This past winter I was watching the Super Bowl with some friends and there was only two things on my mind:
1. The intense upperbody pain that comes after spending the gratifiying earlier part of the day ice climbing in the Catskills.
2. How could I concentrate on the Super Bowl when I was more concerned with what was going on at the latest stop of the Super Pernod Prestige Cyclocross series over in Belgium?
Call me a sports fan nerd, but I've been a fan of world cyclocross racing since back in the late 80's. I was following the antics of guys like Tomas Frishneckt and Paul Curly as much as I was guys like Greg Lemond and Sean Kelly. Even today I'm a bigger fan of 'crossers like Sven Nys and Bart Wellens than Lance Armstrong or Jan Ullrich. I like to think of it as every race being as epic as Paris-Roubaix even if it's on some farmland in the back country of Belgium.
By virtue of my ownership of a cyclocross bike here in NYC and the fact that I don't race it, I admit to being a true cyclocross poser. But I do love the spectacle of the sport, the beauty of the machines, and the antics of the riders. The Super Bowl fans can keep thier big foam cheesehead hats and knockwurst, I'm all about gin and trombones.
So, anybody else here a cyclocross racing fan?