“(N)o one wants to look like wimps on national television."—Health Net-Maxxis team director Jeff Corbett while discussing whether the inaugural U.S. Open Cycling Championships should be run as scheduled despite wintry weather

With all due respect to everyone who took a beating from hypothermia in Virginia or cobblestones in Belgium during this past week, Jeff Corbett had it exactly right. Cycling — and pro cycling in particular — is not for wimps.

This is the time of year when colorfully clad cyclists start popping up like migratory tulips on our potholed roads, inspiring bored columnists for media outlets both major and minor to trot out that sorry old fiction about cyclists being shaven-legged dorks, addicted to sweat, traffic impedance and same-sex relationships. We suffered one such just last week here in Colorado Springs, and it’s a delight to have two such solid refutations so close to hand.

How many mainstream journos would venture outside to start their cars in the weather that greeted cyclists at the U.S. Open in Virginia? (“Whoops, better use the remote, wait for the heated seats and the defroster to kick in, have another latte.”) Or drive those selfsame cars down the cobbled Kemmelberg? (“Whoops, better go around, might spill my latte.”)

Sissies.

To be sure, the sport endures its share of rider protests, sit-down strikes, slow rides and outright boycotts. But for the most part, the pros simply zip up, sign in and roll off to the start line in the never-ending Tour of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

And that’s what I’m talking about.

Pretty much anybody can ride a two-wheeler, even a pudgy malcontent like me. But if I’m going to follow a bike race, I want to see people doing things I can’t do. That’s why they get paid, and why we tune in, right?

So after the carnage on the Kemmelberg during Ghent-Wevelgem, it was good to hear T-Mobile’s Roger Hammond say: “It's a dangerous part of the race, sure, but everyone knows it's there. Do we take the Arenberg out of Paris-Roubaix just because it's dangerous? The Kemmelberg is part of Ghent-Wevelgem. If we took it out, it would lose its identity. What do we do, just have a race on highways?”

That would be no fun to watch, and I suspect it would be less fun to race, even for money.

I was never more than an inept masters racer, but even I got bored with the straight-up road races, criteriums and time trials that constitute the bulk of amateur competition. I came to appreciate the occasional weirdo: the old Watermelon Mountain Classic outside Albuquerque, which climbed to the Sandia ski area via seven miles of unimproved dirt Forest Service road before diving downhill on pavement; the Boulder-Roubaix, which was something like half pavement, half dirt; the Mount Taylor Winter Quadrathlon, which takes its field from downtown Grants, New Mexico, to the summit of Mount Taylor and back again via bicycle, running shoes, cross country skis and snowshoes.

Thus, the races I fantasized about were the spring classics, the Three Peaks cyclo-cross, the rare grand-tour stage that left the pavement for a stretch to rattle everyone's bones and brains. The kind of race you just know had its roots in some whacko on a bicycle saying to a buddy, “Hey, y’know what? Let’s go this way.”

So cheers to those who lead and those who follow. Me, I’ll just get the hell out of the way so I can watch, shake my head and say, “Man, how on earth do they do that?”

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