Koksijde 2

Koksijde 2



After a numbingly bizarre transition in the hotel, I awoke at 10:17 a.m., grabbed coffee, and hit the shuttle to the venue. The sun had come out as Pierre drove the Nissan diesel van to the venue on wet road. He pointed out to me how poor the bike lane – which would blow away any such thing in America – was by design.

In warm sunshine punctuated by drizzle out of clouds passing off the North Sea, I hit the ground and started to walk the course. With some sleep, my mood had elevated dramatically along with the weather conditions. Within a minute of arrival, I spotted UCI staff I knew. I bumped into American fans, and the entire experience began to bloom wonderfully. Brook Watts, Theo Kindermans and his wife, Katherine Cagle, Matt Howie (sp?), Molly Cameron, and countless other Americans swarmed the press center and course. Photographer Will Matthews and I stumbled about the course infatuated with the riders able to master this course.

The sand of Koksijde defies description. This course is laid out on a military base atop dunes. The only thing the base is used for now is rescuing beachgoers and sinking fishing boats.

The numbers in Koksijde are astounding. Organizers announced the event had sold out at 42,000…..Let me say that again….SOLD OUT.

Here are some more:

These guys have the entire venue hard fenced. That means 18 km of fencing. They ran out of fencing in all of Belgium and had to get more from the Netherlands!

Much of the fencing has been braced by secured side panels set at 90 degrees. They are concerned about crowd control and the fencing actually collapsing.

There are as many tents near the finish line as they had at Tabor and Sankt Wendel…The only difference is that this is just in the finish area. By the pits and the dunes there are four more massive tents such as those.

So with all that, today’s pre-ride was fabulous. There were probably 2,000 people here today just watching that.

For you folks handicapping at home, here’s the rub:

• Sven Nys has not been here for a few days, choosing to forego the public pre-ride
• Klaas Vanternout has been here for five weeks.
• Zdenek Stybar railed the course yesterday doing 15 hot laps.
• Caroline Mani rode today, but was obviously in pain.
• Katerina Nash rode the course for the first time this week…as in, she has never raced here before.
• Japanese riders are wildly popular. And even their fans get dragged into photo shoots and beer parties.
• Jeremy Powers and Zach MacDonald looked fine.
• Tom Meeusen will surprise people.

The pre-ride ended and I went to the rehearsal for the awards ceremony. I’m working with Mark Bollard (sp???). This guy speaks five languages and has announced for 31 years! I feel like a French guy going in to Yankee Stadium to talk a little baseball.

This guy seems nice.

The Louisville folks had their presentation for 2013. They did a nice job. Better, in my opinion, than the prior two I witnessed. I wish them luck.

More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Ko

Koksijde 1

Koksijde 1

Air France Hangover on the TGV
Me and Bruce
Out Go the Lights….Twice

So I’m re-opening my blog to give you all my recounts of the 2012 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.

So the departure from Boston via Air France to Paris would be uneventful. I had the unusual departure of 5.30 from Logan. This means an arrival in France of 12:30 in my body but 6:30 a.m. in France.

Having given my liver a break, I could not turn down Air France wine while I read countless European ‘cross results to prepare for announcing my third UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.

I plowed through results and action movies on the flight and touched down in what seemed like no time.

We arrived on a dark and damp tarmac and began the confusing parade of Charles De Gaulle Airport, a massive tube of humanity with countless ports of entry. Paris is a fascinating hub with massive columns of Asian people flooding up against colorfully dressed African women and heavily made up French women. How can French women get away with so much make up and pull it off?

The entire arrival heightens my senses. Every cylinder, every synapse is firing as I bathe in the French language with just enough mastery to convince everybody I actually speak French….which I don’t. So all their directions are in French which means I stupidly do things like walk right off the train platform!

I’ve discovered I’m booked on the TGV from Paris to Brussels! Fantastic adventure! Stay tuned. Next stop is Brussels and then north on a regional train to Koksijde


Brussels-Koksijde

January in Northern France and Belgium is not all that cold…With a damp mist and gray sky it penetrates every building, every coat, and every soul. I disembarked from the TGV, snared my bag, and then dragged about the Brussels Midi Station to sort out the next leg of the trip, a train to the North Sea.

Given the multitude of languages and cultures and immigrants tumbling about Europe, one would expect to see some comprehensive signage. Nah....One simply must be polite and brave and willing to ask what the hell to do. Frankly, I like it because I have those skills. But this experience would rattle the average American suburbanite.

I bumbled from the info booth to the wrong ticket booth to the correct ticket booth and got myself ticketed for 18 Euros. With 40 minutes to kill I dragged my bags across the trolley tracks, walked a block or two, got a bottle of water to offset the TransAtlantic wine on Air France, and then dug into Cruz Verde for a box of ibuprofen to offset the TransAtlantic wine on Air France.

After a lot of beer drinking over the holidays, I sent my liver to the cleaners for a few weeks to prepare for the Tim Johnson Ride on Washington. Despite a few trip ups after cross nationals, I did really well and felt great. I like not drinking.

But there was no way in hell I was going to Belgium for Cross Worlds without drinking some beer! So this is a beer drinking vacation.

So with this airline hangover, I tramped up the stairs to the train platform for the 11:14 train to Koksijde. I found one person on the platform: Bruce Fina.

Bruce and I are funeral friends. We go a long way back and will undoubtedly go a long way forward. I thoroughly enjoy his personality and passion for promotions. I could tell by the gray hairs that that the strain of pulling off the masters world championships and the 2013 elite worlds had taken its toll.

Our recent division over the calendar, when he wanted me to move Providence to accommodate the USGP moving its calendar date but I refused, has been settled going into 2013.

So we boarded the train and spent the 90 minutes talking about American ‘cross, his life in Austria, World War I battlefields, the NFL, and particularly our appreciation of the New England Patriots. I gazed across the lowland landscape with its modest, brick homes, its fabulous modern windmills, and studied the Fietsnetwerk of bike paths and lanes. We arrived and parted ways; my driver, Wilfred, greeted me and off I went to the UCI host hotel.

Wind spattered rain on the Nissan van as we splashed through Koksijde. The landscape reminded me of Cape Cod or the Outer Banks in off-season. I saw the venue and could not fathom how 50,000 people would cram into such a small area. This venue is one half the size of Stage Fort Park and they would be hosting the world.

There is one key element to Koksijde: sand. I’ll describe this more tomorrow after I walk the course.

After rolling through Koksijde, we rolled eastward to the host hotel. I arrived and checked into a simple, neat four-story hotel with a foggy view of the dunes. I had a gift bag with a bottle of brandy, a deck of cards, and some With that I plugged in my electrical adaptor purchased last year in Germany. And into that I plugged my power strip, intent on charging EVERYTHING I had.

“POOF”.

The thing shut off and the strip went dead. And I could not get a charge at all. Dead. With a dead laptop and dying phone, I got a snack in the bar and attempted to sleep….With my body protesting the nap at what it perceived to be 9 a.m. But I conked out lightly. I woke up refreshed, asked for help with the electricity thing, and waited in my room….And waited…..Finally the desk clerk arrived with a new adaptor which did not fit. Frustrated, I grabbed a pile of World Cup results and went to the restaurant.

These trips are wonderful…but also wonderfully lonely. And with a dead computer they are that much lonelier with no e-mail and no Skype. But I drank a double-double Belgian beers, ate small shrimp with the shells on, and ordered the Cassolet de Poisson…which was fantastic.

I pored over results of the Under 23 and Junior World Cups. Here goes my rant on announcing: nobody gets paid to announce the elites. The elites each spend nearly a decade on the trophy shelf of the sport. We all develop a solid sense of who they are, how they race, where they live, what they won, what they lost, etc. We announcers all brush up on the facts before we work a big event but we’re smearing more icing on the cake than most of us can eat.

At the worlds, I put a lot of effort into the Junior and the Under-23 categories. I doubt any of you have ever heard of Vojtech Nipl, but he’s an amazing young rider. These guys don’t have trading cards, look like their 12 years old, and only emerged on the scene in the last few years. I spent four hours tonight analyzing lap times of World Cups this season in these categories. I love that you recognize old names such as Van Der Poel and Frischknect in these ranks. These kids race their brains out. And announcing here fills up my library for future announcing at the elite level.

After dinner I returned to the room, saw the staff had fixed my power outage in one sector of the room. Then I decided to plug in my power strip in another outlet just to try it…..

“POOF”

Only this time, I blew out the entire third floor! Totally in the dark, I groped my way to the desk only to realize they had closed for the night. I wandered into the kitchen and with pigeon French explained the predicament. The bad news is that Belgian circuit breakers are touchy; but they go right back on! And I’m in business!

Thanks for reading. I’ll give you my course report and handicap the Saturday races tomorrow!

The Magic Bus: Homeward Bound

After such an amazing week in Copenhagen there would undoubtedly be an emotional collapse. But today could bring me close to a nervous breakdown.

I’m still processing the death of my sister just two weeks earlier. I’m two weeks away from my Providence race (thankfully Laura Low, Glenn Stillwell, Tom Stevens and others are on the job). The cost of living in Copenhagen has completely broken my bank. And between the time changes and the paucity of Internet connectivity I’ve kept in touch with my wife and family by a single Skype session, two phone calls, and text messages. I was way off the back with e-mail and expected to be fired by every client I had.

Everybody in my family is emotionally scraped up. And I’ve been over here in cycling la-la land…And I would have a few "las" on my final day abroad. It's like being served too much cheesecake.

Sarah McLachlan’s “Building a Mystery” is playing over and over in my head, notably the line “you’re so beautiful; a beautiful fucked up man.”




The alarm went off at 6 a.m. and I had to spend 75 dk to get online just to check my itinerary and eat aspirin to ward off a hangover inflicted by those British folks. I saw that thankfully the flight did not leave until 1 p.m. I collapsed into bed for another two hours.

Again, I would sit alone at breakfast, starting to write this piece. But this morning I would have company at the adjacent table when Mark Cavendish’s mother and her husband (not his father) sat beside me. We had a splendid time discussing his career and they were very complimentary of the job I had done.

Actually I was in agony over a mistake I had made. After successfully peering into the mob of cyclists and seeing the Australian Michael Hepburn unravel in the rush for the sprint to decide the U-23 race and then seeing just a sleeve of a jersey in the train station of the women’s race to recognize Giorgia Bronzini I screwed up on Sunday in the big race. It’s announcing, not Tweeting, but somewhat similar. You need to think before hit send. But sometimes you cannot do so.

In the decisive crash that took down Thor Hushovd, I saw the USA jersey, Garmin helmet, and white glasses of the famous sprinter, Tyler Farrar. And made mention of that. Unfortunately what I really saw was the Garmin helmet and white glasses of the famous American roleur Andrew Talansky.

So I screwed up. But at that level, I wish I had paused and double checked. But you cannot retrieve words.

Only at the end when Farrar emerged in the sprint to finish 10th did I start to question my call.


We lingered over coffee and I savored this last morning in Copenhagen. I knew how much shit was about to hit the fan upon my return. All I could do about it, however, was get home. And for a bike nut, this trip home would be fantastic.
I got a ride to the airport with the organization’s shuttle, joining Guy Doblar, a Belgian official who served as the chief commissar, Kurt Sauer, an American official who lives in Tokyo and surprised me with his command of French and Japanese, two other officials, and the Danish driver. I sifted into the airport experience. The first element of re-entry into America came on a television, where I saw the highlights of Buffalo defeating New England with a buzzer-beating field goal. Believe it or not that proved to be a top sports story in Denmark, where there are several fans of American football.

But the big story in all the papers would be the men’s road race.

After a purchasing a hot dog in hopes of fending off this sickening hangover and anxiety disorder of my return to, I headed towards the gate. On the people mover a guy stepped in behind me. I had noticed him earlier. He had a distinct look about him, slender and fit with jeans, T-shirt and long gray hair cut well. But something about his features, which had some resemblance to Charlie Watt of The Rolling Stones, gave off intensity. He had seen some things in his life. One could tell.

“Ah, the voice!” he said, smiling to me. “You were amazing.”

I thanked him for the compliment and asked about how he liked the event. Turns out he’s Peter Dejong, chief photographer for AP. He’s covered 15 Tours de France and probably as many wars: Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq…Cycling is the one sport he adores to cover. Although he lives in Amsterdam he was headed to Paris, where his girlfriend resides.

We dug into an intense discussion on everything he had done; he took as much of an interest in me. We talked all the way down the ramp and on to the plane.

I had found him so fascinating that I never looked around the gate. I filtered down the aisle to my seat, 21D, with a kind older woman from Jutland in the middle seat, 21E. The window seat remained empty.

As others filed onto the plane, I looked up to allow a passenger to get to 21F. There was the French sprinter, Romain Feillu. Holy shit! Then I looked up to see Sylvain Chavenel a few rows up. Behind me sat Laurent Jalabert! Ja-Ja himself! Thomas Voekler had his young son with him. I was on the plane with the entire French elite men’s team! They all few coach!

I spoke politely with Feillu in my horrible French for perhaps two minutes and then let him be. I did not get my photo with any of them; I did not ask for an autograph. I never do that.

We arrived in Paris’ Charles DeGaulle Airport where camera crews were there to greet the cyclists. L’Equipe, the greatest sports paper in the world, had high praise for the French performance overall at worlds and the media responded.

I filtered out to Terminal E, pressed through customs with a pile Third World line cutters and found myself removed from cycling entirely…..poof……with nothing to do for four hours. And having been cleaned out by the Danish cost of living, I could barely afford the Orangina.

Processing all of this - the loss of my sister and the emotion of her service; the thrill of Denmark; the looming stress of our event in Providence; my own health issues (more on that in a later blog) – just braided together into a confused torpor. And I had nothing to do: no Internet, no phone, and no money….Just me and my little cart to wander about looking at things I could not afford.

And then it occurred to me that the date was Sept. 26…..I had been so wrapped up in my own stuff that I had again proven to be a finalist in the world’s worst father contest. My daughter turned 15 on Saturday without so much as a text from me. What a jerk, eh?

I nearly came unraveled.

Eventually I got home….After a bus and subway transfer I met my wife at Alewife and got the update on all the hardships of life at home, including my daughter’s loss of her left lens of her eye glasses, rendering her practically blind.

Home again. Dig in.

Thanks for reading.

Great Britain: Start to Finish

This would be the big day. The elite men’s 266 km road race. Denmark is infamous for rain and gray skies. But through the entire week only the second half of the women’s time trial had been wet. For Sunday’s elite men’s race Copenhagen received the most spectacular weather of the year.

After breakfast I walked to the start area, dressed in my UCI shirt and suit coat. Peter would be at the road circuit in Rudersdal and I would handle the ceremony of the sign-in and start with help from Jens, a fine guy who handled the Danish with ease.

I arrived to find about 500 people gathered around the fences for the sign-in. But I studied some nearby cross walks and realized rivers of humanity were striding into the venue. It was 8:15.

At 8:30 I started to work the crowd and Jens slipped right in fine. Effectively I just started goofing on assorted countries and telling jokes. It’s sort of fun because I can wheel out the same jokes I’ve beaten to death in America with nobody noticing.

At 8:50 the first rider appeared: Thomas Voekler. We were on a tight time table so I spared him the interview. After a slow start I called teams to sign in and they just poured in the venue. By 9:15 there were 5,000 people in the square. The biggest crush came for the Danes of course but Hushovd, Cancellara and Cavendish drew massive cheer.

As I read off the teams, I realized Germany had built a perfect team for this race with two great closers in Danilo Hondo and Andrei Greipel, with Tony Martin and Bert Grabsch there for the leadout train.

Before they all were done I had to assemble the start. This is effectively a roll call of 200-plus riders by country and then by name. This includes Arabic, Basque, Slavic, and Flemish names. One has to simply be comfortable making mistakes and keep on rolling. The riders don’t mind too much when you butcher the pronunciation and most of them I get close.

Then I hand off the microphone and dash for the Tissot car, leaving Jens in charge. The poor guy’s microphone totally shit the bed and they had no announcing for the start.

We rolled.

I’ll leave the race reportage to the pros, but will give you a couple of insights that may have been missed on some websites.

The crowds assembled along the sidewalks as we rolled out of town for the 28 km from Copenhagen to the road circuit in Rudersdal simply blew me away. As we reached the actual circuit, however, they seemed a little sparse at first. As we approached the final turn, however, the crowds thickened to enormous density. And at the home stretch the place was packed. And those crowds would continue to come in all day. Police called the crowd 250,000! That would be nearly 100,000 more than Australia.

I jumped into the booth with Peter just as the field roared by, with a breakaway of little known riders off the front. That group would gather an eight-minute gap in two laps and then the front of the bunch went all red and blue as Great Britain went to work with Germany helping out.

After about 100 km the most significant event of the race occurred: a curb-to-curb pileup that put defending champion Thor Hushovd, Tony Martin, and American sprinter Tyler Farrar stuck in the back.

With no radios in the riders’ ears, no teams were able to respond to the inventory of crashed riders.

Hushovd was stranded with no team support and never recovered. And Martin never got back. Farrar, however, turned in an amazing performance to get back up to the main bunch and appeared on the wheel of Taylor Phinney for the sprint.

Another great ride was Ben King of the US. In his debut ride at the elite world championships, King worked with the Germans and Brits in the chase. Just 23, King is part of an American youth movement still gaining a place with the Pro Tour riders. King’s boyish looks seemed to hardly help as initially the Germans seemed to be asking him to stay out of their way. But King persisted brilliantly at the front for several laps, at one point over cooking a turn and putting a foot down. I can only fathom how a crash at the front would have been detrimental to his career.

Thereafter the race became a desperate series of attacks with stars: Johan Van Sumeran of Belgium went off and caught the survivors of the break. But British team continued to churn faster and faster, ultimately producing one of the fastest worlds in history, with an average speed over 46 kmh (about 27 mph). Only Cipollini’s Squadra Azzuri at Zolder went faster.

At one point, Nicki Sorensen of Denmark fired off the front. I delivered a Cosellesque "NOW COMES DENMARK! NOW COMES DENMARK! NO COMES DENMARK!" And the place went apeshit, with Peter picking up off that in Danish. The audible roar shook the place.

But the Dane would be retrieved. Still the host country would finish with five guys on the first page of the results, a stunning but overlooked achievement.

Thomas Voekler fired off the front to drive a three-rider break that produced great applause. The French had gone with every move, but that would be the last move.

The British retrieved Voekler, who even went solo before surrender, and started the setup for Mark Cavendish.

They were nothing but fantastic, holding Cavendish at 20th position for five hours. But in the final 3 km they curiously surrendered the front. Australia swarmed on the right; Germany punched through on the left. And suddenly Farrar appeared on the wheel of Phinney! And then Fabian Cancellara appeared.

But this would only be a flourish of the matador’s cape. As they turned to face 800 meters uphill to the finish, Cavendish dismissed the train and got on the back of a motor bike, just one rider, Geraint Thomas.

By the time they leapt off the saddles, the front of the field had no British jerseys for the first time all day. But as the bunch stretched apart, doors started to open on the right side and Cavendish punched through and drove to the line. On the far left of the field, however, rode Andre Greipel of Germany who forced photographers to make a huge gamble on Cav. The Brit paid off. Holding of Matt Goss of Australia and Greipel, who won bronze in a photo finish with Cancellara.

For Great Britain, this would be the first gold medal in the men's road race since the late Tommy Simpson did it 46 years earlier. The entire country lead the medal count with six medals. The US was shut out.

And then done. Really done. I knocked out the awards ceremony with Peter. Received some truly kind comments from people, swapped a few business cards, and moved towards the booth to retrieve my bag.

Please read the race reports elsewhere for more details. Those guys do a good job.

The sheer size of the crowd then overwhelmed me. Despite having all access badges, I could not move in the road and had to go outside the fences and climb back in to get to my booth to gather my things.

This event was like a massive air mattress slowly deflating.

After debriefing and bidding farewell to Peter Piil, I gathered my things and a beer and looked for my ride…..Uhhhhh……

I went from being the toast of the event to being absolutely orphaned.

Finally I just hopped an event van and went to the press center, where I found Philippe. We made the drive back to the hotel for that vacuous lobby procession that follows every event of such a magnitude.

There would be a drink with Peter V. (I don’t dare misspell his last name here on the fly to get this done) and a Belgian agent for television and riders. There were handshakes all around but I stayed in for dinner….again alone.

Crossing the lobby, however, a pile of British folks detained me for drinks. Conversing in English was fun. And only at the tale end of the discussion did they point out Mark Cavendish’s mother sitting at the end of the group. Turns out I was in the epi-center the world according to Cav, whom they had followed and supported since his days as a junior.

These encounters at this event never seem to end. Fantastic.

Good night Copenhagen.

Thanks for reading.

Dinner with the Piil Family

Let me start with apologies. I don’t mean any disrespect in rushing my reports on the Saturday events. My schedule became crowded with obligations and I could not sit and write as I had hoped.

Let me follow up with a comment on modesty. I do not fall for the fanfare of Mario Cipollini for his accomplishments, although he earned every degree of them. What has stunned me is the humility of cycling compared to the bullshit braggadocio of crappy American athletes – high school football players who win things like state titles only to poop-the-bed of real professional athletic tests at the top level. I don’t begrudge them for that, but I tire of cycling heroes who do things such as win a stage in the Tour de France and never consider themselves worthy of much praise.

And yet here I encounter such people who have done such things yet feel as if they have accomplished nothing……..This is sad. I’ll detail this later.

This day would end with a fantastic family dinner with my new best friend from Denmark, Peter Piil. He’s my announcing colleague. Super professional and proficient in Spanish, Danish, German, and history and art and sport and travel….We’re practically soul mates.

I’ll fill you in later on meeting Paul, his 80-year-old father in law who continues to ride 12 km each way every day and remains sharp as tack and thin as a rail. The entire family comes and goes by bicycle.

Americans cannot fathom this. As people wish to leave, they do so individually. It’s really, dare I say, an American concept. But in America people are stranded by the car in which they are attached. Everybody at this table – and we had perhaps 10 people – could go in and out of the dinner party as needed because most were traveling by foot or by bike. We sat on the ninth floor of this apartment, with all of Copenhagen beneath us, smearing fois gras on toast, devouring roast beef, and enjoying fresh melon. I got an overview of Danish history – from 800 AD to World War II – and a great deal of conversation, which I dearly craved. He is not just a wonderful announcer, but a TV personality in the making who wants to avoid the hype.

He is complimenting me incessantly about how I have “inspired” him. But after discussion I learn as a television reporter Peter has done the Olympics several times, W

We had finished the day with the junior men and the elite women’s road race. The junior men’s event would see a remarkable finish with Pierre Henri Lecuisinier – I know, sounds like expensive kitchen equipment, pounding away in a late move and outlasting Martin DeGrave of Belgium and Steven Lammertink of the Netherlands.

And then we had the women’s event, an exercise in patience. This would go from being one of the cruelest slow races to one of the most savage finishes I’ve witnessed in decades of watching women’s cycling.

This thing started so poorly I had to walk around to get oxygen. This was curb-to-curb rolling about, with Judith Arndt riding dead-freaking-last for the first 80 km. I could not feel anything but pity for Emma Pooley of Great Britain, the only one to animate the event with attacks early on. But Arndt insulted her by remaining last. When I explained the term “DFL” to the Malaysian official she laughed for about 20 minutes.

Humor is in short supply in Malaysia.

After six of the dullest laps of racing ever witnessed, the attacks began. Arndt advanced. Linda Villumsen, a Danish native riding for New Zealand, tore off the front and sounded alarms. All the favorites put out the fire and then Clara Hughes of Canada countered. She opened up a massive gap quickly and held a 30-second margin with one lap to go. Farther back there would be crashes that took Evelyn Stevens out of the contest. Then came wave upon wave of leadout trains. With just two kilometers left they collected the brave Canadian. And only in the final turn, with 600 meters to go, did the Italians appear with 2010 champion Giorgia Bronzini in tow. They fired uphill to the line and put Bronzini perfectly in place to outsprint Marianne Vos of the Netherlands and Ina Teutenberg of Germany. The result nearly matched 2010, with Vos scoring her fourth consecutive silver medal in the event.

From there I headed back with Philippe to the press office and sat around with a bunch of friendly French guys. Up walks Sean Kelly, speaking perfect French with an Irish brogue (strange, eh?). Next to me is Charly Mottet, who works as a technical delegate for the UCI. And we drive back with Philippe Chevalier. I would later learn in another drive with him that he was a rider but “not a champion”…..And then he notes that he rode with Greg LeMond for Cyrile Guimard’s Renault-Gitane team. Afterwards I learn he won a stage in the Tour de France, but he modestly describes himself as “not a champion.”

Eeeesh…. The humility of it all.

I arrive to the hotel to find Peter. He drives me across town to his in-law’s apartment. En route I learn that in Denmark cars are taxed at 180 percent of their value. But as a result of that the prices of cars are so low that people will travel to Denmark, purchase a car, and ship it home at a huge savings. People that do own cars own tiny ones.

We arrive at the apartment and use an elevator that is no larger than a phone booth to get to the ninth floor. Two average Americans could not fit in this thing.

We arrive to this splendidly compact home that overlooks Copenhagen at night. There is a table set for 10. This would be the only meal I shared with another person the entire time in Copenhagen. Announcing for a straight week requires a lot of quiet time alone. That and I don’t know anybody, so the dinner invitations do not come to me.

But I adored this family as they splashed between Danish and English for their guest.

I had no idea what to expect for food. We started with a loaf of fois gras and toast and jam. This was followed by cole slaw and roast beef and potatoes. We finished with fresh melon.

Quietly at the end of the table sat Paul. We had wine; he had good Danish beer.

Peter engaged me in a Reader’s Digest edition of Danish history, which is first written in 800 AD. The Romans never got close to these people and they did a lot of ass kicking over the years. These are the folks that put the Saxon into the Anglo-Saxon. Only then did they integrate our alphabet into theirs.

But in 1940 the Nazi’s swept in and occupied them on their way to Norway and Viktor Quisling’s attempt to match Hitler in both politics and haircut.

Paul was 10 years old then. He can recall assorted horrors of the war, notably when the Allies screwed up a bombing and destroyed a school.

The cool thing about Danish Resistance is how it involved bicycles. Every day the King of Denmark would ride about on horseback. This promenade became a daily declaration of Danish sovereignty. The citizens would escort him on bicycle. Each day became this massive bicycle celebration.

Peter and I hit if off fantastically and I dearly hope to return the favor when he and his wife, Charlotte, return to the US.

The only concern I had that night was stretching my voice the night before the elite men’s race. He drove me home in his compact Fiat through light drizzle, pointing out assorted landmarks.

I got into bed before the biggest day of my announcing career.

Thanks for reading. Two more dispatches after this!

Copenhagen Road Race 1

The Eritean Express and the Beauty of the World Championships

So today would be the first day of road races in Copenhagen with the junior women and under-23 men. I feel like I’m running a grand Quidditch match at Hogwarts. We have to read names that are Malaysian, Vietnamese, Dutch, Russian, Latvian, Greek and Eritrean.

I love it. I love different language. I love different culture. I love the world.

To quote Joe Strummer: “I’m so bored with the U.S.A.”

After a night of bad Richard Gere movies that ran too long and Skype to home that ran too short, I awoke to an alarm. For me this is rare. I have this weird knack for waking up about five minutes prior to an alarm actually sounding.

I crave the day I sleep in, not because my schedule allows but because my body allows. I’m kind of a stressed person, I suppose.

But I nearly hit a button which would have led to me oversleeping ….. That would have been bad. I love this gig. I actually like stumbling through French. But I’m still somewhat of an outsider. People in this organization are kind to me, if not downright affectionate. But they are also equally stressed and I’m trying not to cause them additional stress. I do not get invited out; I do not get pulled over to tables; I do my job…and quite well, thank you. But I spend my nights alone in a hotel room writing this stuff.

Copenhagen sounds exotic, I know, but I’m not on vacation. I spend time researching riders. Do you know how futile it can be to find info on junior cyclists? And the Under-23 riders are just as tough. Guess what I did today before the U23 race? I spotted a French rider’s bike during the sign-in ceremony and snapped a photo of the stem.

Now most of you are thinking this thing had a Garmin or a Power-Tap or some other ridiculous device. No, this thing had the Rosetta Stone of the race. The rider had the list of numbers to watch taped to the stem.

Look, I got to watch guys such as Baden Cooke and Tom Boonen race as Under-23s. That’s on top of several great American and Canadian stars in the making. But in the moment of seeing them we are all like “Who?”

The U23 race is where to get the autographs before the lines get long. This is where announcers build up their mental data banks.

But this guy’s list gave me the info on who to watch.

The World Championships is ALL about protocol and pageantry; and I’m all about rock ‘n’ roll….So maybe it’s a bad fit. But I’m playing by their rules. And I learn a lot.

The day starts at breakfast with everybody, the officials, the UCI staff, the dignitaries, etc. busting down the door for the hotel breakfast. Then it’s off to the races held 30 km to the north of Copenhagen. I drive with Philippe of the UCI, a great guy who four years ago spoke no English but today can carry a conversation with me. My French is about 20 percent of his English…. We get along great. But like all my friendships here they are on wobbly stilts of language. English to French; English to Dutch; English to Flemish; English to Danish.

English is not superior, but it is the global default. It’s the second language of nearly every culture on the planet.

We arrive in car lathered in UCI stickers and get access everywhere; this is a far cry from 1980 and showing up with Dave Cox and Billy Rudnick in a VW Beetle with five bikes and no hotel room. That is where my cycling odyssey began 30 years back.

I unload, find my way to Lars the sound guy, get a microphone, and meet up with Peter. Then starts the pageantry.

The junior women must sign in, go to have their bikes inspected, and then assemble by nation. They are wonderful athletes but the sheer magnitude of the World-Holy-Crap-Championships flusters all. They stumble with cleats and wheels and the sheer spectacle of it all.

Peter Piil, a super announcer, rocks the sign-in next to me, calling each name. Then we dash to the start line with a French guy whispering in my ear to speed it up, to have all the riders assembled with five minutes to start, to interview that dignitary with the flag in and clear the media and be on that side of the fence or the other and I do it all with a smile to show that I am not nearly as stressed out as I truly am.

The poor junior women feel the same stress.

We get them to the line at 9:24.50 and start them at 09:30.00. I pride myself on that like a pilot.

These poor ladies roll about a kilometer and then smash into the fences, with a New Zealand rider down next to Jessica Allen of Australia, who won the world championships three days earlier. Game over. Winner gets a trip to a Danish hospital.

Racing just 70 km these women race brilliantly despite a few more crashes. This boils down to a bunch sprint with Lucy Garner winning to get Great Britain its fourth medal. Jessy Druyts breaks the drought for Belgium with a silver. And the Danes get their fourth medal with Christina Siggaard winning the bronze.

I took great joy in watching Thi That Nguyen of Vietnam (pronounced Tee-TAT Gee- YEN) attack solo and then ride to a solid finish. Kids from Asia and Africa and South America who may never get to some coveted European club can earn their berth on the start line here. And then they can prove their worth and valor by attacking as she did or by simply finishing with the bunch.

After a short break we start the U23 race, a 168 km race; 12 laps on a 14 km loop. There is the same drill with the sign-in ceremony and then the same French guy whispering in my ear that we need to start on time and “der are too times as many ridoors in these race.”

Peter and I pound out the procedure. The ceremonial starters would be Michael Plant, VP of the Atlanta Braves and a member of the UCI Management Committee (a great guy) and Tom Lund, president of the Danish Cycling Federation and the Cycle City Copenhagen program (And also a great guy). I interview Mike in English; Peter interviews Tom in Danish. We start on time.

The race unfurls in a curiously negative fashion. Although Brazil has just two guys in the race they both go up the road in separate two-rider breakaways. They are doomed.

With three laps to go they are finally recovered and a counter attack is launched. After assorted skirmishes a breakaway forms with riders from Denmark, Italy, South Africa, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, and Eritrea.

…..Upon reading this a sound of a needle scratching a record should run across your brain. Eritrea?

Do you mean war-torn, impoverished, African hell-hole of a nation, Eritrea? Yes. Eritrea has become a cycling-crazed country. They had dozens of flag waving fans at the finish line. I spotted them and tried to give them a sporting experience like never before.

They started three riders, two of which would hang in the field, one of which would end up sideways in the feed zone, but one of which Netnael Berhane, rode in mythical terms that only Homer could describe. The kid crossed a gap to a breakaway and went right to the front to take his pulls. And he never missed a pull.

As announcers we both played this up. And the Eritrean fans went nuts, banging on signs, waving flags, and dancing.

Sure, Australia and Belgium and Italy would organize the chase and retrieve this break.

But with less than one lap to go, when they were caught, Berhane was the last one to surrender the break. We love that the Spartans fought the Persians to the death. We admire the 54th Massachusetts for charging into the cannons at Fort Wagner. And we revel in Cool Hand Luke defying all the authority. But this kid from Eritrea is what makes the UCI and the Worlds a great thing.

The heavily favored Australians took control of the race with newly crowned TT champ Luke Durbridge pounding to the front to set up their ace, Michael Hepburn, for the win. But they found themselves stranded on the front. The Italians swarmed from the left; the Belgians swarmed on the right; and they still had 800 meters to go. They were characters in Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, left with an impossible task.

And as the bunch swarmed to the front and made a right turn to charge uphill to the finish, Berhane of Eritrea dug in and stayed right in the wedge. Amazing.

Just like in the junior women’s race, all the cannons fired too early. The French emerged on the front with not one but two strong riders; the British found a door and pushed through. As Italy and Belgium faded, the French surged forward to finish 1-2. And the Brits put on a late charge to score their sixth medal of week.

Oh, the Americans? They did not place a rider in a single breakaway and only managed to get Jacob Raathe in 81st place. Not a single medal yet this week for America. They rode well but fell short when it counted.

And the so-called Rosetta Stone taped to the French guy’s stem? Not one of the 34 numbers listed on his stem of the “Riders to Watch” made the podium. And only one made the top 10.

These riders all spent way too much time looking at each other. They would attack, stop, and look back. I stated on the speakers during the race, Merckx, Kelly, Maertens, Hinault….those guys never looked any where but straight ahead when they attacked.

And how about the French guy who had those numbers taped to the stem? He rode to second place. As Ulysses S. Grant said in 1864 about Robert E. Lee, “stop thinking about what he is going to do to you and start thinking about what you’re going to do to him.”

The Eritrean guy got 28th. Frankly, he deserves a pro contract.

Thanks for reading. More to come.