Okay here goes – the tough questions; Craig Cook, I have known gee… 21 years now. That is hard to believe. We both started in CRCA together, except he was one of many juniors entering the sport at that time. Post 1984 Olympics/Breaking Away era – the single most contributing factor for the advancement of cycling in the USA outside of Lance. However, Lance would not be Lance without the American riders like Bob Roll, Carmichael, and many others from that previous glory era. Craig has always been a good racer, friend, someone willing to help the sport move ahead and do it with a laugh and a smile. In an era of pigeon-hole mentality, it is good to hear from a contemporary that did it all, along with others of his age group, setting the stage for cycling as we know it today. Campocat

JC When did you get interested in the bicycle as more than transportation?

@##=#<1,R>@##=#CC Damn dude…I knew I wanted to race when I was 13-14, but I had no idea how. This kid Leon Moser was a year ahead of me in the same school anyway, Leon was -and still is- my hero; he was racing, he had the bike and the kit and the look. I cut school on a Wednesday afternoon to watch the Self Cycling Series when it came to Central Park in 1983, it was a series for women but there was a Men’s Pro 1-3 race with it. Leon was, like, 15 years old and Cat 3. Maybe I’m remembering wrong but I think he lined up at that race. Anyway I know I saw him there, but maybe he was just watching too. We were all riveted on Rebecca Twigg -– remember the Fuji poster? Imagine a Pro race midday on a weekday in Central Park…with a Tavern on the Green start/finish to boot. That doesn’t happen anymore.

JC When you joined CRCA and did your first race, what was that like? Did Lou send you home because your jersey was dirty?

CC I had a grandfather cut from the same cloth as Lou Maltese, I knew how to stay on his good side. I got dropped in my first 2 or 3 C races, end of 1984. 1985 I got a USCF license did a few races and got dropped from those too. Back then everyone raced CRCA , you could be a member of CRCA without a USCF license, with a license from another club, whatever. You just had to wear that itchy yellow and blue jersey made of fiberglass. Remember those first lycra jerseys and how sleek we all felt?

JC Talk about the other juniors that were in CRCA (how many) and around the local scene then. As a 35yr old start back in racing for the first time since I was a kid, you kids were fun to ride with, and fast too!

CC Wow, you were 35 then? That’s humbling. You look the same. Junior racing was bigger then. We’d have our own fields at most races. My first Spring Series race as a junior it was pouring rain and freezing and there were 25-30 kids on the line. They started us after the Cat 4’s and George Hincapie, who was like, 13 at the time -to my 16- he took off from the line and I went with him. We caught the 4s on 110th street. George rode right through them and went on to chase the 1,2,3 field. I was happy just to be with the 4’s and rode the rest of the race with them. I think that was the last time I came close to getting second to Hincapie. The Kissena guys were the real deal back then. Mr. “I” ran that squad like a mafia, they were sponsored by Corso distributors, and rode Atalas and had the same jersey as the Atala pro team in Italy. Really cool jersey, blue and black stripes. Anyway, one of my best cycling buddies was this whip thin kid named Trevor Marshall, you remember Trevor, right? Trevor had a 28 pound Panasonic touring bike with Wienmann concave rims, which were the heaviest most durable things out there. He did the early season races in jeans because he didn’t have any tights. Then he got 3rd in a “B” race and someone gave him tights. Then he got 2nd in an “A” race and someone hooked him up with a new Atala. Then in the district championship he went off alone for a few laps, the Hincapies and most of the good Kissena kids bridged up to him eventually and he pulled them all around and eventually finished fifth. Mr. “I” chomps on his cigar and says “Humph, musta been the bike.”

JC Back then did you feel cycling was going to be this life long relationship, that it has become in your life? Do you feel that it has been a good thing?

@##=#<2,L>@##=#CC No doubt. 90% of all good things in my life came from cycling. Both directly and tangentially. You want me to get into this? ‘cause it’s going to sound like an Academy Award acceptance speech… As a junior all my friends were from cycling, and they were all years older than me, consequently I lost touch with school. I just wanted to ride my bike. I’d get jobs through the club, I started working as a messenger in 1985 and basically made my living like that until 1993 when John Barrett, an old clubbie from way back, said “kid, come work for me.” John was the photographer for the Muppets and Sesame Street, I learned photography through him, and eventually realized that I wanted to do other things. Then there’s Zach Cohen who took care of the CRCA team in France in 1991 and eventually invited me back in 1996 and totally changed my life. Then there’s Breakaway Courier owner Rob Kotch who paid my rent from 1993 to1996 despite the fact that I was most noted for taking out my own entire Breakaway squad on the “S” curve one rainy Lou Maltese race back when it was Pro 1-2…

JC All racers, the higher up in the pecking order you get, the harder it is to find and get to better competition. Talk about that and the problems that were monumental back then, as to now where sponsors seem to be plentiful – were there any people or groups that helped you with equipment, money, rides, etc?

CC I’m not sure sponsors are that plentiful now either. I talk to guys who are all doing the same shit I was; looking for table scraps and stop gaps for the off-season and living out of cars in-season. Before Bob Breakaway became my patron there was a guy in the east 20’s with a little bike shop that dealt mostly in used stuff named Emey. Everyone’s jury was out on Emey; some people loved him others hated him, but he was a saint to me. He chain-smoked heavy cigarellos and his shop was probably a reasonable facsimile of his lungs. And he had a stubborn belief that no bike made after 1980 was any good. But he gave me everything I needed to race. Whatever was the best bike in the shop was mine from 1986 until I started riding for Breakaway. The bikes were most often used, but they were fine. The one new bike he got me, a red Raleigh 753 got stolen while I was in the ‘mens room’ at Prospect Park before a race. I was so pissed off I borrowed a bike from Vic Vitelli and went out on an early breakaway and eventually lapped the field with one other guy – Glenn Weiss, remember him? He let me win that race, but it didn’t pay for the bike. I’m sure other people have lapped the field in Prospect Park but I don’t know who, that was a crazy day, I think the race was, like, 18 laps?

JC Okay, talk about races that stand out in your mind. Great races? Locally?

CC Harlem rocked. The year Ray Diaz, Adam Myerson and myself made the winning move there in 100 degree heat. Three Breakaway riders in a 6 rider split and the rest were Aussie pros. Though now that I’m thinking about it I don’t think Adam was riding for us yet. That was awesome. 1988 and my first weekend as a 19 year-old Cat 2: Saturday the Gotham Cup in Allentown Pa, Sunday the Tour of Nutley, and Monday the Tour of Somerville. At the Gotham Cup I ran over Viatcheslav Ekimov at the base of the 300 meter goat-path hill climb that race was known for, but somehow managed to get back up and hold onto his big red butt back to the peloton. Nutley I got dropped and Superwhoopingcough won, Monday I came very close to finishing but ended up at the very bottom of a curb to curb pile-up that made a double page spread in Winning magazine. I was the second rider to go down. You can’t see me but I’m there.

JC Europe, when CRCA sent you the first time, and living there and racing. What was that like? Did the French ever really accept you as a racer, American person?

@##=#<3,R>@##=#CC I get along pretty easily in foreign parts. When I went over as CRCA in ’91 we were kind of a novelty, and we were treated well mostly. There was the crit in Corbeil-Essones when someone put dirty dishwater in Vic Vitelli’s water bottle while we were all sitting in a cafe waiting for the race to start. Vic got dropped quicky and never took a sip of water in the race. He discovered it out training the next day. In all my years there that was the only malicious thing that ever happened in France in a race context. I had far more bad shit happen in one week of racing in the DR than 8 years in France.

When I moved there for real in 96, I spent 2 years getting my footing both on the bike and in the rest of my life. After that, with my language skills improved and a general sense of the lay of the land things started going smoothly. In cycling I was never super friendly with anyone outside of my team, but I was always accepted and from ‘99 to 2002 people definitely knew my name.

JC How about the equipment and its changes. With advent of handlebar shifting racing has really changed. When we started you got maybe two shifts on climbs, forcing riders to power over hills causing puffy knees and shorter careers. How has the ability to spin and change gears easily changed racing?

CC Everyone spins more, across the board. I remember when I started riding seriously at age 14 I did an American Youth Hostel Tour and my bike had a Sakae 50-36 crank and everyone though that was whimpy. Back then you had a 53-42 or you weren’t a real man. Of course the rear clusters were 6 speed, 7 on your race wheels. You had to choose “hmmm, do I want a 21 or a 24 for this race? As a junior it was easier because if you had a 53 your bottom cog was a 15, so the mid-range was tight. I don’t think racing is any different because of it. If anything racing is probably a little sketchier at the beginning levels because riders are on supremely nimble equipment. But racing will always be racing. If you are really racing right exhaustion and maximum effort feel the same whether you are riding a 5 speed 70’s era Schwinn or a modern carbon Colnago. If anything people’s got to relax about the equipment. My last 2 years in France I rode a 1998 Peugeot that my team had been giving out to riders for five seasons. It was whipped out and 21 pounds and it was fine.

JC You were a messenger for Breakaway. Talk about that relationship, and all the other elite riders of the time that found that to be a viable form of employment then. I know I did it in ‘ 73 for a year, and it was hard. My daughter did it in college’ 90 to’ 94 and she still has the scars and broken kneecaps to prove it.

CC Actually I worked about one week at Breakaway. Rob Kotch started sponsoring me and I was lucky enough to live off of that in-season. Then I started assisting photographers in the off-season. Prior to racing for Breakaway I worked for the Leopolds for, like, eight years. They were messenger celebrities from the 80’s and had a series of companies that either got bought out or went under: Access, Rapid, Rapid Access. Now they have a company called Cavalry. They are doing exactly what they were doing in 1985. I went and worked for them last winter to see what messengering in the post-modern 9-11 world was like. That was a serious flashback. Every elevator ride I was expecting the door to open on 1989 and Janet Jackson singing “that’s Miss Jackson, If Your Nasty.” But your original question, yeah racing and messengering is hard, but it’s do-able, and it’s okay for keeping your base and your weight down in the winter. In-season it’s too much to work full time and get quality training in too. I loved messengering and I still do, I’m afraid I might end up being one of these grey-haired messenger-savants you sometimes see, 20 years from now. Isn’t it cool that messengering will never die?

JC Where are you at now? What are your plans for development at CRCA? Are you going to bring a group out to the track to motorpace????????

CC Actually I’m about to step down from my board position at CRCA. I’m in school full time for architecture and I work for a small arch outfit two days a week and it’s all a little much. But my baby is the junior program at CRCA, which I will continue to do and I hope I can devote more time to when I leave the board. We’ve got great kids, we just had them VOmax tested at Targetraining in Connecticut and their numbers were amazing. So I’m looking forward to helping the next wave come up. When I feel comfortable with their skill level I will certainly bring them out to the track.

@##=#<4,L>@##=#JC I know I took you to the Kissena track the first time. It was so hot we sat under the officials stand more than we rode. Did you ever compete on a track there or somewhere else? The night I met you at Leon Moser’s house, I was shocked to find out Leon made it to Friday night at TTown. Cat. 1 – Word, Leon. Get ready Leon, I’m interviewing you next…

CC In France I did one winter season on the indoor velodrome at INSEP in Paris. It’s a 250 meter wood track. It’s like racing in a salad bowl. They have a season that starts at the end on November and lasts until February. I got my ass kicked. In France the Madison is called the American and I was always getting shit for being the American who sucked at “l’Americain”. Part of the problem was I never got used to doing butt-slings, for some reason the track prohibited hand-slings, I think they thought they were too dangerous for such a short track. You wore a special skinsuit with a reinforced butt and three metal bars in a little pocket that you grabbed onto when doing exchanges.

JC Did you ever do Mt. or Cross racing ever?

CC A bit of cross, got my butt kicked there too. My last two years in France I rode for ESP Persan which was a cyclocross powerhouse for a few years, they had Miguel Martinez for a period. When I got there they were backsliding, but they still had Cyril Bonnand and one or two other strong guys, and they were happy to give me a cross bike and line me up with them because they knew I’d cause a bottleneck or a crash in the first turn or run-up or whatever and all our good guys would be up the road. In my second or third race though I took out Bonnand as he was lapping me, so that kinda backfired.

JC This one is for you. Don’t be shy like Swanie. You can say what you want. But before you do, I would like to say that I hope you intend to coach and race for as long as you can. This sport needs people like you to bring it to a happier, healthier, racing day.

CC Aw gee, thanks John. My word of advice to everyone wanting to do something in racing: get the hell out of Central Park! Get far away. Then come back and tell us about it. Bike racing is something that happens 100k into a point to point, not 2 laps into a 4 lap park race. Sell your power meter and buy a plane ticket.