Jamie Smith - American pro: The True Story of Bike Racing in America

Copyright 2018 by Jamie Smith

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by VeloPress, a division of Pocket Outdoor Media, LLC

3002 Sterling Circle, Suite 100

Boulder, CO 803012338 USA

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Distributed in the United States and Canada by Ingram Publisher Services

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Name: Smith, Jamie, (Cyclist)

Title: American pro: the true story of bike racing in America / Jamie Smith.

Description: Boulder, Colorado: VeloPress, [2018] |

Identifiers: LCCN 2018012648 (print) | LCCN 2018013090 (ebook) | ISBN 9781948006057 (ebook) | ISBN 9781937715762 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Bicycle racingUnited StatesHistory.

Classification: LCC GV1049 (ebook) | LCC GV1049 .S648 2018 (print) | DDC 796.6/20973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012648

Art direction by Vicki Hopewell

Cover design by Kevin Roberson

Cover photo by Jamie Smith

Author photo by Oran Kelly

v. 3.1

For Matthew and Josh Curin and Wyatt, Eden, and Otto Frey.

May you inherit your fathers passion and energy.

CONTENTS

Table of Contents

In a nondescript parking lot in downtown Boston, under the glow of streetlights, volunteers dismantled a bike race course on Congress Street and five teammates packed up their belongings, shook hands, and said their goodbyes.

The 2016 TD Bank Mayors Cup was the last public appearance of the Astellas Pro Cycling Team. Seven months earlier, their title sponsor had pulled the plug, leaving the team with no contracts for the following season. The next time these riders met, they would be wearing new kits and racing for different teams.

It might be the case that even the most dedicated cycling fans have never heard of the Astellas Pro Cycling Team. Despite being licensed as a professional team, this small Chicago-based team didnt play a memorable role on cyclings world stage.

This is their story, as it played out in the lower ranks of professional bike racing in America. Its nothing short of amazing that two bike-racing fans with a little gumption could start a team at the regional amateur level and then take it from dominating the local race scene to becoming a professional team registered with the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) that competed, and won, internationally. And they did it all with a skeleton crew on a shoestring budget.

I was fortunate to have been involved with the Astellas team in various capacities for most of its five-year run, first as a video producer creating short clips for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) trade show, and later as a still photographer documenting their bigger adventures for use on social media. In the end, as a soigneur-like assistant, I performed those menial tasks that fall to anyone willing to do them: handing up water bottles in the feed zone, driving the team van across the country, fetching riders from the airport, and so on. I fell far short of being a true soigneur, but I was all Astellas could afford.

I met up with the team at various events around the country and did my best to help. When not traveling with the team, I followed the livestreams of the bike races and cryptic texts from other teammates who were watching the team race: Ryan in break. 30 secs to pack. I think theyll stay away. I watched the team grow and mature from my privileged vantage point. Having known the team managers for many years, I had a front-row seat for their struggle to launch a team.

I am a longtime fan of cycling. Since 1986, Ive worked in various capacities in the sport that have allowed me to peek behind the curtain to see how it all works. Ive been a TV producer, a race promoter, and even a course marshal. Ive driven a motorcycle carrying spare wheels. Ive been a race announcer at every kind of cycling event imaginable. I was hired as the main announcer at races throughout the 1990s and transitioned to the mobile announcing role at the major American stage races (Amgen Tour of California, the old Tour de Georgia, and the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah), where I got the unique opportunity to speak to every single spectator along every mile of the course. And throughout all of these experiences, I have remained a license-holding bike racer. I assumed all this would make me some sort of expert on the sport, but I was wrong. It was the time I spent working with the Astellas Pro Cycling Team that gave me a much deeper understanding of how the sport really works.

Forty-one riders wore the Astellas kit at various times during the teams run, and those riders poured their hearts and their souls into the sport for as long as they were able. American Pro is my attempt to put them in the spotlight, if only for a moment.

More than anything, I wanted to show bike-racing fans whats behind the curtain. Its not always what it seems.

P rofessional bike racing is an amazing sport with loyal fans who happily stand along a remote section of road for hours waiting for a glimpse of their heroes. Theyll dress up in ridiculous costumes and hike up a mountainside to cheer on someone they hardly know. After their favorite rider passes by in a whoosh, theyll wait another 20 minutes for the last rider to trundle up the hill. The costumed fan will scream a litany of positive encouragements to the first and last riders and everyone in between, truly believing that it has an effect on the riders ability to make it to the finish. And it may.

These fans wear their hearts on their sleeves. Their workspaces are adorned with the trinkets recovered from bike races: race posters snagged from the cafe window, routing signs off telephone poles, and stickers from the team cars. The water bottle that Brent Bookwalter discarded onto the side of the road is treated like the Great Chalice of Antioch. Of course it never held a drop of wine, but it once held some of the best hydration mix that Skratch Labs has to offer.

Every spring at the Amgen Tour of California, legions of fans wait for the team buses to pull into town with cameras and felt-tip markers in hand to meet their favorite riders. They come from all across the country to see cyclings version of LeBron James and Ricky Fowler, to actually reach out and touch the riders theyve watched on TV racing in the Tour de France. The true aficionados know precisely what time to arrive and precisely where to stand so that theyll be positioned in front of the door when the team bus is finally parked.

The teams that ride in the Amgen Tour of California and the Tour de France are the major leagues, the crme de la crme. They are, in a cycling fans mind, every bit as famous and wonderful as the New York Yankees. But teams like Astellas are not part of this scene.