I’ll give you a bit of personal history in my answer to this question. I was drawn to cycling because I saw it as an opportunity to meet my youthful ambition of becoming an Olympic Champion. At the age of seven, I watched Bruce Jenner win the Decathlon in the 1976 Olympic Games and I remember, to this day, turning away from the television during the podium presentation and saying to my mom that I would one day be the Olympic Champ! I get goose bumps just thinking of it now—Jim McKay on the microphone, the Olympic theme song in the background, you know the one, big base drum banging out “dum, dum, dumdum, dum,” then the horns; all good stuff. I was just a seven-year-old kid declaring his life goal….

Through early high school, I thought I’d get to the Games via track and field, but a debilitating muscle tear during my junior year put a major spanner in the works. I was having a hard time with the rehabilitation and just couldn’t get my running legs back underneath me. Later that summer, a couple of bike riding friends (Craig and Paul Flandermeyer) informed me that an American was riding and winning some obscure French bike race and that I might want to check it out on the TV…. Well, as history dictates, Greg Lemond wins his first Tour de France and I get hooked on cycling.

At first, I wasn’t drawn to cycling because I loved riding a bike; again, it was another path to the Olympic Team. However, the freedom of the open road, the hours of time to myself on the bike, cycling’s tough guy image and hardness, along with Greg Lemond’s cycling successes roped me in for life. A trip to Bergamo, Italy for the Junior World Championships in 1987 to ride the 3000m Pursuit (my first year of racing) solidified the deal. Here I was, a Johnny Cougaresque Midwestern boy, traveling the world to race bikes. That was pretty cool.

Well, as the story goes, I came close to winning that Gold medal… two-tenths from winning in 1996, but never did quite climb to the top step of the podium. Six times, I was second or third in the Olympics or world championships and every time I had to watch someone else put on the jersey. Six times… I’m telling ya, I just wanted to wear the world champion’s jersey for one year! I would have given up the five other medals to be world or Olympic champion just once! Two-tenths of a second more and I never have to tell, again, the story of how I came in second place… Finally, Elvis has left the building.

I can’t stress enough that it really was about the winning! I wasn’t there to participate, I wasn’t there for the cool tracksuit, and I wasn’t there just to podium. I was there to win it all for my family, the national team, and for the good ol’ US of A. Second was tough… Fortunately, as time goes on, I am comfortable knowing I could not have tried harder—maybe smarter, but definitely not harder!

After knee surgery in 1999, I knew the dream was over and ended up pursuing cycling exclusively as a job—never a good thing to do—until my retirement from another injury in 2001. In between, I made the Olympic Team again in 2000, this time in the Team Pursuit, enroute to making the fabled transition from track sprinter to road pro. When I got hurt for the last time, I was at my all-time road fittest and leanest (160 lbs), had spent the winter in New Zealand hitting the road solo for 35-40 hour weeks, and placed 8th in the Tour of Wellington, a hilly UCI stage race in NZ; a darn good start to the coming season. I had finally made the road transition, could climb well, I was pumped about the 2001 season—then I injured my Achilles’ tendon after I made a small adjustment to an orthotic in my cycling shoe. Exasperated, it was time to move on as my body, my bread and butter, had become unreliable.

Making a long story short, I needed to get out of cycling for a bit, so I applied and was accepted into the University of North Dakota’s John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences to pursue a degree in commercial aviation. I wanted to fly and I needed an education. I spent a wonderful couple of years in Grand Forks, North Dakota—one of the few places I’ve ever felt truly at home—going to school and getting my flight certifications. However, over time and with many pilot friends and the industry filling me in on the lack of jobs, the cyclical nature of the airline business, and 9/11’s impact on travel, flying’s risk-reward ratio was not looking as good as it did a couple of years earlier.

What was most disconcerting was the absolutely foreign notion (to me) of the seniority-based nature of aviation jobs—basically, get your flight certifications, build PIC (pilot in command) time, don’t screw up, and get in line. As an athlete that lived his whole life with a performance-based mindset, that was tough to take. I didn’t want to be forty years old getting my first opportunity to fly for a regional airline making $18,000 a year as a first officer… As much as I loved flying, I had to reconsider my future. I couldn’t have a situation where I was just compiling flight hours and waiting for a break. I couldn’t pay the dues all over again.

After some time away from sport, it finally dawned on me that many people are missing passion for their vocation in their daily lives. Having only been an athlete, I had been insulated from a more mundane existence by an athlete’s intense mindset, the incredible highs and lows of competition, and the unwavering pursuit of excellence. I missed being a part of that! I missed the commitment to excellence and intensity from those around me. I re-evaluated my life and the direction I was heading and figured I already had fifteen years of “work experience” in something, so I might as well put it to use! May Britt (my wife) and I decided it was time to get back in the cycling game.

Backtrack a second to a defining point early in my track career. I clearly remember a moment during my first elite world championships in Lyon, France (1989) where Marty Nothstein (roommate and friend) and I both agreed to do something productive in the sport when we retired. We wanted to make a difference doing something we loved, namely riding and racing bikes and promoting the growth of track cycling! Now in 2005, Marty and I both are getting a chance to move forward with our vision for track cycling and we plan to make a big difference through our collective resources and combined vision of success.

Therefore, when you ask me “what draws me [back] in,” my response is “the wonderful and interesting people involved in cycling, my personal commitment to making good things happen in Olympic sport, and my respect for the intensity and sacrifice required in cycling.” I’ve been fortunate for the opportunities that have since come my way and have never been happier in my life than I am now in T-town. May Britt’s happy and my kids love it; it’s all good. I’ve feel as if I’ve found a home and a community here in the Lehigh Valley.

As an athlete, I felt that I was constantly pushing the boundaries of human performance. I don’t think I could have worked harder! To be honest with you, I am more than confident that I physically overdid it much of my career, always trying for more, seeing if I could handle the workload. I am sure I made mistakes, but when I started there was little to no guidance at the national team level for my event. I had to sort it on my own and was never going to complain about a lack of support as my crutch for no results. It was my career and I needed to take responsibility. I’d rather do too much, than too little….

A quick anecdote about hard training or hardheadedness (you decide). It’s a dubious record at best, but during an ergometer test designed to evaluate a workout, I recorded the highest level of lactic acid (in mmol/L) ever recorded at the Olympic Training Center. The test replicated a track workout in which I was having trouble completing more than two efforts during a session. All I had to do were twenty seconds on, ten seconds off, twenty on, ten off, and twenty on. Come on, three twenty-second sprints at maximum power; really, how hard could it be?

Well, after the test, the physiologists showed me a 26mmol/L reading on the lactate analyzer… most riders can’t get over 10-12mmol/L! I know, I know, a “high lactate reading can be a sign of inefficiency”… well, to the roadie it can be, however, to the well-trained track sprinter, it helps identify anaerobic workload capacity—how hard one can push the body. Back to the story, at the time a “training center record,” I was forced to lay on the ground for 30 minutes, unable to move, feeling like I had finally hurt myself through training alone! I felt the lactic acid in my teeth, in the muscles in middle of my back; you name the spot, it was burning with lactate. Man, I was hurting! Fortunately I recovered and figured out that the workout was probably a little too hard to throw into the rotation…. Suffice it to say, I didn’t do that workout again, but it showed me how hard I was willing to push to succeed.

Point is, I lived by the code that the hardest working athlete gets to the top of his game—no exceptions. Though I may have stumbled now and then, I was of a mindset that I could win, even on a bad day, because I was better prepared than anyone else in the world for my event. Let me be very clear that I wasn’t just throwing workouts together trying to push, push, push. In addition to the requisite hard work, I trained intelligently and with a well-designed training plan—anyone can chronically overtrain and that’s never good.

Nevertheless, in addition to the right genetics, cycling requires that you patiently put in the time and I think many riders still don’t get that concept. Traditionally (though less so in modern American cycling where the converse is now true), it is a blue-collar, working-class sport for a reason: physically and mentally, it’s extremely hard! In Europe, it was viewed as an opportunity to get off the factory floor and thus had an almost survival vibe to those involved! The true beauty of world-class cycling is that it requires a single-mindedness and hyper-serious commitment packaged in a willingness to work day in and day out for years—old-school style—to reap the results. Cycling forces the athlete to be completely honest with himself as there is no hiding of poor form and fitness… cycling demands respect from the rider.

Truthfully, I wouldn’t want it any other way! It isn’t a masochistic attraction, because no one enjoys the pain of the daily effort. However, I did love the daily process of training, I innately understood what was required to perform at the highest level, and truly appreciated the humbling nature of hard work. Let’s face it, I was trying to ride faster than three billion or so other people in the world and it was probably going to take some additional effort above the norm on my part.

In tandem with the hard work, preparedness was critical to my success. My basic competition mantra was “stress and performance anxiety are felt by the unprepared.” It’s funny, but I could go to a championship event and know immediately by looking at the face of my competition who was, and was not, ready for the job—you could see the fear of failure in their eyes—and the results were usually as I predicted. This preparedness was defined as the combination of hard work and a tactical-technical psychological orientation—the athlete must focus in training and racing exclusively on variables that they can control. If you’re giving your best in your preparation, it does you no good to stress about the other guy! As a bike racer, I can’t control the fitness and times of the other riders, I can’t control the influence of weather, and I can’t control the ebb and flow of an event, but I can control myself.

Let’s be honest, all athletes feel the strain and pressure of the championship event! The hard work and a high level of preparedness were my contingency plans and insulators from those external pressures. Cracking under pressure happens far more at the highest level than folks probably understand and appreciate. The point being, athletes must get control of their psyches if they want to create predictability and consistency on race day. My work ethic and high level of preparedness were my control.

One concept I’d like to bring forth is that the athlete doesn’t always know how hard they need to work in order to maximize their potential. It can be foreign to them just as at one point, it was foreign to me. I’ll give you an example: I won a surprise bronze medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. I was a good athlete, had worked hard, and when the dust settled, found myself on the good side of the third-fourth place battle by 4/100’s of a second over the German, Jens Glucklich. Afterward, though I was an “Oly’ Medalist” I could tell something was missing from the training equation, I just didn’t know what was missing or how much if it.

The next year I got my butt kicked at the world championships in Hamar, Norway with a sixth place finish in the 1000m TT. I was dumbfounded! I had done a similar program as the year before, felt ready to go, and honestly expected a better result. All of a sudden, the world ramped up its game and I was left behind. Yet, all the while—again, as an Olympic medalist—I thought I was doing enough…

Immediately after the world championships, I was on the phone to Lisa Voight (then USAC Executive Director) requesting some sort of guidance or assistance, as I needed a serious change of direction. She arranged for me to go to Adelaide, South Australia and train for six months with the Australian Institute of Sport’s Track Cycling program under Charlie Walsh. Travel and accommodations were set up and I was off to South Australia and un-chartered territory for an American cyclist. Man, talk about intra-squad competition, all of a sudden, I am in cycling boot camp with Stuart O’Grady, Brett Aiken, Tim O’Shannessy, Rod McGee, Billy Joe Shearsby, Darren Hill, Shane Kelly, Gary Neiwand, et al. It’s October of 1993 and we’re doing rides of 230km, lactate threshold intervals in huge gears uphill (the infamous strength endurance interval), track races on the weekends, weights, and more intervals on the ergometer. For three straight months, weekly training volume was close to 1000km in addition to the track and weight room work. That’s a lot for the fall and early winter…I remember coming back from a 300km/180 mile ride (approx. 10 hours straight) and starting to wonder what I was doing down in Oz… I was a bit on the ropes at times, although handling it well, but still concerned that it was a bit much—nevertheless, I was never going to give up and dug in with a Midwesterner’s hardness!

I sat down with Charlie and asked him what was up with the huge volume-and-intensity combination at what is traditionally a slower time of year. His response (I’m paraphrasing a bit from memory) was that “it was necessary to weed out the weak before the specialized work began with the riders that would represent Australia in international competition.” Charlie couldn’t risk the world’s prep with riders of fragile physique and psyche. Whoa… that was a bit of a shock, but slowly the philosophy began to make some sense as training went forth. I was beginning to realize why all but two of the guys in the training group were world champions (only Kelly and Hill were not, though Kelly was an Olympic silver medalist and both went on to become world champions). Everything the Aussies did was preparation for down the road—the focus was exclusively on the big goal. In addition, these were the hardest guys I’ve ever known in my career—a real “get up and put in the work” mentality every single day! Honestly, since then I’ve not seen toughness like in many people involved in track cycling. They were a truly special group of people and I am a better person from the experience.

In trying to keep another long story short, later that season I went to Buttgen, Germany for another three months with the Aussies leading up to the world championships. It was another test of strength and character (think daily sessions of 5 x 500m flying in the morning and 8 x 1000m standing in the afternoon) but I survived to get back to my medal-winning ways. I earned silver at the 1994 world championships in Palermo, Sicily, just behind Florian Rousseau (the same rider that bested me in Atlanta two years later by a whisker!), with Shane coming in third. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t as warmly welcomed back the following year after taking the medal over Shane! I don’t know if Charlie got some grief for that or not from the Cycling Australia, but to this day, all those guys have been nothing but kind and supportive of me.

I still look back at that time with the Aussies as the turning point in my career. I would not have the results I have today if it wasn’t for that camp. Of course, training has changed and that volume and general approach are no longer applicable for sprint cycling. Nevertheless, I dedicate my career to Charlie and Lisa for giving me an opportunity to learn what we are all capable of doing through perseverance and an unwavering commitment to a goal. It also taught me never to rest on past success—an approach I am bringing with me to my position as Executive Director of the Lehigh Valley Velodrome.

I’ll close this section with my philosophy regarding elite racing in America because it will help explain my approach to sport and work. At the most basic level of bike racing, there are two types of riders: lifestylers and professionals. The lifestyler is one who truly enjoys the sport, the camaraderie with his fellow rider, the good times after races, the traveling circus that can be cycling, competition, but really more the social aspect to the sport. Their results tend to reflect the level of commitment: good, but not great or to the athlete’s true potential. Bike racing is more fun than work. It’s a great lifestyle. Having the lifestylers approach isn’t a bad thing! However, this rider must temper his or her expectations from the sport until they commit to the professional’s mindset and work ethic.

On the other hand, the professional, while obviously enjoying certain aspects of cycling, is the one putting in the serious work, investing in himself, making the 24/7commitment, skipping the coffee shop jaunt in favor of the five-hour ride, doing what is necessary to get to the top, and making the single-minded sacrifice to be the best! The professional enjoys the result of the work, namely winning and earning a living from cycling. Cycling to the pro is a commitment to a goal! Bike racing is more work than fun. It’s a commitment to excellence.

It’s a bit George Bush, but I’ve always felt “you’re either in, or you’re out,” regarding the above philosophy, i.e. you can’t be a lifestyler and expect to get to the top rung in cycling—it really does require the professional’s efforts and some darn good genetics.

Point being, I’ve always looked at cycling and life itself through the eyes of the professional. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always have fun, I’ve had an incredible life to-date, I have two great kids and a wonderful wife, and I thoroughly enjoy the fruits of my labor. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, I want success in my job and I’m just willing to work hard for it. As I’ve noticed, “the harder I work, the luckier I get.”

T-town is at a critical point in its existence. To survive both fiscally and figuratively, it’s imperative that we define with much greater clarity what we are in the modern cycling community. Are we a professional racing venue hosting the world’s best athletes and events, a community programs and multi-use facility catering exclusively to the region’s youth, a fee-based training and recreation facility, or a working combination of all three? It’s a very real question with strong repercussions. Fortunately, here in T-town we have a choice.

Let’s look at community programs first. Most importantly, it’s critical for us to carry forward Bob Rodale’s vision of public access to fitness and cycling through the gates of the Lehigh Valley Velodrome. Bob Rodale was a visionary that had the ability and willingness to bring the velodrome to life through his commitment to youth-focused community programs that introduce cycle sport to the public. Bob Rodale was adamant that these programs were necessary for the velodrome’s success and continued growth and I could not agree more! Therefore, it’s imperative that we carry on the mission that Mr. Rodale embarked upon 30 years ago this year in providing the youth of the Lehigh Valley a wonderful fitness alternative in cycling.

My vision has us strengthening our youth cycling programs to create an environment in which there is continuity between the youth-introductory, intermediate and advanced programs, standardization of development program curriculum, more stringent qualifying criteria for our coaching pool, and a bridging system from our developmental programs to USA Cycling-sanctioned racing.

Right now, we have an environment in which children get hooked on cycling through both our Air Products’ Developmental Cycling Program and youth Bicycle Racing Leagues and want to take it to the next level. Unfortunately, the next step has been the “Future Stars” USA Cycling-sanctioned series on Tuesday nights… a huge and daunting leap for anyone, let alone a twelve-year old kid that just learned to ride a track bike! T-town needs a smoother transition from that first developmental course to the racing environment in order to keep kids interested in cycling—throw them too far into the deep end and I guarantee that we’ll lose a good number of potential world champions because the learning curve is too steep!

It’s important for us to always remember that there are many fitness and athletic options available to kids in the Lehigh Valley. It’s imperative that after the initial exposure to cycling through a developmental program, we must provide greater incentive to participate in this incredible sport. One reason traditional ball and stick sports are so attractive is that, in addition to being fun and imbedded in our culture, there is something tangible at the end of the day: a college scholarship opportunity, life-long camaraderie and friendship, and highly-structured programming from peewee to professional! In cycling, it can be hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel with athletes and their parents forced to fend for themselves from day one, usually required to figure it out on their own once they’ve bought the shiny new bike and junior has finished his three-week developmental program. It can be intimidating.

Fortunately for our youth, here in T-town we do have a stronger network of coaching and club support than most cycling communities. Nevertheless, we can still do a much better job in providing guidance and instruction to the kids that want to race bikes. Therefore, my team of Lehigh Valley Velodrome-certified coaches (headed by Nancy Seay, Director of Community Cycling Programs), are prepared to step it up several notches in providing that much-needed incentive to participate for the kids.

More simply put, when parents and children sit down to review the gamut of sports available for summer participation, ranging from traditional ball sports to alternative sports including bike racing, I want cycling to truly stand out as a great choice for that child and worthy of their parent’s investment in time and equipment. Again, we need to provide greater incentive to participate.

Tackling the racing programs, for too long we’ve lived on the hard-built reputation of excellence forged since 1976 by Jack Simes, Dave Chauner, Karen and Leigh Barczewski, Pat McDonough and others. Thirty years of rich cycling tradition and history is at risk if we’re not cognizant in how we approach our professional racing series from this point forward. We need to acknowledge that the racing and its surrounding show have both stagnated and that they need to improve before we can even think of winning back the fan base. Across the board, complacency has taken place in our marquee professional racing series to the point where we need a major re-adjustment. In my eyes, T-town is the Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park of bike racing—a world-class venue that’s been home to some incredible racing! Let’s act like it.

Anyone that’s done anything in track cycling has raced on the esteemed ground of T-town: Eddy Merckx, Patrick Sercu, Nelson Vails, Mark Gorski, Sergei Kopilov, Allan Peiper, Marty Nothstein, Stephen Pate, and the Curuchet brothers—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg! On our track and for the first time in their country’s history, a Soviet team made up of Ukrainian riders broke from regulations and raced in the national colors of the Ukraine! Who would have thought that there was bona fide cold war history in Eastern PA? The Aussies, French, Germans, Kiwis, you name ‘em, they’ve been here. There’s energy to the place that’s undeniable!

Attracting the best domestic and international riders to the velodrome needs to take priority with far greater effort put into getting the right mix of riders in town. Having seen and participated in the best racing in the world, I believe the quality of racing really does matter! Over the last five years, the foreign riders with strong personalities have left town, the domestic road-pro rarely shows up for a go, and the percentage of strong American track riders that base themselves in T-town is down substantially from what it was in the 80’s, and 90’s. If we continue to view the sport through the lens of class AA baseball and not the Major leagues, it’ll slowly fade away… we must bring back great racing, which means the best riders from the US and the world performing on Friday night in a well-crafted show.

In addition to great racing, our marketing of these events needs to change. Our showcase series cannot just be Friday night bike racing… we need to focus on hosting unique, world-class events! I really want to get away from promoting an image that’s so pervasive and imbedded to this community that “there’s bike racing at the velodrome this Friday.” Only the die-hard fan cares that there’s bike racing on Friday… well, we have about 500 of them and I need 3000 in the stands…. What we need to target market in our region is that a festival of international sport highlighting the exciting world of competitive cycling is taking place at a world-class venue!

I’ll use the following analogy to express my point for changing the public’s mentality (as it pertains to a professional sports venue) of the Lehigh Valley Velodrome. As an ex-athlete, I can appreciate and respect almost any sport under the sun and don’t mind spending time and money to watch athletics in person. Note: I will use figure skating as an example, but the following point could use any sport other than cycling. Nevertheless, if there were a weekly figure skating series here in the Lehigh Valley showcasing regional and national-level skaters, I probably wouldn’t attend because I’m just not a big enough fan of ice skating to commit a Friday night and I’m certainly not going to pay for it. Of course, those folks intimately connected to figure skating will attend and are probably willing to pay, but it’s going to be tough to get my family to show up.

However, if the “Champions on Ice” or a similar professional, highly athletic, and entertainment-focused ice skating show came into town, I’d attend with great enthusiasm because I’m willing to pay to see intense, world-class competition bundled together with a strong entertainment package! Cycling, packaged properly, can be fun to the non-cyclist. I stress this because T-town needs a fan base that’s not only cycling-centric, but a mix of people that want to be enthralled and entertained through athletic competition.

Two organizations do this very well: the loosely knit groups that manage the European Six Day circuit and the promoters of the British Revolution series held in Manchester. Both the sixes and the Revolution focus on both the quality of racing and the entertainment aspect of the show itself. Trust me, there’s a huge difference between watching a UCI World Cup and a six-day…. Though the World Cup may have far more international riders, some great racing, and the UCI’s support, the sixes will win for fun-factor every single time. Why? Because the World Cup is geared to the rider and his performance and not to the spectator’s enjoyment! At the six, it’s 100% about entertaining the fans with the riders and the surrounding show providing this amusement.

On a quick tangent and speaking of great events, to me, the best racing series in the modern history of track cycling was the now-defunct Open de Nations held every fall at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy in France. By invitation only, eight national teams would come together for three days of racing in one of France’s coolest indoor arenas. A strong mix of sprint, endurance, and six-day style events fought out by the national teams guaranteed excitement for the roughly 10,000-15,000 people in the stands each night. Because of the national-team format, there was very little collusion amongst the racers, resulting in some seriously epic battles for the yearly title. I fondly remember our own national team track-endurance riders cheering wildly by the side of the track for us to go well in the sprint events, thus gaining valuable points for the overall. We reciprocated the enthusiasm when they were up on the boards. I’m being honest when I say we never had that intra-squad enthusiasm at the worlds… A truly awesome event! Unfortunately, once the race moved to Bordeaux, it lost a lot of its pizzazz and has since faded to nothing.

Alright, let’s get back on topic. Up to about 2002, T-town was managed with a smaller scale, though highly successful, Six-Day/Revolution approach with events and riders that catered to the entertainment qualities of the show. Racing was always hard, but the athletes understood that it was expected that they would perform for the crowd. As Jame Carney recently said to me, “historically at T-town, the weeks of racing flowed like chapters in a book with fans coming back week after week until the book was finished.” The fans were coming to see the racing personalities that grew with time and the battle for supremacy that was fought each week. It was fun to watch Stephen Pate and his boys as they battled Nothstein, Gibby Hatton, Jame and Jonas Carney, Shaun Wallace, Tony Davis, the Aussie and Kiwi national teams, and other personality-driven riders each season! There was great anticipation for the racing by our fan base.

Unfortunately, over the last few years and as stated earlier in this text, we’ve seen fewer internationals base themselves at T-town, the percentage of world-class American riders making the Lehigh Valley home has slipped to an alarming degree, and the fight in the rider (and I mean the good kind) has slowly gone away. The racing schedule has stagnated. Across the board, some basic enthusiasm has been lacking from all parties. Only twice this year did I see the crowd rise from its collective seat due to the thrill of racing: Josiah Ng’s coming from behind sprint victory over Christian Stahl at the Fastest Man on Wheels and Marty Nothstein’s turn-four pass for the win at Madison Cup.

So, let’s fast forward to 2006 and look at T-town through the eyes of a spectator. You’ve managed to get me [the hypothetical patron] back through the gate with some targeting advertising highlighting the new and improved show to take place. As a spectator, I expect a well-managed event, a tightly orchestrated racing timeline, a fun and festive race-day atmosphere, some pre-and-post event musical entertainment, and more than respectable prize money for the riders. I want to know that they’re battling for some big cash. Oh and by the way, if you expect me to bring my kids here, let’s understand that this isn’t backyard “Friday Night Thunder”—I had better not see professionals (racers and velodrome management) acting like amateurs or thugs… I want to bring my kids back and maybe even enroll them into one of your youth development programs. Keep it clean.

In addition, I [the jaded spectator] want to have immediate access to race information which potentially means a score board upgrade for the velodrome. I want to know the names and nationalities of the racers and some of their racing history—who’s good and who’s not, so provide me with a media guide and an informative weekly riders’ update. I want to know who’s battling whom for the individual leaders’ jerseys and I want to know who’s coming into town next week. I want to see elbow-to-elbow racing from guys and girls that actually care that they’re out there representing their sport... I want to enjoy my time at the races, meet with friends, have a beer and brat’, and most of all, I want to want to come back next week and spend my valuable time and money at your facility.

Let’s step out of the hypothetical spectator’s shoes and back into reality. Our interested spectator makes extremely valuable comments across the board. We [T-town] need to start approaching this more from a professional sports management frame of mind and less from the clouded and rose-colored vision of the bike rider. We host professional sporting events, not just bike races.

The other part of the overall equation is the athlete. In the above paragraphs, I highlighted that the rider’s have not been doing their part to keep up the level of the racing. However, it’s not all their fault! As an ex-rider, I can appreciate why they don’t want to show up anymore.

From a cyclist’s point of view, we’re no longer the most attractive racing game in town! Too many times to count this season, I had pro and elite riders in the stands on Friday night, saving the legs for a no-name criterium on Saturday. Prize money in ’05 wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t enough to force the track-experienced roadie to consider it an option. The risk of crashing, though unfounded, was considered too high—especially after the Carney-Lakatosh incident on June 10. Scaremongering abounded through a misrepresented impression that racing here was dangerous because of the cliques of racers that perform in the professional series. T-town was labeled Thugville…

Let me state that this is not true! We had three crashes in the men’s series the whole season! Nevertheless, it will take time and effort to dispel this myth. In ’06, I am giving my guarantee to all riders that they can come and race in a safe and exciting environment. My job, reputation, and the track’s credibility are all on the line and I will in no way tolerate boorish and overly aggressive behavior from riders or their coaches. It’s just not acceptable. Seriously, look at it from my point of view: how can I attract the true international rider if he or she is concerned they’ll leave the track with a concussion instead of cash? I can’t! That’s why we’ll stand tough on our Code of Conduct policy for 2006 and make racing as safe, while still as exciting, as possible for next year.

From the rider’s perspective, they need competitive racing, it needs to be exciting and relatively safe to them, and they need to make money! Speaking of money… to be honest with you, as stated above, our prize list the past three or four seasons was not at quite good enough for the international and American pro to justify basing him or herself in T-town. We had some great riders, i.e. Northwestern Mortgage, Nothstein, Colavita/Bolla Wines, and a few others that kept it honest. Nevertheless, our fields were lacking in depth. Even though our weekly purse is better than any other track racing series anywhere, it’s still perceived as not good enough for the pro to justify racing track without a contract or an appearance fee. We speak of creating incentive to participate in the youth programs, well, in addition, there needs to be incentive for the professional and elite rider to come home to T-town.

For 2006, I’ve allocated approximately $65,000 over 11 events for prize money alone. A small portion of this is sponsor dependent, but fortunately we’re close to locking in the majority of our sponsors for next year. That’s an almost $6000 weekly payout for a track cycling event! As a rider, try to find a weekly criterium series in the United States that guarantees that for three months. You can’t.

In addition to attractive prize money, we will work with the national teams from North America, select European and Asian squads, and individual cycling stars to provide incentive to come over for defined periods in order to create a diverse and wholly professional racing environment. I want predictability in knowing who will show up to race. Guessing how many riders we’ll have on Friday night is no longer acceptable.

I don’t work for the Lehigh Valley Tourism and Convention Board, but I am going to trump our location strengths anyway. The Lehigh Valley is within a three-hour radius of a good percentage of east coast racing, provides easy access to eastern NRC races, has a major airport in Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton International, is home to incredible riding in both hilly and flat terrain, is blessed with nice quite roads and a cycling-friendly driving culture, and has a riding lifestyle and community that rivals Boulder and Southern California! To top it off, the velodrome is the hub in the wheel of cycling in the valley. Here, riders and cycling enthusiasts care about track cycling! It doesn’t get any better than that.

I am confident we’re heading in the right direction for all whom are interested in our incredible sport. I am truly excited for 2006 and expect T-town to, once again, be a whole lotta fun for all involved.