What a moment it was. It is mighty rare that you'll see me on the boards anymore, and I don't just mean the velodrome, I mean the theatrical boards, but last Thursday was one of those times.
Just to the left you can see me shoulder-checking a blocked Pee Wee Herman in the opening scene of the Big Adventure, where P. W. fantasizes about winning a stage of the Tour de France on his 50 lb red cruiser. To my right are Cris and John, displaying their cyclo-cross racing abilities to a packed house at the Bloor Cinema.
This Rocky Horror Picture Show-style screening raised well-nigh $14 000 for the new Toronto Cyclists Union and its new sister magazine, Dandy Horse. I guess my 'Espa~na' jersey was a bit wrong - nobody is wearing long sleeves in the movie, just Italia jersies. Nobody has a beard either...
Bike Month is in full swing here in Toronto, and things are busy.
Twenty-four hours after playing in Pee Wee at 7 and 9:30, I was down at the Toronto Criterium @ St Lawrence Market, freezing my tuchus off marshalling in Turn One with a whistle in my mouth and a flag in my hand. It made for a front row seat for a terrific barrier crash that brought down a good four racers, the first of which got squared by his bike. Five riders managed to crash in the neutral lap. What the hell was going on? Perhaps it was those Zipp wheels on offer for the winner of the open Masters race, they just brought these guys over the edge.
In one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a bike race - no wait, make that the most stupid - three crashees decided to run carrying their bikes from the bottom of Scott Street back towards the start/finish to get their free lap, taking the inside of Turn One to get there. Of course the lead idiot in this footrace to nowhere came within an ace of causing a truly disastrous crash of epic proportions. He got away with this exercise in selfish idiosy extraordinaire - I wanted the paid duty cops to arrest him on the spot but they weren't taking orders from me. In fact they weren't doing much of anything for the first thirty minutes as the crowds of angry commuters swelled, except pulling in $70/hour by standing around.
Luckily some sort of sanity prevailed and a) no racer got maimed for life and b) no mob surged the barriers in search of their commute homeward, and c) thousands of the curious turned out to watch the races. And it didn't even pour rain till well after the whole event was over.
Symmetrics dominated the main race as predicted getting four out of the top five places (1st = new Cervelo for Pinfold, plus Bell won the bunch sprint, Andrew Randell was right there as well...). It all made for super-exciting criterium racing. Friday night bike racing returns to Hogtown!
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