When Louisville, KY was selected as the host city for the World Cyclocross championships, I was excited. I had never attended a world championships in anything, and I bought tickets as soon as they went on sale.
I got the opportunity to volunteer and applied for a cushy job checking people's credentials. Little did I know I would be assigned to the Preatorian Guard, placed at the entrance to the inner sanctum of the UCI:
Now this might not look like much, but when I allowed some stray Ostragoth through, I heard about it:
I can now add a butt-chewing by none other than the UCI itself to my resume.
Good thing they didn't know about my Androgel.
After that no one got by without submitting to a cavity search:
The Dutch did well and take their cyclocross seriously. Here is one of their stars being interviewed:
The Belgians were also well represented:
I stood guard for three out of four races. However, I was right by the Big Board and saw most of the action:
The first race was the 17 and under men. Even at that age they were bunny-hopping the barriers. A Dutchman won, and a game Yank made a bold move for podium but came up short.
The women's elite was won by Olympian Mariana Voss. A pile up on the first lap took out 1/2 of the American team, including Georgia Gould. Katy Compton made a monster move and dropped everyone beside Voss for the silver.
The 23 and under was interesting, and I got to see the Move as it was right in front of me. A Duthman and Belgian were on each others wheel until they reached the pavement beginning the very last lap. The Belgian looked over his right shoulder. Unfortunately the Dutchman was on his left shoulder and kicked on the afterburners in a move that reminded me of Cavendish. You could see the Belgian's soul crushed, and the race was pretty much over at that point.
For the last race I finally got to leave my post for the starting line:
In this race the Belgians won first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. Ho hum.
No, it wasn't that lopsided.
I stood atop a very nasty and steep muddy hill, as it turns out, next to a very nice 50+ Belgian gent who knew everything about the sport.
Photos never quite capture the steepness:
Amazingly a Frenchman opened up a huge lead early on.
"One Frenchman against four Belgians?", my new friend said. "They are only playing with him".
Indeed. In what seemed distinctly sadistic, the Belgians slowly caught up with him, rode his wheel for a bit, and summarily shelled his frog ass out.
Nys took the lead and wouldn't surrender it:
Some other Belgian dude took second:
A third Begian, Pawlets, would have podiumed but his rear der exploded, again right in front of me. He was very noble about it. Good sports, these Belgians.
My Belgian bud was very complimentary. "Very European, this course. Wonderfully horrible weather. Just what we wanted. The worse the weather, the better Nys rides."
The entire American team stopped at the Belgian beer-flavored SnoCone machine at the top of the stairs and was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the race.