Marco was able to get Antonio Cruz on the phone for some words. I was hoping not to blow my chance. After three phone interviews, my energy level was waning. I have no idea how these guys can answer press conference questions all day. I was getting bored, and I was asking the questions. So I picked up the phone with Antonio, made the same “it’s cold outside” small talk I made all day and then we went into the interview:

DS: It must be nice for you not being overseas this year.

AC: Yeah, this is usually the time of year I say goodbye to the family. It’s really different being home, and my wife gets a smile every time she sees me come home from training camp, or I get back from an event.

DS: I like the team sponsorship idea where you accept donations from individuals, so I’m wondering if I donate enough, can I be a pretend director for a race? Can I tell you when to attack over the phone?

AC: Um, yeah, I guess it just depends on the size of the donation. Money talks. You know what I’m saying?

DS: Sounds like you have a great squad for the domestic calendar. What do you see your role being on the team?

AC: I’ll definitely have more of a leadership role. I’m one of the more experienced guys especially for stage racing and things like that. I look forward to sharing a lot of what I’ve learned and will try to implement that as much as possible here. We’ll try to focus mostly on the team element. We learned at Discovery that without a strong team, there was no way we were going to win.

DS: Before you went to Discovery, you were more of an up and comer in the US; and now that you’re back, while you’re not old, but you’re one of the wiser guys that will be racing in the domestic scene. Might be a big switch for you…

@##=#<1,L>@##=#AC: Totally, it’s pretty funny because we were doing some video stuff at training camp. And Chris Wherry was introducing everybody and he comes to me and said, “Here we have one of our elder statesmen.” And I was just like, oh my God! He was right, but it just felt weird.

DS: Do you think that a lot of the domestic races will be able to better prepare domestic racers if they want to go to Europe? Like the longer races, the Tour of Georgia, the Tour of California…

AC: No, honestly I don’t. I think there has to be a big change or re-vamping of our calendar. I think there’s way too many criteriums. We should be doing team time trials. There should be different series than what’s going on. They don’t all have to 6 or 7 day stage races, but maybe 3 to 4 days and just multitudes of them so the guys get used to them and that pattern of stage racing.

DS: Do you think that the distance is the biggest difference? Because most of the criteriums are so short, because if you think about a Kermesse in Belgium – how long they are – they are basically a circuit race.

AC: Yeah, there you go, having a circuit race maybe 2 weekends out of the month; make them circuit races instead of criteriums. Or do a road race and a circuit race. Now I’ll tell you, doing the Kermesses in Belgium, those things will put you in shape really quick, because it’s 3 or 3 and 1/2 hours all out.

DS: And in Belgium, it’s their baseball over there, so they’re so much more into it. Especially little towns, so you don’t have to travel far to do things as far as racing goes.

AC: I think it’s like you said, so you don’t have to travel so far. Maybe just grouping a bunch of races or a certain series close to one another, maybe in on particular state or region, and let it grow from there. Once word gets out people will want to have the same thing where they’re at, and that’s how I think that we’ll expand.

DS: The difference between a criterium and a Kermesse is a couple of hours at this point. So it isn’t that big of a jump, necessarily.

AC: No, and we should easily be able to make that couple of hours go. It will take a good month or month and a half to adapt, but the sport and US cycling will become much stronger and healthier if we did make those sorts of changes.

DS: And unlike the Kermesse circuit, you won’t have the European Techno music blaring and guys drinking a bunch of beer along the course.

AC: And the fan clubs that follow some of these guys; some of them are pretty amazing.

DS: And they bet on the Kermesses, too.

@##=#<2,r>@##=#AC: They do. I didn’t realize that until after my first one. I thought I was going to win, and I went to the tent after and some guy comes up and says, “Man, I put my money on you!” I mean, I didn’t know you could bet!

DS: Yeah, thanks for the pressure, huh?

AC: Yeah, exactly.

DS: And it makes it different once the betting gets involved. Especially if the betters are there, I don’t know if anyone is tempted to do any weird deals or not. It can be fishy maybe.

AC: Yeah, it happens, believe me.

DS: Do you think that in the US domestic scene, in the past it’s always been that younger riders come up through clubs, and develop that way. I think that USAcycling appointed a head of collegiate cycling. I’m wondering if the college system could become a feeder system for pros in the US?

AC: Yeah, definitely. I think that what happens throughout most of cycling, I that we’re just kind of all over the place. We’re still fragmented. We need somebody like USAcycling, or even this team could organize cycling and then create a real structure.

DS: Yeah, because there’s no minor league system; or high school football to college football type of deal.

AC: It’s kind of like a free for all, and people see that – most Americans aren’t used to that – they need that structure. It’s there in baseball, it’s there in football

DS And it’s very hard to tell the parents of an eighteen year old kid, “Yeah, he’s going to go over to Belgium for 6 months, and we’ll see what happens.”

AC: And you know what? There’s no reason for that, because it’s not that we lack terrain or roads or race sites. It just lacks organization. Because we could have all of those Europeans coming over here, and we definitely have the money to fund the whole thing.

DS: Well, there’s no mountains in Belgium…

AC: The Europeans want to come over here, they want to race here.

DS: And they can come over and buy iPods when they get here.

AC: Their first trip when they get here is to Best Buy.