I flew in on Monday night. I had forgotten how long a flight it was from Dulles to Dallas, and by the time I had negotiated the (ridiculously huge) DFW airport with my three bikes, rollers, and other stuff it was already late. I wasn’t in my hotel bed till 2am.
I rode over to the Superdrome (www.superdrome.com) on Tuesday morning. The original velodrome surface had been destroyed by water damage a couple of years ago, and this newer, less expensive surface had been installed by local volunteers. I’ll admit I was initially skeptical of the smoothness and safety of a velodrome built of plywood panels, but my training sessions on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning helped change my attitude. The track is smooth, solid, and fast! I picked up my buddy Matt from DFW on Wednesday night, and we spent much of Thursday preparing for Friday morning’s big ride.
The kilo is truly a race of perfection. To err is human, but mistakes are very costly in an event where you can miss a medal by fractions of a second. Thus it is that even laid back riders like myself switch to kilo and become obsessive-compulsive zealots, going over their checklists multiple times before they ride, and traveling with equipment for every possible environmental condition. I have an elaborate warm-up procedure, and Matt’s role as I prepare for the race is basically to fend off any friends, enemies, or attention seekers as I focus on the task at hand.
Since I had won the kilo at the previous WCQ I was seeded to ride last. Bobby Walthour IV of Monteray, CA was the runner-up seed, and I looked up briefly to seem him record a steady and promising 1:07.433. I was confident, relaxed, and happy. For this race we used a holder rather than a starting gate. The holder took my bike and once it was in place I snapped in. The countdown began at 30 seconds, with a beep at 10 to go, then six final beeps for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go. I took off with everything I had, and immediately the gun went off for a false start! I VERY slowly made my way around the track for the re-start, and just to be sure (and to gain some valuable recovery time) I had Matt check the bike over before I allowed the clock to start again.
You only get two chances, so I took the next start rather conservatively; despite my attempts at calming down I was a little worked up from the false start, and was perhaps a little erratic in the first few pedal strokes, but then I just let it loose. The kilo is 4 laps of this 250m track, but within seconds of taking off I had completely lost track of where I was. I was not going to look up at the lap counter (that would be valuable fractions of a second), so I just decided to keep going as hard as I could until it was over. At some point the bell rang for the last lap and I put on even more pressure. Inevitably the lactate started taking over, but I fought it all the way to the finish line. As I moved up track after the finish I heard the announcer (one thing to thank the UCI for is that we no longer wear those noisy aero head fairings, in which all you hear is wind noise). Where was I? I heard the announcer say “1:06…” and immediately started whooping. With a time of 1 minute, 6.789s I had won again, this time by the better part of a second! I must say I’m beginning to like this event!
Christian Stahl, out of National Sprint Coach Andrjez Bek’s camp, is the presumptive nominee, and he sat out this event. He didn’t have to race, as he came 7th in the Manchester World Cup and had thus automatically qualified to go to Sydney. I had won the qualifier for that World Cup, but was excluded from the team that went. I believe that even had Christian raced, I would have won again. So how come, you ask, he’s going to the World Championships and not me? Christian is a great rider, and he’ll probably eventually do just as well as anyone else would at the Olympics. I have nothing against him as a person. But the selection process is screwed up, based more on manipulation and favoritism than competition. USAC coaching staff and management have engineered the selection process to ensure they always have the final discretion in athlete nominations. There is no guarantee we are sending our fastest athletes to the World Championships (and by extension, the Olympics). More importantly, knowing the stranglehold the powers-that-be have on selection, many good athletes have decided not to bother. I believe this is part of the reason for our mediocre performance in recent years, and why much of the attention track racing is getting these days is ridicule. Of all the programs (track, mtb, road), track is the most dependent on USA Cycling for management and funding, but the other programs suffer from many similar issues. It’s no surprise to me that in spite of the supposed importance of this event, results have not yet been reported on the USA Cycling website (or anywhere). Let’s just say I Evo members will vote support me in this fall’s election for the cycling representative on the USOC Athlete Advisory Council!
OK, that’s my political speech, back to racing. I don’t often race keirin – it’s a specialized event, and quite dangerous sometimes. But this was the last selection event, and after the kilo everything else was for fun. So on Friday night I took my dead old legs out for a ride – and did pretty well! I won the first round easily, cruised into the finals with a competitive second-place finish in the semis, then spent most of the final in an elbowing match with another rider. It was funny – here we are trying to throw each other off the track, but in between bumps were discussing the weather – specifically the incoming rainstorms. He ended up 2nd, me 5th (fellow T-Towner Andy Lakatosh won the event in style – from the moto in front all the way) but I was very pleased with my uncharacteristically aggressive performance. With all my kilo fitness there’s probably some keirin racing in my future.
With the stress of Friday’s racing over, the rest of the weekend went by very quickly. In cold conditions I rode a sub-par (11.7s) 200m time trial on Saturday morning, then pulled out of the match sprint to hang out in the stands and cheer on my fellow riders. I spent Saturday night hanging out some old high school friends, and skipped Sunday’s team sprint to catch an early flight home.
That’s it. I won two out of the three selection races; if I’m not currently America’s fastest kilo rider, at I’m clearly one of the fastest. It’s been a long tough road, but I don’t regret any of the time invested in this Olympic dream endeavor. There’s surely racing on the road and track on my calendar later on this year, but for now I’m adding a little balance to my life – and adding a lot of chocolate to my diet. I should have my bike out of the case in the next week or two, so I’ll see y’all soon!
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support
Anton “Li’l Trunky” Quist