They stand alone, unchallenged, the nationally recognized pillars of Sonoma County, rising up above all others, the three identifying symbols of the area, known far and wide: wine, motorsports and, the most recent construction, seemingly out of nowhere, cycling.
It?s been a remarkable emergence for cycling inasmuch as it has been done without a defining moment, without a celebrity showman out front, without the usual pomp and circumstance that announces the arrival of something undeniably transcendent. But it is here, both of its wheels firmly planted on terra firma as it were, with only one anecdote necessary to reveal that.
Two years ago Santa Rosa sports attorney Don Winkle was taking a phone call from a lawyer in Boulder, Colo.
Boulder fancies itself as the cycling center of the United States. And the reason for the call had nothing to do with the sport. Nonetheless ...
Remembered Winkle, ?The first words out of this guy?s mouth were: ?So I am calling some wannabe sports attorney from some town that wants to take over cycling.? I said to myself, ?Wow, we got Boulder sweating. We must be doing something right.?
Jealousy spawns cryptic introductions and two years later that same intro might find a few R-rated additions acknowledging that maybe Santa Rosa, not Boulder, is now the American center of cycling. It is not a reach to write that opinion or, for that matter, to claim it.
?Boulder has about nine great rides and you can only ride there about six months a year,? said Winkle, 50, an everyday cyclist. ?We (Sonoma County) have hundreds and you can ride year-round.?
How Santa Rosa and Sonoma County rose to such prominence might seem to the uninitiated as a meteorite arriving out of nowhere, and there?s some validity to that as the sport does not have the national cachet of football, basketball or baseball. Even so, the hills and forests and ocean vistas and sweeping panoramas weren?t discovered in the last year or two. Nor have bicycles arrived at about the same time as Twitter. For that matter, the urge to compete is hardly a recent phenomenon.
So what changed? And how did it change? The answer to both questions leads to a conclusion that appears as a destiny.
That cycling in Sonoma County, and this may appear outlandish, is just starting to gain traction. Yes, just starting, for even a brighter and more accomplished future is in the offing.
?It?s been so organic,? said Carlos Perez, organizer of the recently completed Levi?s King Ridge GranFondo and publisher of Bike Monkey magazine.
Organic is not just for vegetables. Organic is a naturally occurring experience that also can be applied to rubber and tubing and pedals and handlebars.
Organic, as in look at the hills, folks. Don?t you just want to go to them, climb them, descend them, stop and gawk from them, by foot or by seat? Organic is healthy, and how many tubby cyclists do you see? They get that trim pedaling in Sonoma County.
?I have my pro team and I could base it anywhere,? said Gavin Chilcott, a 1980 graduate of Santa Rosa High School and owner of the BMC team. ?I could live anywhere and have my team with me. I chose here because it is everything I want from my lifestyle.?
Yes, cycling has to start with a compelling landscape, otherwise the sport would never get out of the health club, as a stationary bike is hardly the inspiring training tool. So, the idea goes, if you are going to sweat for five hours, might as well have something to look at. Greg LeMond, Lance Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton, among others, have thought so.
?A lot of the Who?s Who in American cycling made stops here,? Chilcott said. ?Maybe they weren?t visible (because the sport wasn?t), but they were here.?
And they spread the word on why they were here.
?For a serious cyclist,? said Winkle, a 1977 graduate of Montgomery High, ?this is like a surfer going to Oahu?s North Shore.?
But back in the day, well, there might have been scenery but it didn?t have a lot of bikes in it. Winkle and Chilcott both remember those days, in the early ?70s, when cycles on hills were as common as spider bites on the face of Beyonce.
?Cycling was viewed as this odd European sport that only odd people got involved in,? Winkle said.
Seven or eight people, Winkle guessed, were at the core of the first serious group of Sonoma County cyclists who set up residence at the now-legendary Pink Palace on Fourth Street. Seven or eight people, Winkle, Kevin and Gavin Chilcott and a few others, who rode every day. You might call them the seed money and it was small seeds indeed.
?When I was at Montgomery,? Winkle remembered, ?we had the option one year of doing something different during physical education class. I rode my bike. A coach at the school told me, ?What are you doing? Cycling really isn?t a sport.?
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