Jeff King rides for Blue Ribbon Translations. When I first saw his “Flanders” frame in a club race in March, I thought, “Uh oh, either we have a clown or a real racer here.” Since he’s been placing in CRCA clubs race all year long and has a few wins to his credit also, I think we might have a real racer on our hands. But before he became the stealth sprinter/strongman, he was a collegiate All-American and raced with a Flemish team in Belgium and Europe.

SCHMALZ: So, it seems you’ve been outed as a “fahute” (sp – I hope I have that right, as I am an idiot – as always) What’s the story behind that?

KING: Interesting first question. You might need to check the spelling. I have been called a lot of things but I am not sure what you mean by “fahute”. Is that Flemish?

SCHMALZ: “Fahute” is a, I believe, Belgian term for cycling badass – likes wind, cold, etc.

KING: Oh, Flahute! I don’t think people called me a flahute except myself. But I did race in Belgium for a season, in 1998. I was racing and going to University in Boulder Colorado. I was a 23 year old cat 1 and really wanted to make the jump to racing in Europe.

Unfortunately, this was before a lot of American’s were going over there, they didn’t have the Espoir center set up or the Cyclingcenter. But, some national team guys got me a place with this Belgian team in Ghent. I remember when the team director picked me up at the airport he said “you’re a college boy? You don’t have to be doing this stuff”. I laughed and thought, this is the dream man, this guy has no idea. After about 4 months of racing 4-5 days a week in the rain/wind/over manure I changed my tune.

One story: we all got these gum infections because the rain would splash the manure on our teeth as we rode the echelons. I still remember the taste (just think horse crap alley in CP).

Anyway, at the end of the season, I packed up my belongings and thought that I should have listened to him in the first place. It was a great experience, but a tough way to support yourself.

SCHMALZ: Yes! Flahute, that’s it! I got the spelling wrong on account of me being an idiot and all… But, c’mon man this is the internet – you can call yourself whatever you want! I’m calling myself a journalist for crying out loud! That gum infection sounds nasty. We should compare the manure taste between Central park and Belgium…

It’s interesting the difference in perspective on cycling between the US and Europe. Here it’s a fairly elitist endeavor, while in Europe it’s for farm boys mostly.

KING: That’s a good observation. Best way to put it is that cycling is Belgium’s boxing. In Boulder, my teammates were mostly prep school kids who went to CU to try to turn pro as a cyclist.

Going to Belgium was a major shock; I was the only guy on my team who went to college. They saw the sport in a different way – they were doing it as a job. These guys were pretty hard, they worked at factories or farms before they raced. I knew right away I was out of my element, it wasn’t Boulder.

The living conditions were pretty dire. One of the houses, the water went out and the team director came over, punched a hole in the wall and pushed a hose from outside to use as the shower. If anyone complained – about the water, food, road rash or too much racing, they would say you were a tourist and too soft to race bikes. We got money to start races, so we had to start no matter what, or leave.

Not to mention that my head started to go to mush. Races would start in the afternoon so we just sat around all day watching Euro MTV. When we didn’t race, it was 12 hours of Euro MTV.

Did I mention that it was a great experience and I am really glad I did it?

SCHMALZ: 12 hours of Euro MTV!! Sign me up! Did you do the Kermesse circuit? I can just imagine what a Kermesse smells like. I imagine mix of stale beer, funnel cake, and cigar smoke. I wonder what Euro carnies are like? That’s a great story about the hose in the wall, makes waking up at 4:30 to get to CP seem like a vacation.

KING: We did a lot of Kermesses but he would also send some of us to Interclub races. They were sort of like minor UCI races where we would go up against the bigger teams like RC Roubaix and even the younger Lotto and Mapei guys etc… Interclub were more like normal racing and sometimes even on TV. Unfortunately, I am big so I was always sent to Holland or Northern France to race in the wind and flat roads; the little guys got to race in the mountains.

You have probably heard about the betting on races? These crusty old Belgian guys would love betting at the Kermesses and on the Track (there was this small indoor wood track in Ghent that I raced on). I got a couple top 5’s on the road and won a couple track races so I still have some betting sheets with my name on it with really long odds. They called me De Koning, which is King in Flemish (after my last name not riding ability). When I took a prime I would hear it on the loudspeaker.

KING: When I left Belgium, I gave up riding and really didn’t get on a bike for years. I got a job in investment banking in Denver and then moved to London with my wife for a few years and moved to NYC at the end of the summer in 2004. I had just moved here and I was thinking about riding for fun. I was on my bike around 120 street looking for the GW bridge (I didn’t realize that is was further north). I ran into 3 Blue Ribbon riders and asked them how to get to NJ (Thomas, Armand and Justin). They convinced me to ride again and let me join their team. My old friends don’t realize how good the riding is in NY. The riders are cool, strong and the CRCA is amazing; we have a lot to be proud of here. It’s a great racing culture here.

SCHMALZ: Did you grow up in Boulder?

KING: I was born in Dallas but grew up in Rochester NY. I started racing as a junior with the GVCC up there. But when I wanted to get serious about cycling I moved to Boulder. Boulder is a great place to race and college racing is a great scene. Funny enough, it is a lot like the CRCA, with the important team aspect. In college we were racing for the team overall at nationals and in the park we have the Team Cup. I really prefer team racing. My last year in Denver I coached the CU cycling men’s team. That was when Tom Danielson was at Fort Lewis. I have a great story about him. Are you interested?

SCHMALZ: A Danielson story? Hell, Yeah!

KING: Okay. My Tom Danielson story. I was coaching the men’s team at CU, and we had a strong team. All 1’s and 2’s. We had a freshman who won college nationals in VT that year and races for the US national team now. Point being, I thought we were going to crush everybody in the conference. At the start we did, but then we went to Durango for a stage race and my best rider said that his buddy was switching over from mountain biking and would be tough to beat. I laughed.

The first stage was an uphill TT. My guys were all finishing between 20-22 minutes; we were killing everybody like usual. Then this guy with skinny little legs posts a 17:30 or something like that. I went raving mad about how he must have cheated, the road was straight uphill with no shortcuts but I was sure he cheated. I was really pissed that they were screwing us on the results.

The next day was a crit and I wanted to teach this kid a lesson. My team thought there was no way that we could beat this guy, I promised them that we would. I normally let my guys ride steady and let the race develop a bit before they unleashed the hurt, but I wanted this guy dropped right away. I told my guys to warm up and start attacking from the gun. In 15 minutes, the race went from 50 guys to like 10 (9 CU guys and Tom). Whenever there was a break and he was in it I told my guys to sit up. The other coach thought I was being nasty – but if 4 guys were off the front with Tom I told them to sit up and then told the other 5 to attack. It went on like this the whole race. Whenever Tom wasn’t in the move he just rested for 20 seconds and then pulled it back; my eyes were bugging out of my head. Of course, I had seen good riders before but this guy was really strong. We finally got a couple guys away with 5 minutes to go but he still got third. We were all excited to beat him.

The next day was a long, really hilly circuit race. By then I realized that Tom was for real and told my guys to hold onto him and beat him at the line. The first time around he had 5 minutes; by the end he had almost 25 minutes. But at least we got him in the crit. A couple years later, after I moved to London, I was in a magazine store and saw Tom on the cover of CycleSport. I turned to my wife and said “It’s that guy from Fort Lewis!”

SCHMALZ: That’s funny; it seems like guys with real talent just ride at another level.

KING: Tom had a big mountain biking background and had raced with the US team off-road. He was just new to the road and I didn’t know him. He is very talented though.

SCHMALZ: What was your first race like?

KING: My first race story is not a tale of heroes and champions. I was 17 and was riding with the Rochester racing club. The guys were nice to me so I was brimming with confidence for my first race.

I found a race in the back of Velonews and begged my dad to drive me 3 hours up to Canada for a junior crit. I was so excited, I remember it so well. I looked around at the start line and thought that I was going to win. Gun went off and I was straight off the back; very humiliating. I made my dad promise to tell my mom that I did okay. But in truth, it took me a long time until I did okay in a race.

SCHMALZ: Your first race story was touching and a little sad, and then I remembered that you are a bone crushing sprinter who can win from a break and I’ll admit I didn’t feel so bad.

Did the Rochester winters slow you down?

KING: The Rochester winter doesn’t slow you down as much as it just stops you. It is almost impossible to ride until April. And even then there can be slush on the road. The whole season you are trying to catch up to racers that are fitter from other regions. The only way to do it is to cross train. Cross country ski, plyos etc. Back then I played basketball at school in the winter. NYC weather is much more conducive to winter riding.

SCHMALZ: Rochester has a lot of that “lake effect” stuff, that’s for sure. Did you ride rollers or a trainer in the winter? My record for rollers is two hours, and after that I had to detox for about a week…

KING: Don’t talk to me about rollers, those things should be illegal. I did a bit in the 90’s but had to quit them. Too hard on the head. Now I am all about cross-training: lifting, plyos, hiking, speedskating, stuff like that.

When I first moved to Boulder, I was stuck in the 3’s. I could finish the races but almost never got a top 10. I was so frustrated that I decided that I would either get better or quit the sport. A local training guru told me that I should stop training like everybody else if I wanted to beat everybody else. I needed to pick something in cycling to be good at and train for it. I picked sprinting becuase I thought TT’s were boring and everybody in Boulder thought they were great climbers. During the off season, I lifted, did plyos, anything I could think of to build power. I didn’t want to be a skinny climber, I wanted to be big and powerful. I still did miles on the bike, I just also did a lot of lifting. I went from 170 to 190. Some people thought I was crazy but it worked, by the time the season started I was flying. I went from a 3 to a cat 1 in 6 months. I learned that you don’t need to be like everybody else to win races, in truth you are better off if you aren’t.

Now that I work a lot of hours on Wall Street, I just do spin classes and lift/plyos at the gym at the office when I can. No rollers.

SCHMALZ: You’re to going to tell me that you do so well on just a few hours training a week?

KING: I-banking can be a lot of hours and travel. I work about 70-80 hours a week but I train more than a few hours, typically 2 spin classes and/or lifting during the week. I also ride on the weekends before work. When I’m not too busy I can get out for a Wednesday morning ride with my team. The CRCA races are short so I can get away with it. I guys who really get my respect are the ones who race with kids, I want to be like that someday.

SCHMALZ: I don’t think you meant me when you were talking about guys with kids who race, but I will pretend you meant me and take the compliment anyway – that’s how I roll… Rollers are definitely mental patient miles, were the CU guys you coached there on scholarship?

KING: The CU guys were not on scholarship, only 2 schools did that. However, CU had a pretty big budget and a lot of things were paid for. It is a very big, well organized team. We took college racing very seriously, and tried to win nationals on the road and off-road every year. College cycling goes through cycles. When I was there, it was post Tyler and the best juniors thought college cycling was the way to turn pro. Then it seemed like guys didn’t go to college, some even dropped out of High School. Now it is back to college racing, maybe because of Tom Danielson. I’m glad I went to college because it gave me more options after racing.

SCHMALZ: I read an article the other day about how parents were getting their kids into sports that aren’t as competitive (meaning less participants) as the bigger sports, in order to get their college expenses paid. I’ve always thought that if there were more college scholarships for cycling then in the US you would have more kids going the cycling route because it would be easier to justify to parents if their college tuition were paid and they wouldn’t have to sacrifice their education. Plus, you could potentially have cheerleaders!

KING: Scholarships would be good for young American cyclists but Universities do not like to add new sports. Smaller schools are probably more likely to get cycling added; ones without big football programs. But ultimately, the school would give us a fair bit of money and in-state tuition was very low so I felt like I got good value.

SCHMALZ: How were the training methods in Belgium different from the US? Did you feel the need to deviate from the training that got you the success in the US?

KING: These questions are really bringing back old memories. Training in Europe was by far less scientific than in the US. In Boulder, we were very focused on regimented training. The Belgians were much less scientific and more “Guru” about training. By Guru, I mean guys would adhere to old wive’s tale type stuff. If Merckx or De Vlaeminck did it, then it had to be right.

Examples: the Belgians had for some reason gotten into their heads that you should not be cold…ever, or you would get sick. There is probably some truth in that but I remember guys sitting in the team van with the heat turned up when it was 70 degrees because they didn’t want to get a chill. Also, we would ride to a race in the summer and the Belgians would be wearing full winter kit; it was hilarious. But it was the opposite in racing, in the Kermesses we weren’t allowed to wear arm or leg warmers; we had to go bare and slather this icy hot type stuff on our skin. One particular race, it was freezing, pouring rain. I had this bright idea that I would dress warm and the Director wouldn’t be able to get to me once the race started. No such luck, he came charging through the riders at the start line, pulled off my arm warmers and covered me in that stinky icy hot stuff.

A typical Belgian’s training was just a lot of racing; and when they weren’t racing, they would be riding behind a derny at high speed. They had the idea – and probably still do – that you need to just race a lot and the hardest man wins.

It didn’t effect me because I did so many races over there that I didn’t have the time or energy to train. I was over there for months, either racing or watching Euro MTV waiting to race.

SCHMALZ: I think you had a couple of sprint wins to your credit last year, and you show the ominous signs of being able to win from a break, should we start considering you the Tom Boonen of the CRCA?

KING: Tom Boonen of the CRCA? That’s funny, some of the guys on Blue Ribbon have joked with me about that. But my wife would kill you if she heard you were pumping up my ego.

SCHMALZ: You should really surprise your wife and grow a Boonen-esque “faux-hawk”.

KING: Oh, the “faux-hawk” rules, I just don’t think I could pull it off.

SCHMALZ: I guess my University cycling fantasy is that the schools would develop a talent developing program that would rival the football factory that a lot of schools have; leading to US cycling conquering the world.

I’ve heard that riders going to Europe as far back as the sixties would opt for French teams because they let young riders develop a little slower, did you find this to be the case? Maybe that’s also why there aren’t any dominating French riders right now.

KING: I heard that about French teams but am not convinced that was the case. It was really hard for foreigners to ride on French teams; also Spanish and Italian. They had limited spots for how many foreigners they could have and I always heard horror stories about guys going over there and only being allowed to race once a month. It really just wasn’t worth the bother. As a foreigner, Belgium is hard to turn down.

SCHMALZ: Is it true that Belgian racers will urinate absolutely anywhere?

KING: What are you saying? Are these some places you are allowed to urinate and others where you are not?

SCHMALZ: I’ve just heard from guys who have raced in Belgium that they were surprised by where the Belgians would urinate, like at the start line, etc.

KING: I’ve seen that also; maybe it didn’t surprise me as much as it should have.

SCHMALZ: Did you cross paths with any current pros in your racing days in Belgium?

KING: Some of the good Belgians have gone on the better teams, but no big names that I remember. For example, I don’t remember a young Tom Boonen or anything like that.

However, one funny story is that an Australian guy named David McKenzie stayed at my house for a bit. He was racing the early season with an Italian pro team called “K Ross” or something like that. He was really being mistreated by his team; not allowed to race, then told to race 10 days in a row, crappy equipment, the whole bit. The kicker was that he had crashed all his clothing and didn’t have anything to race in. His team told him too bad and wouldn’t give him any new kit and then scheduled him for some racing. He had to go to a local bike shop and buy some of his team kit that they were selling for souvenirs. The stuff guys put themselves through to race is amazing. But he went on to win a stage in the Giro d’Italia 2 years later!

SCHMALZ: That’s funny about McKenzie, you know that’s someone’s dedicated when they are paying to race, but the Aussies always seems a little gonzo.

Here’s an unfair question, how would you compare the racing in NYC, Belgium and Colorado?

KING: Ahh, the I knew this question was going to come up sooner or later.

Let me put it this way, Belgian and European racing was by far the hardest racing I ever did, it’s a step or two up from pro/1/2 racing in the US. If you don’t have the goal of getting a big contract, you have no business racing there. The severity of it can chew guys up, like it did with me.

In Boulder it’s a lifestyle thing, almost everybody in the 1/2/3s was racing full-time and maybe working part-time to pay the bills. But racing was the focus in their lives. A lot of guys wanted to be pro but there are also a lot of guys who just don’t dig working and want to be on their bikes all day.

New York is the best balance. Here you get guys that have real lives outside of racing. They have real jobs, kids – basically more complete people. I think people sometimes take the CRCA for granted. Being able to wake up and roll over to the park for a race is amazing. At this stage in my life, New York is the only place that I would race.