News

Staff Profile: Craig Cook, Team Director

Craig Cook started racing bicycles with the CRCA in 1985, at the age of 16. He raced at the elite level in the United States, and Europe including eight seasons based in France. Craig returned to New York in 2004 to pursue a degree in architecture. He freelances as a journalist and photographer, having worked…

Staff Profile: Joao Correia, Sponsorship Director

In the early 1990’s Joao Correia was just another punk teenage bike racer trying to break into the sport. As a first generation Portuguese immigrant growing up in the Hudson Valley Joao learned to express himself through the bicycle. Joao raced the Junior World Championships for Portugal in Colorado Springs in 1991. In 1992 at…

Staff Profile: David Jordan, Coach, Assistant Director Sportif

David Jordan’s bike racing career has only recently been surpassed by his career as a coach. In 2005 and 6 Jill Kintner, one of DJ’s proteges, won back-to-back titles at the World Championships in the 4-Cross event, an off-road discipline. DJ has been a professional endurance sports coach for 10 years. Prior to that he…

History Lessons, Part 1: JT waxes nostalgic

John Forrest Tomlinson in a vintage Bell “Biker” lid and CRCA jersey. I’m guessing 83-84?

(originally posted on the long defunct CenturyCentral)

My first race was a CRCA club race in March of my last year of high school. It was a cold and rainy morning and few people showed up. Lou Maltese was running the race and combined everyone — and even then the field was small. Less than 20 riders.
We set off and the pace was pretty fast for me, but not too bad. I’d been commuting and messengering a lot, so I was in OK shape for a beginner. We went up the hill at the north end of the park quite fast and I started hurting, but I made it to the top in the group. I remember thinking “Good, now we can coast down the hill and have a rest” Not! (as people used to say in the 1980s.) I got dropped immediately and rode the rest of the race alone.
I ended up being the first C (or was it D) rider anyway so I “won.” And I was hooked.
A guy who I was later to learn was one of the club’s biggest hitter — Jonathan Massey — won the race overall. My race ended on an earlier lap, so I watched the finish and was impressed by Massey’s long, painful looking sprint, and by the big bunch of mucus hanging way, way down from his face. What a sport.