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Michael Barry's Diary - The Olympics: From 1996 to 2008
Four of us climbed into the back of the borrowed team Saturn truck, picking good spots for our lawn chairs. Once we were settled, the door was pulled shut and locked. We sat in darkness while our team captain, Steve Bauer climbed into the passenger’s seat beside Fernando, our mechanic and the driver, up in the cab. The southern air was hot and muggy and the back of the truck, filled with bikes and wheels was at first refreshingly cool in contrast to the outside air.
For three hours we laughed and chatted in the back of the truck, holding on to wheels and bikes as we turned corners, bracing ourselves so that we didn’t all fall off our aluminum lawn chairs and crash against the walls of the box truck. We were on our way from Alabama to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Road Race. Gord Fraser, Jacques Laundry, Eric Wolhberg Steve Bauer and I were the Canadian Olympic team and we had been staying at the Jacksonville State University (the Gamecocks), where the marquee on the local McDonald’s read, “Welcome Canadian Olympic Cyclers.”
We ate the cafeteria food and lived in the dorms for a week before the games to acclimate to the heat and train as a team. The riding was good, the roads quiet and, although it seemed they had never seen a dressed-up cyclist before, the locals were friendly.
Twelve years later, Gord Fraser just sent me an email recalling that day in the truck, the great cafeteria food, (“I still, to this day, miss the cafeteria food,” he wrote), the Games and the moments we shared. When I was recently been told that I was selected for the 2008 Games my thoughts immediately jumped back to ’96.
I was a naïve 20-year-old amateur and I had only done two professional/amateur l races of any significance prior to the Olympics: Rheinland Pfalz and Settimana Ciclistica Bergamasca. The Atlanta Games were the first Olympics open to professionals, meaning we would be racing against the elite of the Tour de France peloton. This excited and scared me, as it would be my first test as a cyclist on a major stage. This was the beginning.
We arrived in the village sweaty and sticky as the cool air in the back of the truck had warmed before we were comfy in our lawn chairs and cruising on the interstate. As we stopped at the gates to the athletes’ village, the door rolled up and we climbed out, our eyes sore from the quick transition to the bright sun. Not surprisingly, the draconian Atlanta security searched us repeatedly before permitting our entry into the village where we could settle in to our dorms.
My eyes were open and I absorbed it all. I learned from Bauer, my childhood idol, watching everything he did, emulating him, and becoming friends. In the month we were together, he taught me many fundamentals I still use while racing today. He could feel the race beyond anybody I have ridden with since and knew his body and bike well. Steve raced in a different generation; his generation never used PowerMeters, rarely even a cyclometer, they didn’t use race radios, or ride in fancy team buses. Even though he had raced in a dozen Tours and had placed on the podium in many of the Classics, he never complained when things weren’t going smoothly. He just put his head down, focused on the goal and rode; riding in a truck to the biggest race of the season didn’t matter, sleeping in college dorms and eating cafeteria food didn’t matter. What mattered to Steve was that we trained well, that we had the occasional massage and that we were motivated.
Steve is a true Canadian. During his long career he worked like a faithful mule for his leaders and rode like a champion when he was the leader. He never relented in the harshest conditions, attacking in the hills and on the cobbles with his blond hockey hair flowing in the wind.
In Atlanta the village was disappointing. It was a commercial mess of billboards, Coke machines and McDonald’s. It wasn’t a village as there was no sense of community but a city of motorized trains and golf carts buzzing around, shuttling people between security checkpoints and massive football field sized dining halls. I had gone to the Games expecting it to be about the participation, the team and the global community but it seemed more about money, medals and nationalism. Prior to the Games in Atlanta it had been argued that professionals had no place in the Olympics but when I arrived I realized that actually these Olympics were professional sport.
Oddly, one of the strongest memories I have of my time spent in the village was sitting with Steve while he chatted with the Danes: Riis, Skibby, Sorensen and Holm. They had just arrived from the Tour where Riis had rolled up and down the Champs d’Elysees in yellow. They were skinny, too skinny, and their skin was charred black by the French sun. They looked young but weathered. Riis, wolfed down two Big Macs and fries as he sat at the plastic dining hall table and Steve joked with them while I sat nervously, watching, and listening.
When I received the phone call that I was going to my third Olympics in Beijing I was excited. Not because I was going to see China, or that I was again an Olympian, but primarily because I could represent Canada. As a professional I don’t often race for Canada. It motivates me to pull on the jersey and also brings me home, to my roots.
Now in China my eyes are still open. With a decade of experience I have matured, but am forever learning. Our sport is politically complex and ever evolving. It is trying to move forward but still holding on to its strong roots. As cyclists, we can race well and honestly, which will make a difference.
The Olympics are political on every level and, in this respect these Games will likely exceed others. The historic events will become lasting memories. But despite this, as athletes, through sport, we can make a difference. While racing with heart and guts to a silver medal in a political Olympics in Los Angeles, Steve Bauer brought Canada to its feet for an afternoon, and inspired a generation of kids to get on their bikes and start racing around the block. Still inspired, this weekend I will be racing to leave a mark.
Michael Barry, is a member of Team Columbia Professional Cycling, husband of Olympic medalist Dede Barry and author of VeloPress’s “Inside the Postal Bus”
