With drug scandals, the withdrawals of major sponsors and an unresolved ProTour battle, 2007 has been tough on cycling.

But despite the rocky year, USA Cycling CEO Steve Johnson says he sees reason for optimism when it comes to the health of the sport in this country.

“You have to look at it in two different ways,” Johnson said. “One is domestically and the other is international, primarily in Western Europe. In the U.S., the sport continues to grow. We have increasing interest in large multi-day races, like the tours of California, Georgia and Missouri. All of those are back and employing a new model that engages smaller communities in those states. The sport is getting traction here, while in Europe, there seems to be a bigger impact from scandal.”

In an end-of-the-year interview with VeloNews, Johnson said he’s not entirely certain why the scandals of 2007 and before haven’t had as much of an impact in the U.S., though he noted that Americans may see the problems as symptomatic of pro sports across the board, rather than a problem solely centered on cycling.

“Maybe (Americans) are generally more skeptical to begin with,” Johnson said. “There’s a problem in professional sport in general. It’s admittedly noisier around cycling, but that’s because this sport has drawn a line in the sand and does more testing and enforcement. There’s a willingness to take on the problem. People recognize that.”

Johnson said that despite waning interest in some quarters, cycling in the U.S. is reasonably healthy, a claim he says is backed up by continued growth in the number of licenses issued by the governing body in this country.

“Once again, they’re up,” Johnson said. “In terms of membership and in terms of revenue from membership, we’ve never been healthier. We’ve seen growth trends start in around 2001 and 2002 and they’ve continued. This year we had about 5 percent more members than we did in 2006.”

Johnson said USA Cycling issued around 62,000 licenses, roughly 42,000 road licenses and the remainder divided between mountain bike, coaches and officials’ memberships, with approximately 4500 riders holding both road and mountain bike licenses.

At the end of the 1990s the organization was faced with serious budget shortfalls, prompting program reductions and a 20 percent reduction in staff in 2000. The board sought help from retail and food industry executive Gerard Bisceglia, whose management experience was instrumental in returning the organization to a position of solvency. A few months after his appointment, Bisceglia further cut management staff and undertook an organization-wide review of revenues, expenditures and services.

Johnson said USAC’s financial problems are now a thing of the past.

“We worked through those several years ago,” he said. “Right now we’re on solid ground.”

The organization’s most recently published IRS 990 form would bear that out. In the 2005 document, USAC reported $7.8 million in revenues, expenses of $6.8 million and a fund balance of $3.3 million at the end of that reporting year.

That was also the last full year for which Bisceglia was responsible. He was fired in 2006, after an apparent dispute with board president Jim Ochowicz. Bisceglia filed a wrongful termination suit, alleging that he had been fired for raising questions about payments Ochowicz received from teams and promoters of events, including the now-defunct Zürich World Cup, in Switzerland.

The case has not been resolved, but both sides have agreed to remove the matter from the courts, allowing it to be settled in arbitration instead. Johnson said it would be inappropriate to comment on a case that has not yet been resolved.

A big move?
While Johnson said he is satisfied with the general state of the organization, he is certain to make at least one major change in the coming year — a decision regarding the location of the governing body’s permanent headquarters.

The organization is currently headquartered in an aging building at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. The building, which originally served as a hospital and later as offices for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is slated to be torn down at some point in the next two years.

Several communities, including Ogden, Utah, and Brownsville, Pennsylvania, have approached USAC with offers intended to lure USAC out of Colorado. Johnson declined to discuss specifics.

“Well, the one thing that is sure is that we’ll be moving,” Johnson said. “The one thing that is certain is that the building we currently occupy will be torn down in the not-too-distant future. We have to find a new facility. We have to find a new headquarters. Because of that, we took the opportunity to look around and explore other options, and those include relocation to a different community.”

Johnson said his primary goal is to use the move to put an end to USAC’s current landlord/tenant arrangement in which the governing body rents from the U.S. Olympic Committee, and emerge with a facility owned by the organization itself.

“At this point, we’re exploring our options, and that’s all I can say,” Johnson said. “We do have some solid offers and hope to make a decision in the near future. Right now, what’s on the table is really good for the organization. I’m looking for us to get into a home that we own and control our own destiny.”

Topping the list of needs, said Johnson, is a facility that includes room for growth. After the financial problems earlier in the decade, the governing body has again expanded staff and that has again put a strain on space requirements. USAC’s current building offers approximately 16,000 square feet of office and conference facilities and “we’re busting out at the seams. At this point, if we hire anyone else, they’d be sitting in the hallways.”

Johnson said part of the concern has to include the fact that the bulk of the organization’s staff is already established in Colorado Springs, and that might give that community an advantage in any decision regarding a new facility.

“That has to be a consideration,” Johnson said. “Part of it has to take into account the cost of moving (out of Colorado) and the number of employees we would lose in the process of moving. That is certainly part of the deliberation.”

Johnson said that USA Cycling is looking for a new building that includes between 25,000 and 30,000 square feet of office space.

“Training facilities aren’t a necessary part of that,” he said. “As you know, we already have access to Olympic facilities here in the States. Our programs are all project-oriented or resident-oriented in Europe. We take our athletes where the best racing opportunities are. We may have testing facilities, but we aren’t looking for space that includes training facilities, or even relatively close access to those. It’s a nice advantage, but track programs are based in Los Angeles at this point and our road programs are based in Belgium; our mountain bike programs will be largely based in Europe next year, so the reality is that we won’t be trying to establish another program at whatever new facility we have. The new building will be largely focused on providing member services."

Heading into an Olympic year
Johnson said the U.S. expects to field a strong team in next year’s Olympics in Beijing.

“At the professional level on the road, we have a lot to choose from out there these days,” he said.

One event is off the table, though — the four-man team pursuit.

“It’s the most expensive of all of the Olympic events,” he said. “It requires five or six people training together almost full time; it requires a full road program in addition to a full track program and it just doesn’t make sense, given our limited resources. That money can be spent more effectively on individual events, particularly the mass-start endurance events on the track.

"Team pursuit is fun to watch, but in some respects it becomes a distraction. Given the competition at the international level, even if we were to put a lot of resources into the effort, we’d still be struggling to be competitive in the top five.”

Focusing on individual endurance events is a better use of USA Cycling's money, Johnson said.

“We have a six-day program going on with the U23s (in Belgium) that we’ll expand next year. The full U23 road program is going to include track time. The women’s program, too, will include track exposure for those riders. We think that by offering that, we’ll end up with some very competitive riders.”

USAC and USADA
On the road side, the U.S. faced a potentially embarrassing outcome at the 2004 Olympics when gold medalist Tyler Hamilton apparently tested positive for homologous blood-doping at the Athens Games. That test result was subsequently thrown out, but the American then tested positive for the same offense at the Vuelta a España the following month.

In the ensuing disciplinary procedures, Hamilton mounted a rigorous defense, citing problems with laboratory testing procedures and the World Anti-Doping Agency’s use of what he said was an unproven method to detect the presence of a secondary blood population. In 2006, American Floyd Landis tested positive for testosterone at the Tour de France. Landis, too, attacked the procedures employed at labs and the methods used by WADA and its American counterpart, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Under the existing structure of the World Anti-Doping Code, initial enforcement and adjudication is left to individual governing bodies. In the U.S., however, USAC has handed those duties off to USADA. Johnson said he’s comfortable with that arrangement.

“It’s the right way to do it,” he said. “If you’re really serious about cleaning up a sport – and we are – I think having an independent body charged with testing and adjudication is the right way to go. I am comfortable with that relationship and the way those issues are being handled. We have always tried to balance the rights of the individuals with the effort to catch cheaters. That’s a difficult balance, but I am comfortable with the way USADA has handled that.”

2008 calendars
One sign of the health of the sport in the U.S., said Johnson, is what he describes as a smaller-but-better racing calendar for 2008.

"We had more requests for (National Racing Calendar) places on the '08 road calendar going into the new year," said Johnson. "We've actually reduced the size, though, a decision that came out of a USPRO board meeting in which we sat down with the teams and asked them about the state of things. With their needs in mind, the number of events on the NRC is lower than last year, but the prize-list minimum is considerably higher. The long-term goal is to make the NRC designation more selective and build a calendar that we can use to generate excitement around the sport and then slowly try to raise the bar to build value in each of those.

"Looking at the professional calendar as well, we'll be seeing a lot of great events there, with the Tour of California starting things off on that front and rolling through the season."

Johnson said the mountain-bike calendar remains a work in progress.

"There is still some confusion over the NMBS (National Mountain Bike Series) designation - what some still call the NORBA series - versus the national calendar," he said, "but that's to be expected and over time that confusion will disappear.

"There is no NORBA series per se, though the NMBS had that designation by default, because when a void is created people look for a replacement. In our mind, building a national calendar along the same lines as we did the road is the way to go. At this point, there is no national series, there is a national calendar, and within that national calendar there are several NMBS events, but they are part of a larger national calendar."

National championships
Johnson concedes that "we need to do some work" to improve national-championship events, particularly when it comes to races other than those run for elite men and women.

At the national cyclocross championships in Kansas City earlier this month, several older riders expressed frustration after organizers combined several masters' categories into a single race and then pulled slower riders, some as early as the first lap.

"I know about that for sure," Johnson said. "I was there and I am aware of it. It was a bit of a confluence of factors that created a 'perfect storm' for problems. The weather was awful, or great from a cylocrosser's perspective, with 20-degree temperatures and 20-mph mile winds, and the decision was made - and I don't know where or when that was made - to combine categories into the final event.

"Suddenly we had everything from 50-year-olds to 60- and 65-year-olds on the course of the at the same time, at the end of the day, when everyone is tired and cold. The course conditions were so brutal that it immediately separated the group. It was a difficult course in even the best conditions and with frozen mud and ruts, it got even harder. There were cases in which riders were caught and lapped within a lap. Per our regulations and UCI regulations, those riders were pulled."

Several of those rider dispute Johnson’s assessment of the rules and have
initiated an on-line petition seeking changes in the way future national championship events are organized.

"There may have been cases in which some riders were pulled prematurely," concedes Johnson. "I don't know at this point, we're looking into that. The whole thing generated several complaints and, frankly, they have reason to. It's not good when you have people traveling across the country to compete in an event for a lap. We have to improve that experience and we're working on that."

Part of the problem is field size, Johnson said.

"It's certainly a different environment these days," he added. "The problems we're dealing with now are different than those we were dealing with a few years ago. Now, we're facing bigger fields - particularly in the masters' events - and we have to deal with the logistics of that."

Johnson said that there were similar problems at road nationals earlier in the year.

"It's a problem across the board," Johnson said. "They way we've done nationals for the past few years just isn't working anymore. We have to re-evaluate the way we're doing that. We're looking at everything to limiting the number of registrants based on categories, going to heats - which is what we're doing at road nationals.

"My preference is not to limit the number of participants, but to ensure that the finals are of the highest caliber, so I think heats may be the solution for cyclocross as well.

"All I know at this point, though, is that the current system isn't working and we need to change it before next year."