10/16/24

We were once young  

In August of 2024 I made the realization: becoming a fit masters athlete, after years of recreational cycling, trail running and general half-heartedness, had become not just a “want.”

Becoming an athlete again was now a need.

I have, admittedly, dreamed of a return to masters bike racing for years and years, making a few mild attempts here and there (the most significant interrupted by the mother of all concussions in 2015, a year that I had tagged as the “growing my hair long again and racing Snake Alley year”). That particular year I spend partially in and out of concussion clinics and outpatient brain rehab centers. But that will be another story for another time.

The title of this blog is a nod to the thundering hordes of young men and women who, upon watching one singular event on national television, got into the beautiful sport of bike racing.

This singular event was not what many people think. Although there are other important hallmarks of American cycling ascendancy in the 1980s: Greg Lemond’s Tour de France win in 1986, near demise in a shooting accident in 1987, and then return to win in the 1989 Tour, or Andy Hampsten's miraculous Giro d'talia win in 1988. All were extraordinary sporting achievements that I'm sure inspired countless young people. 

No, the singular event I’m referring to is Alexi Grewal’s gold medal in the 1984 Olympic Road Race, a race where he outsprinted one the fastest men of the 1980s era, Canadian Steve Bauer. Alexi’s tenacity and hubris were stuff of legends even in the early 1980s; within 5 miles of the finish he had been all but dropped by Bauer on the last climb. Indeed, Bauer was so good, so talented, that just a few weeks after getting a silver at the Olympics, he scored a bronze at the professional world road championships in Spain. 

I was among the many thousands of young people (I was 14 at the time and had already become an active member of our local bike touring club) who saw the Olympic battle between Alexi and Bauer, Grewal almost jumped off his bike in ecstatic celebration at the end. My Dad and brother and I jumped with the same joy when watching this final sprint in our family room in Kirksville, Missouri.  I immediately thought to myself: "all other sports are now ruined for me; this is my sport now." 

For the next 4 years I devoted myself completely and utterly to cycling and bike racing. I competed in one national championship a year after I got my first racing license, several stage races in the Midwest, huge money events like the WJBC-Pepsi Bloomington/Normal weekend, Junior Worlds trials qualifiers, an invite to the junior Olympics festival in Atlanta, recruited in several phone calls by Jim Schneider in late 1987 to race for the Spirits of St. Louis Juniors team (who sent Kevin Livingston to the stratosphere), only to take a very common route of 18 year old juniors who get burned out. I dropped the sport in the summer of 1988 in favor of college dissolution, Camel straights, dozens and dozens of the best rock shows, and later on, 2 years in Alaska.

I have always been one of Alexi’s disciples, even when I wasn't racing.

If Greg Lemond was a more staid, traditional version of a 1980s athlete, Grewal was punk rock flash and style, exemplifying the proverbial "The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long." 

Just as Grewal returned to the sport like a phoenix from the ashes in the early 2010s, I’ve returned again and again. Yet, the last 15 years have been an anomaly for me. The last decade and a half have been spent doing something, to me, that retains the greatest meaning of all: being a Dad to my two daughters. Being present for them, and not on the necessary four hour Zone 2 February rides, was both a need AND a want.  I have no regrets at all.

But I’m again, back, hopefully rising like my own version of a phoenix from the ashes, still overweight and still detrained, but with the long-term goal of competing in the 2026 national road cycling race for masters. Another goal is assisting in introducing our beautiful sport to another generation–the NICA generation.

Alexi’s disciples–long live cycling!