Cyclocross Worlds 2013 -- Worlds in America

I'll try to keep this short (and will fail) although my head is still swimming from the weekend.  My anticipation over this event had been growing all week.

The Plan:

I would pick the boys up out of school around 12 and go to BWI for a 3pm flight on Friday.  We would see the rider presentation Friday night, then the Juniors race and Women's race on Saturday, then the U23 and Elite Men on Sunday.  When I printed our tickets out Thursday night I noticed that they didn't mention both days even though I paid for both.  So, Friday morning at 9:10, I called the ticket people to make sure it was ok, and ..... I was told that the Sunday races were cancelled and everything was moved to Saturday because the Ohio River was going to flood the venue on Sunday. Wow! Well, I was glad we were going on Friday.  Loren & I got the boys from school and we were running a little late, and I may have exceeded the speed limit ever so slightly to get to BWI, but all was fine.  Lots of people on our flight who were also going to Louisville for Worlds (the airport was also overrun with Ravens fans going to New Orleans for the Super Bowl).

Friday Night:
Flight was fine. We got there and Louisville was welcoming the event.

CX Hairs "Gettin Lucky in Kentucky" shirts

We had a minor hickup when we went to the wrong Marriott (the nicer one), but no worries.  We had dinner with Justin Mauch and his dad, Larry, at Gordon Biersch.  That was nice, and we ran into and chatted briefly with Adam Myerson at the restaurant. Then we went over the official race hotel, the Galt House, (first regret is not booking us in there; I remember it getting not great reviews but it seemed pretty nice) for a reception put on by Focus Bikes that Chris Mayhew told me about.  It was winding down a little but I met Greg Keller of mudandcowbells.com and we got some free t-shirts that were nicer than anything official.  We didn't see any racers because they were all in bed by then.

Parking seemed mysterious, so while at Galt House we saw a thing for a shuttle and I went ahead and paid for the shuttle passes for us.  We would just walk the 2 blocks over to the Galt House in the morning then ride to the venue.

Saturday -- The BIG Day
Ok, so, did I mention is was cold as hell Friday night.  Indeed, and they were calling for snow flurries all day Saturday.  We woke at 7am to this:

An inch of fresh snow.  Awesome!
Well, the boys & I put on multiple layers of clothes and our heaviest boots.  I went with my LL Bean boots (that I got in 1984) because we knew it would be wet.  But they have no insulation so I brought chemical toe warmers in case (also extra socks).  Unfortunately, the old boots have terrible traction, which would be a problem.

We wandered over the Galt House and waited for the first shuttle with a group of Belgian fans.  It was very cold.

I was really glad we opted for the shuttle so that I wouldn't be trying to figure this out in the snow.  We got there, no lines, straight into the venue

Liam at gate

Juniors warming up

The venue was a snow-covered wonderland.  It was beautiful (but cold).

We had time, and we wanted to go meet Edwin from Van Dessell to say hello in person and thank him again for his support of Jake's racing.  So we wandered over to the expo area for a while.  We found him.

Then we scored more swag.  Hats from Shimano (that blue one that Liam is wearing in the rest of the photos) plus hats from Trek, and thanks to Mark Monnett the local SRAM rep that I met at Taneytown, we got a Tim Johnson and a Zach McDonald "big head" (Zach is even on a stick).  Liam now treasures Big Head Tim.

Junior Race
We headed up to the start area for the junior race.  American Logan Owen was a real contender for top 3, and really was the 2nd best hands down.  We waited at the end of the pavement with Andy Guptil, Curtis Windsor, Chris Keeling, and Philip Rob for the start of the festivities.

Here's video of the start:

Owen had had an issue and was already way back.  Jake went running off so Liam and I wandered around to watch the race.

This is a happy boy

Lots of people in Winchester Apple Cross hats from the DC area were there.  It was incredible.  Logan Owen worked his way forward and caught the 2 belgian boys who were in 3rd and 4th.  Lars Van der Poel (spelling?) was long gone and another Dutch boy was in 2nd. Here's video of Logan about to make the catch:

He ultimately finished 4th after a bobble cost him 3rd.

Women's Race
Very quickly up next was the women's race.  We had found Jake, and Liam and I had discovered a place along the sand where you could see a bunch of different parts of the course, so we hung out there (second regret is maybe not wandering around the course more, but we were afraid of losing our spot, from which we had several good sight lines).  Just like in the junior race, Katie Compton had some sort of horrific start and was way back.  Ugh.  She did come back to get 2nd.  We were yelling ourselves horse.  Marriana Vos rode away with it.  The Dutch were 2 for 2.

We went to grab some food after the women's race.  The food tent was really inadequate for the crowd (we do better at Super8 races). We waited a long time to get a burger and coke

In line behind us at the food tent

The Crowd was growing

Crowd on the hill behind us

U23 Race
We went back to our spot by the sand for the men's Under 23 race.  It was a good race between a Belgian and Dutch rider.  The Dutch guy caught the Belgian with about 2 laps to go and carried it home.  The Dutch were 3 for 3.  The snow was giving way to mud. We cheered for Zach McDonald and I waived my Zach-on-a-stick at him.

I just found this photo from Greg Keller, thanks (www.mudandcowbells.com) that he took right across from us as Zach went by; we're right there, crammed against the fence (Jake has on the orange/yellow scarf I have the white sleeves and Liam is between us)

It was incredible to be so close.  We could really see a lot of this guys were suffering badly.

Elite Men
We had an hour before the Elite Men's race, but didn't want to lose our spot as the crowds were really getting bigger. (probably should have wondered around, oh well).

waiting for the next race

 

Liam held Big Head Tim the whole time

Here are some videos of the men's race.  They're a little darker than I had hoped.  The sun had gone behind the clouds and it started snowing during the race, which was just incredible. First lap:

This was the crowd around the sand and then Sven comes through with 2 to go

I was pulling for Lars Van der Haar.  He got 3rd and was literally foaming at the mouth at one point.

This was the last lap. Sven Nys had taken the lead.  Do you think Liam was into it!

We couldn't possibly get to the finish, so we watched on the jumbo screen across the field, which was another advantage of our location (if they had 1 more of those, maybe 2 it would have been perfect).

We watched the podium, my boots slipped and I fell on my butt in the mud, the crowd boo'd Pat McQuaid, and it was all over.

Saturday Night
Saturday night we heard there was a SRAM party at 4th Street Live (a kind of open mall area with restaurants and bars).  We didn't find it but we ran into Andy Guptil et al, and we were able to score a table for 12 at Gordon Biersch (again, that's fine).  It was nice.  During dinner we saw Jonathan Page with his family; he walked by our table and I congratulated him.  Then someone tweeted that Lars Van der Haar was at Smash Burger across the street, so after dinner we walked over but he was gone.  Then as we walked back to the car, Jake says "that was Sven Nys."  I yelled to him, but he was on the phone & the other belgians looked like they were going to kill me.  But we followed him into Gordon Biersch and said hello and I got a photo of him and the boys

Jake said he had a minor heart attack when he first saw him.

Sunday
What the heck to do on Sunday.  "Stalk Euro Racers" was the boys' desired pursuit, but we hung out in the hotel in the morning.  Then we went to the Frasier History Museum (yes we were desperate) to kill some time, then we wandered over to the Louisville Slugger Museum.

Supposedly Ryan Trebon was somewhere inside but we didn't want to just wait for him.  And of course, shortly after we left Tim Johnson tweeted that he was there -- damn.

We made our way to the airport.  Getting Big Head Tim and Zach-on-a-stick through security was a concern, but they made it (and we were those people with way too many shoes but because Liam was 12 they sent us through the metal detector rather than the scanner to move us along).
Photo by JD Biladeau of us with the heads

Liam held Big Head Tim on the plane.

And then we were done.  We got home a little after 10.  Tired.

What an emotional whirlwind of a weekend.  I know the boys had a great time.  We could have done a few things better (hotel), but all-in-all it was great (but cold).

So, as a final -- small world -- note, early Saturday I saw Meg Biladeau, who was from the Mid Atlantic but moved to New England 6-7 years ago.  She was an early Cross Blogger and supporter/racer/etc.  She remembered us, and she even remembered a picture of her and Jake at Granogue in 2006 (when Jake was 9).  So, funny thing is she and her husband JD were on the plane home with us, sat behind us, and so we did a picture of her and Jake to re-create that photo from 2006.  Here are the 2 photos.

2006 Granogue

2013 CX Worlds