Visiting America's Dairyland

Back in 2018, I had visited Wisconsin for an anti-doping assignment, and quite frankly, I pretty much had forgotten about it. Crazy, isn't it? I should have looked through the Chronicles before my recent trip to the Madison area so that I would not have told my hosts that this was my first time to visit the state. Pretty embarrassing, especially when, in retrospect, I had lots of fun back then in this beautiful corner of America. 

Oh well, I suppose one can chalk it all up to travel overload. I am sure that my trip to Englewood Grass Farm just outside of Fall River will stay with me for a long, long time as it was a truly memorable race, quite different from pretty much all UCI races that I have worked over the years. At the center of it all is the Agnew family who not only own the many acres of pasture land and wooded hills but who have created a mountain bike paradise for themselves and others.

The Agnews have lived for generations in this part of Wisconsin, a little more than half an hour north-east of Madison. I spent the first two nights at the patriarch's family home, surrounded by fields that old man Tom still works on a daily basis. His gregarious (and IPA-loving) wife, Megs, had come to the MSN airport to pick up me and my old friend Jared, who hails from the D.C. area; he was the USAC-appointed race secretary, and I was the second-in-command to our Canadian UCI chief, Geordie. Two regional commissaires, Marla and Alan, rounded out our officiating team, while my Turkish friend Ugur, who lives in Minneapolis, served as the technical director and close confidant of race director Ben, Tom and Megs' son and operator of Englewood Grass Farm.

Megs simply had to take Jared and me to The Dump

Pint and Pounder at Karben4. Thanks, Megs!

Ben used to race motocross, but an accident stopped some of his motorized aspirations instead he started to ride mountain bikes on the land on which he raises grass-fed cattle. Over time he developed trails, and his now 17-year-old-son, Tommy, took to the sport with a vengeance. As it turned out, Tommy was able to use his homecourt advantage in the race weekend's UCI Junior XCO event, beating the current Canadian Junior Champion and UCI's top-ranked 17-18 Junior. Both grandparents and parents were proud and elated!

Young Tommy after the short-track, a day before winning the XCO

Ugur and Jared massaging the call-ups

On Friday and Saturday, UCI-inscribed short-track and cross-country races were the marquee events, with numerous USAC categories also on the schedule, attracting around 300 racers altogether. On Sunday, even more riders (many of them truly grassroots) showed up for the WORS portion of the weekend—the Trek-sponsored Wisconsin Off-Road Series. Sunday's officiating was in Alan's hands, and I had time to observe the race from several different vantage points on the course while also lending my hand to various race-related volunteer chores. In return, there were as many delicious grass-fed beef burgers as I wanted!

No, even I know that this is not a Black Angus

After my first two nights in Tom and Megs' house I had moved to a camper trailer that I shared with Jared. It was parked just steps from Ben and his wife, Kristi's, house that overlooks Englewood Grass Farm. The housing arrangements may not have been optimal, but the family connections and the communal meals were truly something special, and I hope to return next year for another edition of this UCI-calendar event. To top it all, for Sunday night's dinner, four generations of the Agnews were in the dining room.

My flight home on Monday showed once again the fragility of our aviation system where one delay can easily cascade into an extra night on the road. Instead of a simple hop from Madison to Dallas and then onward to Lubbock, I was rerouted halfway across the country to Phoenix where I spent the night in a Holiday Inn Express near the airport. On Tuesday morning I backtracked to DFW from where I finally left in the early evening hours to make it back to Lubbock, 24 hours behind schedule. So much for that glorious life on the road.

For the sake of completeness, I should also mention that the weekend before my trip to Wisconsin I had driven to Austin for our Texas Criterium State Championships. It was a typical road race—first day at Walnut Creek, the second day at the iconic Driveway—with little emotional involvement or interaction between riders and commissaires. (I do have to say that a few old racing friends made a special effort to say hi, which made the otherwise very work-intensive and matter-of-fact weekend so much more fun.)

Overall, it all came off fine, thanks to a good crew of officials who made my CR job easy, and I even had a chance to make a new friend, Jay, who works in the marketing department of Meanwhile Brewing, one of several new-for-me establishments that I have added to my list over the past few weeks. In all likelihood, this car trip to Austin will be my last long drive (816 miles!) to an event until the fall as the remainder of my upcoming assignments call for plane travel. Spring is officially over, and now the summer beckons. Stay tuned!

Jürgen