Roller Derby!

Here’s the status report after two nights of racing in Zurich. Actually, I’ll take it from the top leaving Nice last Thursday. At first the trip got off to a rocky start at the bus station when a pigeon lurking in the ceiling catacombs shat on my head. It was a pretty perfect shot and I can only imagine the high-fives he would receive later. But actually it turned out that it was lucky shit because we got business class upgrades, our bikes flew free, we gorged ourselves on grapefruit juice and chocolate croissants in the business class lounge before the flight, and we got two first-row aisle seats.

The first night we stayed with one of my dad’s childhood friend who moved to Zurich after the 1956 Hungarian revolution. It took a bit of trial and error on the S-bahn to make our way there, but it was really nice staying with them, hearing their stories, being treated to meals, etc. The next day was our first night of racing, and things were a little rough around the edges for us. Dan came down really hard for our first exchange and almost took out the whole field, I rode down on the apron to avoid him then he went underneath an exchange. Nice. Then a few laps later after throwing Dan in I was riding relief in the pole lane and was just about to look over my shoulder to move up track when two guys started yelling “Whoa! Whoa!” then simultaneously plowed into me from behind. I’m not really sure what happened but my guess is they were trailed off the back of the group, weren’t watching, started their exchange, then one guy went under and the other went over. They both hit me though and we all went down. I wasn’t hurt much but both my wheels took quite a hit and my frame was dented, but everything held up surprisingly well. And really that’s fine, the other guy’s SRM was swinging from his bike like a metronome and he hobbled off the track to the medical tent so he was much worse for wear.

I got back in the race and the rest of the night was pretty much just damage control. The racing was super aggressive but not very directed, so guys were just all over the place and there were quite a few more crashes. I think at the end of the night about half the teams had hit the deck at least once. We ended up losing a lap as a result of the crash, then lost another right at the end from a missed exchange and finished low-mid pack.

After our very rough opening night we were both much more focused last night and talked through some of the problems we had previously. I also decided to not take any chances and went ahead with the full-body shave just in case that’s what was holding me back. Again there were a ton of crashes including the leaders of the race going down and one of them ending up in surgery that night to fix a torn groin muscle. We learned at breakfast this morning that he’s now back home in Belgium, so that’s another team out. Towards the end of the race we attacked a few times to try to take back a lap and got about half a lap up one point before coming back right on the sprint lap. The Czech team made a nice move and took a solo lap to move into the lead, but then their first exchange back in the field they took themselves out and almost lost it at the end. They are still in the lead but one guy has been walking around with his arm in a sling since then so that can’t be good for the exchanges.

Tonight we’re both pretty excited to go for it, we’re feeling better every day and don’t have a GC spot to defend so the plan for now is to go for an early lap and try to win the stage. Since this race is scored like a normal 6-day rather than an omnium, we’re in no way a threat to the overall and there are no points on the line until the last 40 laps, so it would in theory be silly to chase us. And there’s been so much mayhem the last few days that hopefully people will be content to just let us roll.

OH, another pleasant surprise is my Danish friend from last year in Copenhagen is back. Keven called him “the white one” because he’s albino, Dan and I call him “the friendly ghost,” but somehow in a year he has neither let the grudge go nor come up with anything new to say so whenever we’re in front him he just starts barking “fucking Americans, get out of here!” He said the exact same thing last year and even socked Keven in the hip during one of our exchanges, which was his breaking point and once Keven started fighting back the dispute ended. Last year it was unpleasant but this year it’s just funny, especially because we simply smile and greet him and he won’t so much as make eye contact.

And so continues the high-school drama of the UIV Cup. Maybe in the next post I’ll talk about the subtle hierarchies and social jostling in the post-race cafeteria.