentation/Gala fundraiser, I couldn’t help but notice one of the celebrity photographs up for grabs in the silent auction: a color still photo from Easy Rider autographed by Dennis Hopper. That sure must have been a buzz kill for all of the giddy party people eager to celebrate the ensuing TofC. There’s nothing quite like conjuring up the mental image of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda getting gunned down in cold blood by Louisiana yahoos at a festive, high-dollar gathering of cyclists. Particularly, since I’d wager that every person in attendance who has ever gone out on training rides in rural settings has likely had at least one up close and personal encounter with rednecks in pickups. In 1969, Capt. America and Billy could very well have been John Howard and John Allis, decked out in a wool kit and leather hairnets while training in obscurity for the Pan Am Games and Olympics, and just as appetizing a target for hate. Have things changed much about 35+ years later? Well, just ask the rider in the photo next to Easy Rider, a certain Lance Armstrong, about the love he’s felt from Austin, TX area motorists.

Exhibit A:

Image source: http://www.genart.org/film.event.htm?itemid=1341

Exhibit B:

Image source: http://www.toyota-united.com/

Guys in matching sweatsuits + faux attitude + a NYC backdrop will forever in my mind equate to mid-’80s Beastie Boys (A). So when the United Pro Cycling Team sashayed out of their ESPN Zone press conference and snapped a Times Square photo (B) this past Tuesday, I couldn’t help but chuckle and wonder who’s at the helm of this operation. Maybe next year’s rendition of United Pro Cycling will take another cue from the Beastie Boys oeuvre and head deep, deep back into the ’70s a la Paul’s Boutique. ‘Cause if you’re going to reference the Beastie Boys, you’ve got to emulate their masterpiece. Which means casting aside your Rick Rubin-fuelled testosterone-fest and ushering in some West-coast Dust Brothers suavity. Which means blown-out ‘fros, monster lamb-chop sideburns, and a proper kit. If you’re going to deck your riders out in stars & stripes then United Pro Cycling has no other choice but making a beeline back to Roger de Vlaeminck and Team Brooklyn. That’s how a stars and stripes jersey should look.

Exhibit C:

Image source: Kanye West “Touch the Sky” screen capture

And how about some Evel Knievel jumpsuits for après-cycling leisure-wear? Kanye West (or should I say, Evel Kanyevel (C)) is all over that, so you know it’s hot. And Coke-can Easton rigs are way overrated, who amongst us doesn’t love the classic steel Gios ride? I’ll even let them make a few tweaks for the modern era with these provisions: (1) Dura-Ace 10 is ok as long as Shimano creates some custom STI levers with non-aero brake cables and (2) yeah, you can use clipless pedals, BUT (3)deep dish carbon wheels are a no-no, just your classic 32 spoke box rims, (4) you better hit eBay to find some Benotto tape, (5) just for the hell of it, drill the crap out of your brakes and levers, and (6) I’m sorry, no hardshell helmets allowed; hit eBay for some leather hairnets, too. And the team management needs to get Roger de Vlaeminck over here in the States to mastermind another reality tv show. Let de Vlaeminck keep going with his bizarro Zimbabwe Euro ‘cross experiment Allez Allez Zimbabwe in the winter, but have him travel around the US with United Pro Cycling during road season with the cameras running. For if there’s one thing I’ve learned from burning up vast swaths of brain cells while glued to my cathode ray boob tube, the US can never have enough reality television.

I’d buy a membership for that…

The farcical implosion of Giancarlo Ferretti’s 2006 ProTour Sony Ericsson squad is hardly recent news, but I couldn’t help but zero in on one sentence of the February 2006 procycling interview with Ferretti. Now, professional cycling team managers may not necessarily be intellectual peers with Nobel Prize Laureates (although Jonathan Vaughters’ cerebellum may give someone a run for his money…), but there’s definitely a tangible element of brain power required to successfully manage a team. After all, anyone who can get multi-national corporations to cough up millions of euros, anyone who can fill a 20+ rider roster of prima-donnas and convince them to ride as a team, anyone who can deal with the logistics of sending riders and support staff to train and compete all over the globe (very often with squads competing on different continents simultaneously), anyone who can read a race and make split second strategic decisions certainly has their ducks in a row or they would soon be out of work. Which leads me to this jaw-dropper comment from Ferretti in procycling:

procycling: Did you ever get to meet these fictional Sony Ericsson representatives, or try to?
Ferretti: It was all done via email, on this address that I now know must have been made up: ronwestland-sonyericsson@hotmail.com

Holy shit, Ferretti was making multi-million euro contract negotiations with a certain “Ron Westland” hiding behind a hotmail account! Earth to Ferretti, employees of multi-national corporations do not conduct business deals via hotmail accounts. I think someone needs a primer on how “the internets” work. It would be comical if it weren’t such a tragic situation for the riders and staff who got screwed and had to scramble for 2006 employment at bargain basement rates to squeeze onto already brimming team rosters. I hope Ferretti hasn’t since sent gobs of money to Nigerian petroleum companies who need a willing partner to assist in transferring wealth out of the country.

Never mind that Belgians have swept the elite ‘cross podium for the past 4 years and have won 20 of 24 elite ‘cross worlds medals over the past 8 years. John Gadret has been on a tear, only a few scant seconds behind Erwin Vervecken and Sven Nys these past couple of weeks. And with countrymen Francis Mourey on hand, a willing and enthusiastic partner in Gadret’s Franco Mallachi Crunch, and with the undeniably inevitable Belgian infighting probably already manifesting itself at this very moment, John Gadret is primed to make history.

Is there anyone out there who can honestly say they’ve never raced a bike hungover, at least once? I know I can’t. For instance, I raced the Athens Twilight Crit once (and only once, that race was nuts) back in 1992. I maybe moved up all of two places in the peloton the whole night, but I didn’t get dropped and I wanted to celebrate. Caught up in the frenzy of about 20,000 drunk crazy people screaming their lungs out around the 1km loop all night, and with plenty of drinking establishments to satiate one’s boozing desires right on the course, it only seemed right that I have a few beers. And a few more. Maybe one more. Ah, fuck it, sure I’ll have another. And then the alarm goes off too damn early the following morning for Sunday’s road race. Oops, forgot about day 2 of the race weekend. But I race about 100km in the am, a bit green in the gills and groggy, and sweat all that booze out of the system just in time to contest the field sprint. Mission accomplished, no big deal.

Now I’m hardly endorsing such behavior, but when you’re in your 20s you can get away with competing under less than ideal physical states. Which is why the whole hubbub about Bode Miller racing World Cup downhill events with a hangover is so amusing to me. I don’t see why Bode had to apologize. If anything, the other downhillers who got their asses kicked by a person who may have failed a breathalyzer in the starting gate should apologize to their fans. What’s even funnier is Nike’s glorification of Bode Miller’s predilection for projectile vomiting (albeit under different circumstances). If you happen to visit Nike’s Bode Miller love-fest, check out the option “training sled” in the pulldown menu.

“I piss on Belgium.” - Alexi Grewal

Things weren’t going too well for brash American 7-Eleven professional Alexi Grewal amidst the 1986 Three Days of De Panne. Gloom. Rain. Misery. No results. No sight of the sun since leaving the United States. Grewal’s fragile pysche cracked while the team sought pre-stage respite from the elements in a cafe, and the Het Volk reporter, there ostensibly to pen a puff piece about 7-Eleven’s first full-blown Euro season, instead was handed dynamite via Grewal’s mouth as he fled the premises in a tizzy. If only Harry Pearson penned his homage to Belgium about 10 years earlier. Armed with the insight of Pearson’s extensive travels in both Flemish and Walloon Belgium, A Tall Man in a Low Land may have prepared the wide-eyed 7-Eleven pros for immersion in perhaps Europe’s most maligned country.

Harry Pearson, a British sports columnist and travel writer, deftly reveals the quirks, oddities, and charm of Belgium gleemed from several months of travel through seemingly every city or village in the country. Additionally, seemlessly intertwined within Pearson’s narrative is a steady dose of Belgian history impressive in both depth and breadth. If I ever make an appearance on Jeopardy, I am confident I will kick anyone’s ass when it comes to facts about Belgium. Names, places, dates, events, artwork, architecture, beer, language; I’m armed to the teeth. Of course, to me Belgium is synonymous with professional cycling and, fortuitously, professional cycling is what first drew Pearson across the English Channel. His first-hand experience with the 1995 Ronde van Vlaanderen, particularly atop the Muur in Geraardsbergen, allows Pearson to flaunt his contemporary and historic Belgian cycling acumen. For more than 10 pages, Pearson weaves every name of Belgian cycling lore and legend (Eddy Merckx, the de Vlaeminck brothers, Freddy Maertens, Briek Schotte, Rik van Steenbergen, Rik van Looy, Edwig van Hooydonck, Eddy Planckaert, Eric Vanderaerden, etc.) into his account of the Ronde occurring before his very eyes highlighted by Johan Museeuw’s solo victory following the Fabio Baldato beat-down on the Muur. The riders past and present, plus the facts of the 1995 Ronde, are hardly anything earth-shatteringly new to cycling tifosi, but Pearson’s fleshing out of the fervor, zeal, and frenetic ardor surrounding the Tour of Flanders deserves a mention.

On a more macro-level, I think Pearson gets one’s brain churning regarding the dynamic between travel, stereotype, and expectation. In particular, I think Pearson hits the nail on the head regarding certain truisms of foreign travel:

“One of the odd things about being in a foreign country is the impossibility of detecting any kind of social nuance. All the guidelines - clothes, accents, articulacy - that normally point the way are lost to us. We do not know if the person we are talking to empties septic tanks or runs the stock exchange for a living. We wander dippily around in this blissful state and when we return to our hotel in the evening and tell the receptionist how we have spent our day her face turns white, her eyes bulge and she shrieks, ‘You went there. But my God it’s soooooo dangerous over there.’ And we swell with pride and reply, ‘Oh really? It seemed quite pleasant to us.’ To our untrained eyes abroad is wonderfully classless, overseas societies homogeneous visions of the perfect future. It is the happy egalitarianism of total ignorance.” 

For some reason I was to a certain degree surprised that the gulf of the English Channel separating England from Belgium may as well have been expansive as the Atlantic Ocean separating the U.S. from Europe. But I guess I’m just a dumb American. Just as amusing as Pearson’s seemingly frequent snarkiness concerning Belgium was the degree of bewilderment expressed by Belgians that someone would actually come to their country to visit. “You’re here on holiday? Hmmm…It’s flat, crowded, and it rains all the time” was a frequent assessment of Belgium’s appeal. Perhaps everyone worldwide is afflicted by a case of the grass is always greener. Or maybe they’re just averse to being the grist for humorous anecdote after humorous anecdote. I don’t think it’s too broad a stretch to imagine Pearson being beaten senseless if his Belgian subject(s) could have read his mind. Even the Trappist monk may have kicked his ass. I’d be curious to hear the opinion of a native Belgian regarding this book. Thumbs up? Or a resounding “I piss on England.”

Sweet. John Gadret avenged being pipped at the line by Francis Mourey in 2005 with a reversal of the scenario this afternoon in Sedan. Only time will tell if this augers well for ag2r’s burgeoning ProTour campaign, or if it’s all downhill from here this season. Here’s hoping for the former. And in case you wanted to meet every living soul who had anything to do with putting on the 2006 French ‘cross championships, your wish has been answered.

I’ve spent a fair amount of last evening and this morning watching the live stream from the Rotterdam 6 day event. Very cool. All of the events - the madison, scratch, 400m TTT, miss-and-out, derny (that sounded like I was trapped inside a beehive echo chamber), plus the keirin and match sprints - were entertaining (especially since while I’ve been a big fan of historic 6 day events, I’ve never actually seen one take place live).

While the pros on the track are undoubtedly physically talented, what I actually have the utmost respect for is their ability not to go postal after hearing this soundtrack absolutely beaten to death:

Right Said Fred: “Stand Up (For the Champions)”
Queen: “We Are the Champions”
Survivor: “Eye of the Tiger”
London Symphony Orchestra: “Star Wars Main Title”

At least the audience can drink heavily to diffuse the torment. The riders out on the track have to hear it all full-bore, stone cold sober. Ad nauseum, again and again and again.

And having just finished the 1992 Tony Doyle biography, Tony Doyle: six day rider, where he details the execrable conditions the riders had to put up with (particularly housing), I hope that the riders today are getting better treatment and salaries then Doyle had to put up with in the 1980s-early 1990s, and what was likely worse prior to that. Doyle mused about tennis pros like Ivan Lendl, surmising that he didn’t sleep in a cot in a basement at Wimbledon or have to take a dump in a plastic bucket courtside while playing. What was particularly interesting to me about Doyle’s bio was how many big-name road riders (we’re talking Tour de France and Giro champions: Laurent Fignon, Gianni Bugno, Stephen Roche, Greg Lemond, Francesco Moser) did six day races in the winter. Plus, Doyle chronicled the tension that it created among the 6 day specialists who were wary of the road pros’ riding skills on the tight quarters of indoor velodromes plus jealous of their larger paychecks. It seemed to me that the road riders had yet to adopt the globe-trotting winter travel currently in vogue to seek out warmer climes for winter riding. Instead, they had the choice of cyclocross or 6 day races to add intensity to their road off-season training regimen. Perhaps in addition, the paychecks weren’t quite as large as today for many of the pros and racing six day events was an economic necessity. I did notice a few road pros in Rotterdam (Isaac Galvez-Lopez, Max van Heeswijk, Servais Knaven, Aart Vierhouten, plus I’m sure some of the others race on the road), but it seems to me that the recent generations of Grand Tour contenders avoid the winter track season. It’s probably not a bad thing, particularly for the rider’s constitution’s sake, but just a fact of contemporary pro racing. I think riders don’t race as many days on the road per year, but the days they do race are more intense. Gone are the days of rolling into February a little overweight and able to race off the pounds by the classics or first grand tour. Expecting someone these days to race a full road season then hit the 6 day circuit is likely a one way ticket to uber burnout.

I confess to not knowing too much about the current state of track racing in Europe, but it seems that there still is a core of riders Doyle dubbed “The Blue Train” who are 6 day specialists comprising about 50% of any event’s lineup, while the remainder of the field is made up either of younger, up and coming 6 day riders or road pros looking for training/paycheck/thrill of competition in their home country (or maybe just the desire to suck down cigarette smoke and live vampire hours for 6 days straight).