June 25, 2007
BY GINA DAMRON
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The day is perfect.
No wind. Warm sun.
Perfect for hitting the track.
"It's go when I say go," yelled the man in the safari hat directing the action.
The cyclists look on, their eyes guarded by sunglasses. They wait in a straight line, the thin tires of their bikes within inches of each other on the velodrome, a track for cycling tucked back in a corner of Bloomer Park in Rochester Hills.
Go.
They zip around the 200-meter track like nimble speed skaters. Daylight beats down, casting long shadows of the riders on the 44-degree-angled embankments.
Luke Cavender, a leader among the group -- the one expected to make it big, expected to go pro -- leaned into his bike and whipped past some of his training comrades as the force of the pack rattled the wooden panels that cover the steel underbelly of the massive bowl.
But the 19-year-old from Troy, a graduate of Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills, has his eyes on a bigger prize: an Olympic medal. He said he hopes to make the U.S. cycling team in 2012.
"It just takes time," Cavender said, "to build and build and build."And he'll have the whole summer to do just that. One of the goals at the velodrome -- constructed six years ago by that guy in the safari hat, Dale Hughes, and a handful of fellow cycling enthusiasts -- is to turn young local talent into national and international leaders of the discipline.
Hughes, who has built velodromes all over the world, said the track has kids night every Tuesday, with free bike rental and training, and races throughout the week.
Cavender, who has ridden on the Bloomer Park track since it opened, has a lifetime of road cycling: experience racing on the national level, time spent at the Olympic training camp last summer and a riding regime of 2 to 5 hours a day.
He said without the velodrome -- one of 18 in the nation and the only one, Hughes said, that's 1/8 mile around -- he wouldn't be going to North Carolina's Lees-McRae College this fall to join the school's cycling team.
The track, Hughes said, takes all kinds: kids and seniors, nervous riders and amazing ones, women and men. There's Gene, the 73-year-old with titanium knees, flipping the numbers on the lap counter. There's Sandy, the 58-year-old speed skater who was injured last year and admittedly put on a few extra pounds. There's some guy named Ronnie, who unofficially has retired but whose name still comes up in conversations.
And then there's Maia, the 21-year-old newbie with the red, scabbed-over scrapes on her knees to show for it. Maia Orabi of Shelby Township is one of the few women racing against the men.
"Like how a mosquito tastes blood and wants more, more, more," she said, "I'm like that with the track."
On Wednesday, she partnered with Cavender for a race called the Madison, an event where, every few laps, riders tag out their teammates, one slinging the other into the race with the momentum they've built up traveling around the track.
Orabi's front wheel is shaky as she rides one-handed, her 5-foot frame reaching out for Cavender's hand.
"Nine to go, nine to go, nine to go!" Hughes cried, calling out the number of laps left.
"Come on, Maia, dig!" yelled a rider from the sidelines. "Come on Maia, dig, dig, dig!"
They didn't come in first, but no matter. At the end of the day, it's all about learning, training, friendship, helping each other out.
And, two days from this night, just another Wednesday training night with the gang, they'll ride again. "Luke," Hughes said, "you racing Friday night?" "Yeah, I'll be here."
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As it turned out, Maia and Ed Gostin won the AA Madison race on Friday night.
Renee Schroeder- 6th place - Elite Women 1/2/3
