schmalz I remember you riding for the Fraysse, how did you get to where you are? Which, I’m assuming is in Brooklyn?

Flaherty The F train..haha. My mom actually called Mike Fraysse back when I was 16 and had been racing for 2 months. I spent a weekend with him down in Trexlertown, where he had me do some 200m-1000m efforts. I guess he like the times that he saw, and he put me his great junior team, UPMC. That year, we went to Junior Nationals and got a close 2nd in the Team Sprint. With UPMC, I raced all over the country and internationally over the next two years and moved up to Cat 1 road & track in about 3 years. It was a great opportunity to gain racing experience at a young age.

Kissena 2004 Grand Opening

It wasn’t really until I moved out to California for college (a long time dream of mine) that I decided to focus on road. It was more a consequence of where I was situated than anything else. Northern California is cycling utopia… no joke. I could praise it for days. The combination of the amazing terrain for training, the much harder/longer races, and the awesome team at Stanford jump-started my transition to a more complete road rider. I lost about 15 lbs of track muscle during my freshman year and helped widen the spectrum of races I can contest (i.e. some things w/ a couple bumps). This year I’m racing with Champion Systems, and will be able to travel to a number of races like Tour of Ohio & Superweek, both of which should be good experience. Even though I’ve been racing for 4 years, this is really only my second year doing serious road racing so I’m happy to get as much tough experience as I can get.

schmalz Since you’ve finished a few years of school at a non-technical school (in your case, Stanford), you are now officially smarter than me. How do we get this NYVC thing to make money?

Flaherty Oh, come on, give yourself some credit, I think…Honestly, I’m surprised you’re not rolling in it already. Real estate on your website is worth some decent bank I would think, as it seem like every cyclist in the NY area reads nyvelocity religiously. Any New York area business associated with the cycling industry is losing money every day they don’t advertise on the site. The bigger NYC cycling retailers need to wise up and start using nyvelocity to reach the ‘$5000 to spare’ demographic, which many NYC cycling enthusiasts fall into. Maybe they just need the hand of schmalz to slap them out of their advertising comas. Andrew LaCorte could bake them cupcakes too as incentive. But I doubt the pastries would make it to your potential clients…

I definitely don’t think the problem is expanding your reader base. . . I live in Northern California and know a slew of very bored pro riders (who will remain nameless) who are addicted nyvelocity.com and its witty banter. Campocat’s interview series is a big hit as well.

schmalz Thanks, your check will be in the mail (um, can we post date that to 2009?) You are currently ranked number one collegiately. Do you have any boosters offering you cars or women or such to keep you at Stanford?

Flaherty #1 huh?..I don’t know if that’s true after my lovely last turn crash at Nationals. I was sitting in third wheel in the last corner when I got bumped hard on my inside at full tilt and slid out. I was a little perturbed (translation: devastated) but that’s bike racing. The crash gods don’t care how important a race is to you, when you card’s up, it’s up. As for my Hummer with 22″ rims complete with scantily clad cheerleaders, the Athletic Department says its forthcoming…haha. No, I’ll be completing my four years straight no matter what. It just seems the most sensible thing to do for me. After all, I’ll be 21 when I graduate and this is cycling, not gymnastics. I’m in no rush to race pro full time until I have my degree in my pocket.

schmalz How do you feel about the current state of collegiate cycling, and what do you think needs to happen for it to develop?

Flaherty In all seriousness, collegiate cycling, though home to a growing number of pro and soon-to-be-pro riders, is in desperate need of the support it needs in order to grow. Talented young riders need to be enticed enough by the level of play/professionalism in collegiate cycling that they are not going to bypass it for a mediocre contract on a continental pro team. In my mind, what needs to happen is mainly on the shoulders of USA Cycling to change the rules in order to force development of U23 riders on its continental teams. Jonathan Vaughters (TIAA-Cref) and Dan Larson (VMG) are the only two US pro teams independently following the CORRECT european model for what a continental team should be, which means a roster with the majority of riders born in the 1980s. As it is, US continental teams abuse the UCI’s rules on age limits: just making the average age requirement, signing young riders that never ride with the team at big races, or even worse, don’t even race at all and are just on the roster to lower the average age. I’m not going to name names, but this is happening. But that’s not the only issue. US pro teams need to allow their young riders to have the freedom to attend college should they choose. No talented U23 rider should have to choose between going to college and racing pro, that’s just not right. The system should be such that it’s possible to successfully and concurrently do both.

schmalz It seems from my contact with collegiate racing (at Grant’s Tomb) that it just seems more fun. So what I propose is that we start an “Old School”-style old racer’s frat at Stanford and we charge these old codgers $4000 a week to come and hang out, ride bikes, and re-live their college days. We’d make millions!

Flaherty That’s what I’m talking about baby. I actually live in a frat at Stanford, we could put them up no problem. And since all the cute freshman girls are already live at the house, we can start a brothel too! Can you imagine the profits?!!? Between the NY codgers and their NorCal counterparts, we’d be filthy rich and I wouldn’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay for food after college. I eat a lot…not as much as LaCorte, but still too much. If the brothel/cycling house doesn’t work out, we can always move to Santa Monica and be state-fed ‘homeless’ fellas.

You’re right though, collegiate cycling is way more fun. There’s little to none of the attitudes you find at UCSF racing where the stench of ego overcomes one instantly. Most of the people racing collegiate are academics who love cycling and despite who, being ridiculously strong, have no intentions of continuing cycling beyond the collegiate level. Even in the West Coast Conference, where you have a good number pros and elite amateurs, the mood is mellow, the rivalries between teams are actually friendly, and getting plastered before, between, and after the races is strongly encouraged.

schmalz You’re back on the Easy Coast – what’s the biggest “culture shocker” since you’ve been back?

Flaherty Why the f*ck is everybody is such a hurry??!?! Haha. The NorCal way of life has rubbed off on me big time. I stress out less, I hurry less, I rush less, I smile more, I dohn tawk like uh noo Yawkah. Everything seems even more polarized being back here now but that’s ok, its something different..and I do kinda miss the New York pace of life.

UC Santa Barbara Criterium gets the one arm salute

schmalz Explain the one arm victory salute.

Flaherty In UCI track races, posting up completely is advised against and you can be disqualified in tight finishes for doing so. I guess it’s just something I got accustomed to as a junior. Also, I’ve seen a bit to many people either “Zabel’d” or actually eating shit thanks to their victory salutes. If I ever did that, I think I’d have to kill myself Samurai style as to not live in unbearable shame. So, yeah, I play it safe usually with the one arm. After all, I don’t foresee many solo mountain-top wins where it would be okay to fully post up.

schmalz What’s the worst cycling advice you’ve ever gotten?

Flaherty “It’s good to take the day completely off before a hard race, that way you’ll be super rested and fresh”. No joke…I heard this when I was 17 and everybody and their mother laid their complete guide to cycling on me. I have stubble now, so people leave me alone.

schmalz Do you have a coach?

Flaherty Yup. I’ve been working with Linda Jackson for the past two years. She’s a former world champ and Canadian Olympian. She’s retired now and lives in Northern California very near Stanford. She coaches a small number of pros, boys and girls. Her coaching style works very well for me, and we talk very often about what I need to work on, what needs to be modified, when I need to rest, etc. I’m really happy with the way things are going.

schmalz Well, I guess getting advice is like hearing opinions, and we all know what opinions are like…

My best advice, have a beer after a race, emphasis on “one.” Um, you are 21, correct?

Flaherty 20, but I’m pretty sure Tony Maisto is the only cop reading, so I should be OK…and as long as by “beer”, you mean Guinness and by “one” you mean five, we’re dandy. Young riders need to be very careful about advice. You get beaten down by advice from everybody, and 90% of it is just plain wrong. Search for those little nuggets of truth, and habitually practice smiling and nodding.

schmalz I am sort of a coach grouch, mostly because I’m a know-it-all nutcase. But there seems to me to be a lot of “coaches” out there who might be a bit dodgy. What’s up with all the coaches?

A two arm salute for a win in Prosepct Park

Flaherty Everybody knows that you are Eddy Merckx’s illegitimate son, so you were born with divine cycling knowledge. Why waste money on a coach?? You’re right about the surplus of “coaches” for sure. What happens is you get accomplished racers and SRM gods who think that their racing experience or tech expertise is all you need to be a good coach. While these are great things for a coach to have, they are not the foundations of what makes an effective coach. It needs to be a personal relationship, not just the generic training plan that you see far too often. For me, a great coach needs to be deeply invested in the progress of his/her athlete and be able to communicate with them about their goals, how they are feeling, etc and develop/change their unique program based upon those conversations. If you had a coach like that, you’d quickly be healed of your coach-a-phobia.

schmalz Illegitimate Merckx? Hmm, my mom did have a lot of imported Italian sausage arriving on the doorstep when I was growing up. And, if you got that reference, you are either very old or a bike wing nut.