This week while working a particularly slow open house a one of our customers in southeastern New Jersey, the highlight was a giant canola that one of the reps from Long Island brought for all to enjoy.
Between customers I spent some time talking with a friend who shares the love of riding motorcycles. The conversation darted between motorcycles and family and John shared that his oldest son was racing bicycles for the University of Pennsylvania. John’s son Sean was a professional ballet dancer; in fact he left high school early to join a professional ballet company. Some years later Sean met back up with a high school sweetheart and they got married and now both attend Penn. Sean joined the bicycle team 2 years ago. John said there was a race this weekend close to where I live and he was going to go watch Sean race on Saturday.
Later that night I did a little searching on the internet for the ECCC and also checked Velo News; on Velo News I found Sean had written a race report of an earlier ECCC race. The weekend race consisted of three events an individual time trial (ITT), a criterium (crit) and a road race. The ITT was being held at Mercer County Park on Saturday morning and conflicted with my plans for my own bicycle ride; the road race was being held on Sunday in Skillman and conflicted with my Polar Bear motorcycle ride; but the Crit was being held at Caldwalder Park and fit nicely into my schedule.
Saturday morning was cold and windy, at least when compared to last weekend; but I was able to bet 35 miles on the bicycle out of Cranbury. My oldest son Matt, visiting with his girlfriend Elizabeth from Alexandria, and I headed over to Caldwalder Park to meet John.
When we arrived a woman’s race was in progress, we found John and he introduced us to Sean. Sean’s race, the men’s A was the last race scheduled for the day. We settled in to watch the other races. The course was around a mile and with the topography you could only see a small portion of the track at any one spot. We stood near the start/finish line. During the last lap of the men’s B race there was an accident just down the hill (there was a hill leading up to the finish line). It was taking forever to clear the course and we walked down to see what happened. A rider, jockeying for position, was forced off course and hit a curb head on. The picture below, pardon my lame photographic skills, doesn’t really show the giant indentation on his front rim. The rider was ejected over the bars and hit a metal post head on. Fortunately after much initial pain he seemed to be ok but was taken to the hospital to be checked out.
The men’s’ A race started and Sean was mid-pack as he passed us each lap. About lap 3-4 we didn’t see Sean go by and work spread of an accident at the bottom of a downhill section. John rushed over to check out what had happened and returned shortly with news that Sean had indeed run into two riders that had fallen in front of him; he had crashed and had a flat tire. Sean quickly replaced the front wheel and rejoined the field. Rules allow riders to do this outside of the final 5 laps. As Sean circulated each lap, the race is 40 minutes; he seemed to just be riding along and smiled at us each lap. With 3 laps to go a rider broke away and seemed to be able to stay about 3 seconds in front of the pack behind him. They rang the bell for one lap to go, the lead rider was still in front and Sean was buried mid-pack. As we watched the pack come up the hill for the finish, the group had caught the lead rider and passed him; Sean was sprinting at the front and finished first by a wheel. What a finish! A guess that explosive strength required for ballet translates to explosive power to sprint to the finish of a bicycle race.
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