Having been away for the weekend, I wasn’t able to personally witness any of the mightiness that transpired over the weekend, so I will have to wade through all the naughty pictures and cat visages known as the internet to find out what happened.
First, at the Plainville Spring Series in Plainville. CT, the twitter results are up, but they seem a little off, as there are racers who have placed multiple times in the same race, so maybe wait for the results to be posted here.
At Branchbrook, Marcin Wojcik of Team Somerville Bicycle Shop won the cat 1/2/3 race. John Durso of Colavita Racing Inc. won the 35+ race. Eric Anderson of the Somerset Wheelmen won the 45+ race. Konrad Ratzmann of the Kissena Cycling Club won the cat 4/5 race. Svenn Mikalsen of Veloroigin Performance won the 35+ cat 4 race. Results are here.
Up in Bethel on Sunday, Steve Badger of the Bethel Cycle Sport Club won the pro/1/2/3 race. Laura Summers of Central Wheel won the women’s race. Matthew Vandivort of Sixcycle-RK&O wonthe cat 3/4 race. Gary Steinberg of Brauer/Mick Management won the 45+ race. Joshua Salit of Tarmac Cycling / Iron Bridge Consulting won the cat 4 race. Shoy Louisgie won the cat 5 race. Results are here.
You forgot to mention Shoy is from Mineola Bike Club…..Go MBC Yea!!!
Pics from the first three races at Bethel can be found at darlenevallar.smugmug.com
Awesome. I will be showing them around the office tomorrow. I am a fucking super hero.
NYC races are a lot better and they have more talented fields,the guy who won Bethels pro123 is a real big time Geek !
There is a sad lack of snark in this report. Bring back Josh!
You think we can afford Josh?
Well, in that case, more cat visgages!
all I said was it takes little talent to win a bike race. it takes a lot of fitness. if you haven’t figured it out yet, cycling is an endurance sport, not a skill sport. that’s all. relax. nothing new, nothing novel.
Well he beat the “talented” New Yorkers.
The “talented were not there”and I agree with Pete that guy is a tool !
Yenta award
Stan’s had a few, Breach, Eneas was there and many more. Solid win by a nice guy. Maybe give an example beside what seems to be jealousy.
takes little talent to win a bike race…fitness yes, talent, no.
I agree he has no talent
You’re debating whether someone who won a race has fitness and/or talent? geez, that’s a new low even for you losers. he won. he did better than you did.
You’re a moron.
How is it that every car in that video gets the bike stuck in exactly the same place when pulling into the garage?
bahahahahaaha
Gigantor had issues on Target even going as far back as Remax.So words like Tool,Geek,Moron are being kind.
takes more talent to ride freestyle bmx than road racing
.
who didn’t have issues on target?
Of course you need talent to win bike races.The hating on Badger for winning a bike race is PLAIN WRONG ! He has been wining races with other talented racers in the race for along time.
He has fun racing his bike and if he finishes second he is very hard on himself for not winning!
I’m more concerned about the motives of the haters posting here ,who I bet never won a race or even finished in the top 5.I personally think they are all pussy’s for not posting their real names.
I just read a best seller called Talent is Overrated. The premise is that if you start young enough and put in enough hours (you have to be young as your life span is limited) you can be the best. However, the book focuses on people that have talent already. The best of the best. For us amateur bike races talent plays a big role but it can be neutralized somewhat by hard work especially in the the 5-3 categories, however to win as cat 2 or above is out of reach for most no matter how much they train, even a race like Bethel.
I believe my “talent” is sprinting, I train a lot but climb like a rock and time trail even slower. I also lack discipline which I consider a talent.
let’s direct our anger where it should be. Anyone see DD’s fb post hating on people celebrating those who finished MSR? WOW!! Way to take one of the most positive aspects of cycling and spit on it. He is laughing all the way to the bank with you suckers. Taking your money and thinking you all are losers
You need drugs to win a bike race….hehehehehe
Don’t care about his MSR comment, but hate that he is building a monopoly on road races in the area charging twice as much as other promoters and giving half the prize money. Anyone volunteering for his races is a sucker. I for one will not support his races. Wish he would stick to fun rides and Grand Fondos.
DD puts on better races and deserves to make a little money doing it.
The amount of time he puts into putting on these races is more than most people think.
I am sure he makes less per hour than most people racing on 10K carbon rigs in his races makes.
commenter saying “you think it’s easy, you put on a race.”
really, no one cares he doesn’t give a crap about honor and tradition in the history of the sport? cool
no idea what you’re talking about … what is this about tradition?
Interesting discussion. The tradition comment is funny. I laughed at that, but not while on the way to the bank. Sorry.
Dieter
lanterne rouge has always been celebrated. you spit on that today, dd. classless
I “spit” on it yesterday actually, but that’s not the point I guess. The point is that we have a poor example to follow in European professional cycling that’s regularly perpetuated (with increasing regularity) at VN to the point of glorifying pure idiocy; that lantern wasn’t just red, it was beet red.
The related point is that it’s a European tradition that Americans follow, not an American tradition. I’m doing my best to create our own, as are many others. I’m happy to take suggestions, though I’ll reject any that include races run at a loss. That may be the only tradition American cycling has, as it turns out.
Anyway, chasing dreams in Europe and the suggestion that we should promote that are proven failures for most (but not all) US Pros, current and former. Don’t you think it’s time we acknowledged that?
Dieter
…everyone would do it. It’s the HARD that makes it great. If you take that out, why do we all do this?
If your goal as a racer is to emulate TP finishing dead last,then you’re doing it wrong. There are good reasons why there are rules against awarding prizes for finishing last. Races are already hard.
Pro cyclists aren’t paid to risk their careers to prove a point. Amateur racers shouldn’t risk their lives emulating them when they do.
Dieter
Your snark in the first line pretty much sums up your attitude. I don’t even really understand the rest of your argument. So, screw anyone who doesn’t wind up on the podium should be the american way? Great, we can reinvent the sport and have another football or baseball. Let’s all drink some bud, have some cheerleaders and make fun of the wimps who didn’t win. That couldn’t possibly lead to more doping, could it? Or maybe you didn’t notice that was an issue our sport was struggling with
1: Doping in pro cycling directly affects Dieter’s ability to get sponsors for his events, so he has more reason than you or me to be mad at the pros.
2: Dieter helped us put on our roller race benefitting the CRCA juniors, and more than matched our take with an unsolicited donation.
Because he did something you like his positions should be accepted across the board? That’s how you roll, huh?
I bought him a beer once too, so it’s official: I own Andy.
Dieter
Yeah, Andy, I love you guys, but that’s weak sauce. Good on him, and I like plenty of things about him, but just saying, there is a lot of good in cycling tradition and celebrating finishers is one of them. YESTERDAY (there, happy Dieter?) he pissed all over that, and I find that pretty offensive personally. That Taylor Phinney piece touched a lot of people, including some in the “lance armstrong is the only cyclist ever” sphere, and here comes Dieter and his cronies mocking it. Great.
Does Dieter touch the monkey?
Actually I don’t buy the Phinney thing either. Making heroes out of athletes makes me uncomfortable. In fact, that’s straight out of the Lance Armstrong playbook.
Yes, well, celebrating only winners winds up with heroes, that is precisely the point. The VN article he was referring to sucked, I grant him that, but I don’t think he or you will get much support from the cycling community continuing down the ‘win or gtfo’ road.
and “don’t buy?” that’s pretty heartless. nice story about a dude having a miserable day on the bike and getting through it, that’s all, don’t lose perspective
No, stories that tug at heartstrings create heroes. Sagan won, I consider him an entertaining bike racer, nothing more.
Win or get the F*&K out!
Thank you. I am finding this stance of andy/dieter’s perplexing as well.
I can’t do this all day, so some quick points and I’m outta here.
1. The original post about Badger was probably a friend of his giving him shit, and now laughing his ass off.
2. I never said ‘only winning matters’, Dieter said something along those lines but he can defend that himself. I’m all for recognizing others but Phinney’s TA story arose out of his own tweets. It makes me think he’s being positioned to be the next big American thing, by some of the same people no less.
3. Isn’t it a fine line between ‘heroic’ and ‘inspirational’?
but 2) is a bit conspiratorial/paranoid sounding, and 3) that’s just weird, so we should no longer be inspired?
“I can’t do this all day, so some quick points and I’m outta here.”
And yet you do.
Sure, his father is fighting a terrible disease. He is from a patents who were great athletes but that’s not a reason to be inspired. I am sure many of those racers had some sort of “story” behind that race or their careers.
Pleeeeeease. He should have kept that story to himself that would have been more inspiring.
Cycling is starting to resemble local amateur triathlon group – I may have to take up a new sport.
man, some of you guys are just hellbent on tearing others down. are you really that miserable in your own life? you must be so perfect and a real treat to be around.
phinney sr. has parkinson’s. his son uses that as motivation to keep going when he thinks things are otherwise really rough.
is it really more complicated than that?
an unfortunate leitmotif in this thing of ours
I don’t think anyone is claiming that we need to make a hero out of him, only that his effort was inspiring. If you find it impossible to read a story about the mental struggle that even a pro cyclist encounters without defining him as a hero, then maybe that is a personal issue, not a problem with the article. I would argue your stance is probably more out of the Lance playbook: ‘only winning matters’, than anything the article is suggesting
I am not sure if the commentor trashing Bethel and its racers has ever raced the venue but I can say that it is a more challenging course than any NYC venue for two reasons. 1. the wind on the back stretch is brutal. To get off the front and stay away is just plain hard. 2. the finishing hill is deceptively long and requires perfect positioning to pull off the win. If you go too early you get swarmed and if you hesitate a second too long you miss the train. Also, the fight to get to the front on the last lap is very fierce.
These factors coupled with the fact that many strong CT,upsate NY and NYC racers participate (just because you dont recognize the names does not mean they are not good) makes the race very hard to win.
Finnally, I always laugh at the new racers who think that only the NYC A field is legit. There are some strong NYC racers but they often take there lumps going up against racers from around the East coast.
I think someone needs to get their sarcasm detector calibrated
I think it is a bit of an overreaction to suggest that the TA article goes to fair in celebrating kinda failure. I think it is good to recognizing that cycling is hard and kudos to riders who hang in for the finish even when that means they are in the caboose. The WSJ article goes too far when it suggests that TA was the true winner of the race. He wasn’t. He didn’t even win his own race of trying to make the time cut. That said, I enjoy the way he communicates the life of a pro racer and the thoughts he shared in the article are no exception. Cycling is cool. F all that hatin’ except for hatin’ on hatin’. And even that should be kept to a min.
Who the hell is TA?
DA’s brother
TP dangit.
Who the hell is DA?
I don’t own a monkey, I don’t think(?)
Dieter
do you like to dance?
I’ve heard all those jokes, but I don’t dance. Sorry.
Sprokets. Just another name for gears
Willkommen to Sprockets!
Dieter you are beautiful and angular, and if you were a gas, you’d be inert.
I can say with the the utmost certainty that Dieter has probably never heard any sprockets jokes.
Touch him!
Luve him!
I’ve heard all those jokes, but I don’t dance. Sorry.
I’m not even German. My parents named me after a beer distributor. True story.
Dieter
Do you like German Expressionist cinema?