USA Cycling Olympic Development Academy
I was prepared to dislike Rob DeMartini, the President/CEO of USA Cycling. This foreboding arose from an incident that occurred almost exactly a year ago when, out of the blue, I received a phone call from the Feds saying that that the newly crowned DeMartini was coming to Manhattan and would I meet with him? Accepting, I endured a chorus of catcalls and a particularly vehement, “oh, honey!” from in-the-know cycling friends and family; after all, when I’d finally closed my race promotion company in 2017, after gifting the last race property to Laura Reppert, my daughter solemnly handed me a beautiful edition of Don Quixote saying, “Daddy, this was you…” I still believe that she meant it as a compliment, I really do.
Of course, after preparing all weekend for the meeting with my ideas on where American cycling had gone wrong and how to fix it, I never heard back and that cracked-open door was firmly and permanently shut.
But then, about 10-days ago, I received an email from Bill Humphries asking if I’d join a Zoom call for a discussion with DeMartini and Elite Athletes Head Jim Miller – when an OG like Bill sounds the call, one is obliged to respond. There were about 20 of us on the Zoom, I won’t of course say who or quote anything from them as it was a private call, not a media event, and to do so would be unprofessional not to mention unethical, but I can give my impressions and some general context.
DeMartini, in fact, deeply impressed me with his humility, his acknowledgment that he still has everything to learn about our sport, and most importantly, his self-characterization as a “community builder”. This was the first time, since the big money rode Lance’s coattails into control of USAC, that someone in a position of power had actually asked me a question. Mind you, the cynic in me understood that USAC had received enormous blowback from the clumsy launch of their new Olympic Development Academy (aimed at 16-year old’s – cycling’s becoming like the fashion world where the top models are ever-younger ) and that the Zoom call was designed to try and firm up support for it.
The outrage over the Academy erupted from the $10,500 per semester (what in the hell is a semester in cycling one might logically ask) participation cost, which gave rise to fears that National Team spots, like Ambassadorships, were for sale. That is not at all the case but more on the specifics later. The raw, deeply unpleasant fact is that today, pay-for-play in elite sports is pretty much the American way. Our National Team program has, unfortunately, been based on that of USA Skiing, targeting kids whose parents have enough income to allow them to frolic in the resort areas of Colorado and Utah, whether on boards or bicycles, then able then fly off to Europe for competitions. The following two articles provide some insight (to my Conservative friends, the Atlantic article may enrage you, but skip past the sermonizing and look at the numbers, they don’t lie).
https://skiracing.com/the-method-behind-the-madness-of-u.../
https://www.theatlantic.com/.../income-inequality.../574975/
I am, in fact, fully supportive of the USA Cycling initiative, despite that it goes completely against everything I believe in regarding how cycling should be structured and to whom it should be available. I support it because we are stuck in the current situation, domestic racing is collapsing, USA Cycling must be on life-support as are all organizations that are event-based, and we’ve got to, somehow, keep getting kids into the pipeline until a better way can be created. The villain in all of this is the Olympic system, but that’s the subject for another article.
A few years ago a friend, David Greenberg, introduced me to a young boy from the Bronx named Tenzing Tseten, a Tibetan born in Darjeeling, who spent his formative years well above 6,500 feet of altitude. He was basically Nairo Quintana, completely coachable, possessing an iron-clad honorable character and, which was clear as day, blessed with a crazy VO2 Max. Fast sprinter too. They would have absolutely lost their minds over him in Colorado Springs. But at that time there was nowhere for him to go, the jump was too great as there’s no structure in the USA (The terrible failure of the past 20-years) and he’s now lost to the sport. I absolutely would have found the money to send him to the Academy. This is the function of the Academy: a program to give kids, outside of the National Team and normal paths of entry to the elite level, a chance to both get top training and to be seen by the coaches. They have a considerable scholarship program too, which was somehow ignored by the media reports.
After voicing that view on the Academy I rhetorically asked the meeting why the French have not won the Tour in 35-years: the fact is that their future Tour winners, like their current FIFA World Cup Champions, are to be found in the Banlieues and HLM’s – or housing projects – that surround their cities and towns. The young people with limited futures who find a pathway out through soccer and should do through cycling. But French cycling won’t tap that motherlode of angry talent to their decades-long detriment. We are doing the same, our vision for cycling has been astoundingly “small ball”. I firmly believe that cycling has a moral obligation to act as a pathway for less-that-privileged kids, as it has for the past 140-years, a moral obligation that if implemented in an organized manner would give our sport almost unimaginable returns, not just in champions, but in providing untold thousands of kids a taste of a different life, a taste of the freedoms that life on a bicycle – aka the “Freedom Machine” after all - can bring.
Rob DeMartini does not need this job; for the former head of a four-billion-dollar company this current position qualifies as social work and I find it a miracle that someone of his qualities was willing to take the job. It is clear, however, that he needs different advice and viewpoints than he’s been getting so far – his initial overview omitted any mention of domestic racing (note: I don’t consider Tour of California a domestic race, Somerville and Redlands are domestic races) which follows sentiments expressed by people such as Jonathon Vaughters and others in the industry: a dismissive and often sneeringly contemptuous attitude towards anything not WorldTour related. The good and refreshing news is that DeMartini has a most open mind and is actively reaching out to the community for different perspectives. We all need to give him a chance to figure this out. It’s going to take at least a decade to reverse what has happened in the previous two and he’s the man with the goods to set that change in motion. So keep the conversation and ideas coming but please, don’t chase him away.