"You may as well call us Team Money."

McLane Bicycle Classic March 16, 2004

By Agnetti Sheldrake

Hhhmmmm…who said cyclists were humble.

Why should we be? We deserve recognition, respect, sex, rock stardom, little poodles with American bandanas and Gucci booties. Yeah, and trading cards and tanning beds and and and… leather pants and capes; it all comes rushing to the head like the initial stroke of a sprint, full of commitment and completely void of thought. Looking inside the head of a cyclist is like fracturing a carnival sky with the hands of an innocent child and scattering the pieces in waving strokes of glory, for the cyclist is a legend in his own mind.

This is the eternal building block for the psyche of the sport. This trend seemed to follow our young teams' launch into the odyssey of the sport, and Team TIAA-CREF's first race: the McLane Pacific Cycling Classic. When we first got to the Ho Jo Inn, we were greeted by a half naked pale figure.
"Who are you", he said; lip sturdy, legs oily, ribs protruding.
"Who are you", I say.
"Who are you", he says again.
After this productive interaction of egotism, he finally broke down with a concrete answer: "I'm ******* of Team *******. You may as well call us Team Money."
"Oh yeah, why's that?" I say.
"Because we have the ex-baby Giro champion, and we have two DVD players in our van."
Still, he's straight-faced and staring deep into my cranium. If he was even a sprig more focused on anything other than his bloated mask of sport he probably could have read my thoughts with that stare, but who needs to think when you're a rock star, right?
My lip quivers with hesitation and I ask "does that help you ride faster?"
"Well, well, it's more comfortable."

Anyone close to the pinnacle of this sport knows that comfort is not necessarily advantageous, and is usually degrading to the fight or flight mechanisms of insecurity that fuel that demonic fire of fury and primal rotation of skin-wound pistons. So, needless to say we didn't let Team Money sour our innocent taste buds. Our teeth were still sweating; we wanted to show that 20 year olds aren't just post-puberty hormone junkies, we are beautifully honed specimens, ready to throw head butts at Gordo or Lucio or Borto-lami or Johnny Salami or Team Money... So we suit up, plaster our faces, give each other a little schtoink in the groin to appropriate the manliness, and head off.

We can barely contain ourselves. "Yea, we're gonna take Sayers to the gutter." "We're gonna sprint squad this beast." "Who's ready to destroy?" These are moments of ecstatic youth, togetherness, complete and holiness, comfortable in the laurels of our eccentric culture. This is who we are and what we live for. It could all be taken away by the drowsy eyelids of a scruffy, chaw-master truck driver, but for now we are free and heading to the unperverted glory in the natural arena of the criterium. The air is sticky and humid. It finds our pores with ease and surfaces in layers of our skin as we gradually open to the nervous energy, and they both fill us as time slowly creeps and the awaited start approaches. The more we tool around the outskirts of the race the more out of our element we feel. The faster a cyclist goes, the more he feels comfortable in his skin, for speed is the catalyst for balance, and our minds are wobbly until the gun strikes.

The big hitters are called to the front and the crowd is engaged. Hairs are raising and goose-pimples are forming with the blood that will soon pump through our bodies in voracious, exhausted spurts. After the stars are announced, the residual hope clutters to the line, bumping and electrified.

The gun smokes and we're off. The first two laps make me wish I hadn't eaten baklava an hour before the race, as every team is driven to get the first and second lap primes. The race never settles though, and my comfort theory proves true. I'm throttling on the tip of my saddle trying to sift through clusters of riders while negotiating the serpentine nature of the course. I approach the Italians on team Monex and salute them, "Porco dio e proprio un casino eh?" "Si e vero", he proclaims and drifts to the inside of the chicane, missing the wheel in front of him by inches. Every two laps I hear grinding metal, screeches, yelping, yodelling. It sounds like a load of squirrels thrown into a dumpster full of broken glass and burning newspaper. Barely any breaks go off, and Health Net seems to have a stronghold on the race. Jelly Belly makes an effort to overthrow their train, but Gord and Sayers are too drilled, and Fraser wins.

Nathan Mitchell and I move our way to the front and finish off with two top thirties, not quite to the standards we aspired to, but not too bad for a couple nineteen year-olds. The sprint squad is still hungry, groping our ambition with red teeth, massaging our eyes with hotel-room antics to compensate for cross-eyed manoeuvres during the race. Now we're off to Pomona, and visionary team manager Ben Turner planned a little field trip through Yosemite. You may as well call us team …