Shaftesbury International

"Pinky" George & friends

George “The Boss” has been on my case about writing something for the Shaftesbury since my visit to England last August. I know that 1998 was the last time I sent you guys something but, to be honest, the exploits of the Shaftesbury C.C. Bermuda International Division (SCCBID) since then have been nothing to boast about. The reason I'm finally relenting is that, after seeing this picture of George “Pinky” Shakespeare, I'm afraid that he might get some of his “friends” to come after me!

For those of you who don't know me (and that's many of you as the club seems to have grown so fast), I'm Kevin and I was exiled to a small island in the middle of the Atlantic about 10 years ago by George. His alleged reason was that he was sick of jumping out of the team car and providing me with new wheels, as I seemed to puncture in every road race. Personally, I think George should not have been so selfish. I mean, if he stopped eating or even shared all those fine cakes Lily makes for him all the time he wouldn't have struggled to get his plump belly past that steering wheel! I hold no grudge against George as Bermuda is not such a bad place to end up, especially as I got married here nearly five years ago and my wife, Shannon, is Bermudian.

Tim and Kevin, SCCBID 1998
When I last wrote in 1998 the SCCBID was at its peak. Its two members, Tim Miller being the other, had between them won the road race points series and represented Bermuda in the Mini Nations World Championships held in Cuba. We had sought the permission of the Shaftesbury CC Executive to allow new members to join the SCCBID with the purchase of just a jersey, anticipating they would flock to the winning team. Of course, there is only one place to go after this peak...down!

The new members did not rush to join partly, I believe, due to the biggest sponsored team here changing their colours to red, black and yellow and providing the jerseys to the riders at no cost. How could Tim and I compete? To put it another way, how could I compete? Tim had taken a job with a company called GlobalCrossing and that is what he proceeded to do for the next two years, cross the globe. Every couple of weeks I would get a phone call to say that he was in Bermuda after travelling to Seattle, Japan, South America and many other exotic places. Strangely enough he didn't want to spend this time cycling but with his fiancée!

So there I was in 1999 expecting to take on the role of road captain and pass on my years of wisdom (?) to the younger riders when I ended up riding solo again. Now my legs were not very impressed with this and decided that they could not compete with a new English rider on the island called Steve Millington from the Scunthorpe Poly and a big fat Canadian who must have been a track rider originally as he put it in the 12 sprocket and left it there regardless of the gradient we were riding on.

As my legs did not do what I told them in 1999, I put them away for the year in 2000. This may be a bit harsh (I'd better be nice in case I want them to pedal hard again), but I don't think they finished a race in the bunch on the five or so occasions they were asked to do something strenuous!

So you can see that in two years we had basically hit rock bottom, hence the lack of articles over this period of time. The good news is that due to our lack of effort over the preceding 12 months, or 24 in Tim's case, we entered 2001 season with a lot of enthusiasm and good intentions.

The first race of the season is always the 2-up 25-mile time trial in the middle of February. We had ridden this race twice before but on each occasion one of us was far fitter than the other and basically battered the rider into submission resulting in a rather poor finishing time. Having decided that there was more to this 2-up stuff than brute force we decided to hatch a plan that would make us unbeatable for the event. When our grey matter eventually came up with the solution it seemed so obvious that we wondered why nobody had thought of it before...we would ride a tandem and then whoever was fitter could drag the other person along without dropping him!

It was decided that this tandem should be hand built especially for the occasion, as we did not know of a tandem in Bermuda that was up to the task of transferring our immense power to the road! Or was it that there are no tandems in Bermuda? Anyway, it was decided that this machine would have every device possible to make it faster. It is a well-known fact that two riders on a tandem do not result in a 100% increase in power through the drivechain; there is a lot of wasted energy in the traditional tandem setup. Not being scientists Tim and I did not care why this happened but we knew there must be a solution to it. Again, our brilliant minds (?) came up with a very simple solution. In order to get 100% out of each rider's effort through to the wheels you only use one rider at a time! Apart from this obvious advantage there are so many others. First, the “passenger” can rest until the rider wants a break and then the two can swap over with the new rider being ready for a full out effort without any lactic acid stored in the muscles! Also the “passenger” can provide refreshments to the rider so that the rider can concentrate on the task of going FASTER and FASTER! Finally, the passenger could shout verbal warnings of approach to the other road users who would be slowing us down due to our extremely fast progress. We anticipated breaking the speed limit...okay, I admit the speed limit in Bermuda is only 23mph, but we did anticipate breaking it.

Obviously these great speeds called for some fine engineering. In order to reduce the wind resistance, 26-inch wheels would be used at the back and a 12-inch wheel at the front. Now with the wheels bringing us closer to the ground and reducing wind resistance what could we do with the rider and passenger? Another simple answer...put the rider in a recumbent position. Okay, that might not meet with the UCI regulations, but this is Bermuda and I don't think we have that many UCI inspectors here, fortunately! Also, to conserve the energy of the “passenger” for his turn of cycling we decided it was appropriate to add a flashing light to the top of the tandem rather than having the “passenger” wasting all his oxygen with vocal warnings.

Being just a couple of office bods, Tim and I had to put this engineering marvel out to tender. Of course we accepted the lowest bid as any cheap cyclist would, which meant that we were utilising the services of “Dingy”, one of Tim's mates. Now Dingy, or “Dinky” as Tim's father-in-law calls him (we'd better not use that name in case George gets the wrong idea), is a fine craftsman and once we presented our ideas to him he said that such a tandem would present him with no problems as long as we could present him with the specialist cycling components. Brilliant, it was all systems go.

And then the Gremlin put his spanner in the works. My job decided that I had to be in London at the time of the 2-up. Months of planning for a historic Shaftesbury victory denied by a cruel twist of fate. But hold on, although we have a tandem - it's made for just one rider? YES, Tim could do the 2-up and take a glorious victory on his own! And from my sources at the race you have never seen such a valiant effort. By the time he finished, not only was the timekeeper very glad he could eventually go home, but Tim was completely exhausted. In fact he was semi-conscious. Just see what a terrible state he was in at the finish...

Tim - Completely Exhausted !!
Tim
As for Tim's choice of cycling attire I think George may be able to give you a better answer than me. Regarding the six-pack that looks decidedly empty, Tim's lawyer says that he only took the substance with him in case he was completely drained and he had not participated in any “treatment”!

Sorry, I always wanted to write novels. Tim and Robin did have a wonderful wedding on April 14th though, and on April 1st Tim had an amazing stag night although he regrettably doesn't remember much about it! That's where the picture came from.

Now where was I? “...we entered 2001 season with a lot of enthusiasm and good intentions...” is stretching the imagination just a touch. The only reason Tim and I competed in the second road race of the year in Bermuda was because it was a criterium in the centre of Hamilton, the capital city of Bermuda, in fact the only city (or town!) in Bermuda! The criterium was to proceed up Burnaby Hill that the professionals had ridden up for the last three years in the big race we have in September (more on this one later) and we have only ever been able to ride down before, as it is one-way. Now those of you who know me will be shocked to hear that I WANTED to race, because it meant going over a short sharp hill every three-quarters of a mile. But when you've stood at the bottom of the hill at the 90-degree corner where it starts and seen George Hincapie blast up there in the big-ring with his back wheel skidding from side to side due to his power output you just have to try yourself to see if you can do it...and do it we did, just at a pace much slower than the rest of the peloton!

Tim and I did do a two-up in 2001 but it was in the criterium and not the 25-mile time-trial. We were both dropped the first time up the hill! We had actually planned for this because we knew we did not have a chance of hanging with the fit guys and were better riding together at our own pace. Our “tortoise and hare” plan actually worked quite well as each time we crested the top of the hill you could see another rider who had pushed it too far trying to hang in the peloton and had blown badly. We eventually finished sixth and seventh.

Of course this got the competitive juices flowing and we managed to put a season together between us. There were no great results to show but at least the SCCBID was competing again. Actually, we would have had a third in the national championship road race if you guys hadn't ruined our chances (it feels good to blame someone else when you lose).

Our nationals were scheduled for the same day as your July road race. I had the perfect plan to guarantee a place on the podium. I was going to catch a lift from Steve Millington who was the hot favourite. Steve had won every race at this point of the season, normally with a solo breakaway. Now that might not seem like the most ingenious plan as every other rider would be thinking the same thing. But I'd spoken with Steve beforehand and I was to attack at half distance and he would jump across to me and we would work together from there, or so he thought!

Anyway, while Julia Hawley from Bermuda was getting in a good 80-miles racing in the Shaftesbury event I was standing on the start line in Bermuda in torrential rain. This is something that Bermudians are not very comfortable with and to be honest neither am I. So the race was cancelled as we were going to have a hard time persuading the marshals what a good idea it would be to stand at a junction for four hours while water was poured onto them in great quantities. The race was rescheduled for the following Sunday, which turned out to be very unfortunate, for me at least. The reason being that our top Bermudian rider, Kris Hedges, was back from university that week so that meant the two top spots were gone in the road race and only third to play for (Kris came fourth in the World “B” Championships in China in 2001).

Now this is what I'm blaming you guys for. With one km left there were three of us in with a shout for that the third spot, one of which was Julia. At this point on the final hill she attacked and guess who went backwards...yes me, so I had to settle for fifth. So I'm convinced that if you guys hadn't let Julia get in your fast 80-mile road race she wouldn't have had the form to drop me so easily at the finish of our nationals (and I'm probably the only one in Bermuda thinking along those lines!).

I did mention earlier the last race of our season that is held for professionals and does have a supporting race for us mere mortals. This is at the end of September and is called the CD&P Grand Prix. It consists of four events over four days, two being criteriums in Hamilton on a Friday night (floodlit racing) and Sunday morning, one 10-mile time trial on Thursday and a road race on the Saturday. Over the years there has been a good turnout from the American teams such as Saturn and Navigators, including two or three Postal riders (George Hincapie being one of these every year...think he likes the climate). There have been composite teams from England, Ireland and Canada, but these have never faired that well in the two criteriums or heat. The only exception to this was Yatesey while he was the rider-manager of Linda McCartney. He put the rest of the team to shame even though it did include some of their second-string riders.

One of the classiest pieces of riding I have seen was by George Hincapie in last year's Friday night criterium. This is the race that draws the crowds and has substantial prime money as a result. I took my wife Shannon along with me to watch, as she likes star spotting as well. There I was explaining to her how it is safer and easier to ride at the front as you avoid the crashes and don't have to sprint out of the corners so fast, when the bunch comes past with George sitting at the back. I go on to say that he probably didn't have a good warm up because he was busy giving interviews and chatting to the girls in the crowd and after a few laps he would feel better and move up the bunch. A few laps went past and then a few more and George was still glued to the back. Riders were dropping like flies (remember this is the three-quarter mile course with a steep hill) and George had to close the gap each time they took him off the back.

I just could not believe what I was seeing. I know this probably wasn't an important race to him but I'd imagine that the guy who won a semi-classic and was the strongest rider in Paris-Roubaix this season did not want to be dropped in a Bermuda criterium. I knew things were really bad when the Canadian time trial champion went up the road picking up some large primes and was joined by Dylan Caisey of Postal but still George was at the back. The next lap I was not sure what was happening. The two leaders went past and then there was a Postal rider stuck between the leaders and the bunch...but it was not George? And George was not hanging on the back either. Had he punctured or worse was he dropped? A minute later the leaders were back. Hold on, at the front was George! The lap before he had ridden through the bunch of approximately 40 riders who were strung out in single file and jumped across a 15 second gap to the leaders! Dylan Caisey saw George and decided he could do more to help the break succeed by blocking from the bunch and he was proceeding back to them when we saw him. Even with a $1,000 prime the bunch could not close the gap on George (he'd decided to go solo at this point as there were large primes nearly every other lap now). In fact he nearly lapped the field!

The best was yet to come. In the interview afterwards George was asked about his tactics early on. He said that he wanted to be at the back so that he could see how the race was developing in front of him! So next time George, “The Boss” that is, tells you get your skinny little a*** up to the front of the bunch you know what to tell him!

As you can probably tell from my last page of ramblings the Grand Prix is our biggest event in Bermuda. As the season had progressed Tim and I had gradually improved our fitness and we wanted to complete the season with a grand finale in the Grand Prix supporting event. We decided that in order to compete with the big sponsored team, The Winners Edge, we had to get another member. After considering every option we decided to go for a newcomer as we could dazzle him with our knowledge and get him to be our domestique! So Gino Crofton was signed and the SCCBID was now a formidable squad of three riders. Not since 1991 have I had the pleasure of riding in such a strong Shaftesbury team when Jim Green, Russell Crowe and Kevin Youell (good to hear that you're back in the fold, Kev) were available to drag me back to bunch!

It was a great three days of racing, apart from the time-trial where we were all quite appalling. In the road race we had the legs of Eddy Merck and the mind of Claudio Chiappucci. We attacked at every given opportunity without any thought of the consequences. Of course the consequences always come and bite you in the butt later, which is exactly what happened when the race blew apart with two laps to go. There was Tim and I finding that gear all cyclists hate...reverse. Fortunately Tim came around and was able to drag me back up to one of the groups ahead where we also found Gino. Gino then tried to do his part by leading me out for the sprint (although this was only for sixth place, every second counted for the overall), but he was too fast and I could not get around him. I'll have to review this policy of signing novices as they don't seem to realise there is a pecking order that should be followed! Even when the criterium on the last day was held in torrential rain we had fun, more because of the fact that we stayed upright than due to the results we had. And the results - we had overall positions of fifth, eighth and ninth.

Tim, Gino & Kevin after the Grand Prix Criterium 2001
(Note: Gino is not THAT short, he's standing off the pavement!)

So as the 2001 season drew to a close the SCCBID was once again looking healthy. As the 2002 season appears on the horizon there are going to be more changes in the team makeup. Gino has retired (temporarily) from work and has gone to Majorca for six weeks in order to prepare properly. We are not sure if we will be able to hold onto him as Tim and I have retired again (yes, we've both threatened to many times before) and he might not appreciate the lack of assistance. If he does go, the newest member of the Shaftesbury is due on March 7th and I will be getting baby Topple measured for a jersey immediately! So we will have a full complement of members if not riders at the time you are reading this.

For what it's worth, the SCCBID votes to keep the team colours and jersey design the same as it is. It is very bold and our wives find it easy to spot us in the bunch even with another team wearing the same colours, as their's is too wishy-washy.

Finally, I've been seeing a lot of notes in the International section of the Shaftesbury web site regarding the 2002 International Points Competition. We heartily agree to all your rules with the addition of one. If you have a curry with George Hincapie you get 10,000 points and can carry them forward to the following year! Thank you for first prize and we will toast you all when we pop the cork. To a healthy and fast 2002.