News and Race Reports for September 30

Ashes to Ashes


  The ashes of former world champion mountain biker Jason McRoy are to go
on tour with his team next season -- strapped to a friend's bike. The
23-year-old rider, from Washington, Tyne and Wear, and known on the circuit
as Racin' Jason, was killed in a motorbike accident this past August.


In Remembrance

A poem from Major Taylor for Fabio.

"To an Athlete Dying Young"
     by A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defeated challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strenghtless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.