A Boy With a Dream
Part 1. The Dream
He would sit patiently through Tuesday night racing waiting for the best part, waiting for the final event to finish so he could join his dad for a precious few laps around the velodrome. Each week they rode together when racing was over before the lights went down. It was only a few minutes and a few laps, but it was the highlight of his week.
The velodrome that captivated his imagination was Bob Rodale’s field of dreams. Rodale fell in love with track cycling while at the 1968 Olympics, and decided his hometown, nestled in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, needed one of its own. So he carved out some land and got to work bringing his dream to life. It wasn’t much when it opened, just a concrete oval with a gravel parking lot tucked into a cornfield in the sleepy hamlet of Trexlertown. But the dream was now a reality, and the foundation was set for decades of dreamers to fall in love with track cycling just as Rodale had.
Like Rodale, that little boy also fell in love with track cycling. He was young when it captured his imagination, so young that his developing brain couldn’t retain the memory of the moment it happened. He has no memories of life without a love for that banked oval in rural Pennsylvania.
In the absence of a clear memory, it’s impossible to tell what sparked the love affair. Perhaps it was the first time he pedaled to the top of the banking, the sudden changes in altitude and perspective causing a surge of dopamine to overwhelm undeveloped synapses, leaving a permanent change in the subconscious of his developing mind. No one could have had any idea of the ripple effects that moment would carry through his life for decades to come.
It surprised no one that laps with Dad progressed to racing. Together they made the 3-hour drive to Trexlertown to compete on Tuesday nights at the Lehigh County Velodrome. No longer sitting quietly through the night, he raced and his dad raced.
His love for track cycling grew. It was the secret life he lived away from the doldrums of school. The boy would be summoned from class early, climb into the family van, and head out for a night of adventure and excitement. He was always tired on Wednesdays, tired but still buzzing from the thrill of the secret life he led on Tuesday nights.
As years went by, the dream grew. He emulated his heroes and dreamed of racing on the big stage under the bright lights. And he began to dream of bigger stages, brighter lights, and other velodromes.
Each dream and each goal led to another. And each brought him one step closer to the Big Dream. National Championships led to World Cups and then to the World Championships. Next up: the Big Dream - the Olympic Dream. 20 years and thousands of laps had passed since those first hesitant pedal strokes and the first time he felt the thrill of climbing to the top of the banked turns.
The years and the laps crystalized during the Olympic Games on August 16th, 2008 as he pushed off from the start line at Beijing’s Laoshan Velodrome. Just as he had done decades ago, he rolled through the first turn and climbed to the top of the banking. This time, his wheels rolled over Olympic rings painted on the track surface and he saw the stadium open up before his eyes - a three-dimensional and multi-sensory tapestry of colors and flags, the echo of bikes rolling across boards of Siberian Pine, and the roar of the crowd anticipating the event to come. He forgot for a moment the task at hand and soaked it all in, and in that moment the earliest memories of climbing the banked turns in Trexlertown surfaced from his subconscious.
Over the next eight years, he kept chasing the Olympic dream and striving for the elusive Olympic medal. It never came. Emotionally exhausted from years of chasing a singular goal and incapable of recalibrating for one more chance, the boy walked away from his dream.
Part 2. The Homecoming
The Olympics are an unwieldy beast, and those enchanted by her spell are often left to flounder in the wake of the destruction she leaves in her path. The chase is all-consuming and the euphoria of achieving that goal is a high so great that no amount of mind-altering substances can bring you back to the same place. The low of missing out is dark and at times bottomless. I know because I’ve experienced both.
I left the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Olympics defeated and depleted in every sense. The four years leading up to those Games were a zero-sum pursuit of one last chance to claim - something. Was it all for a medal? Was I chasing external validation of an internal need to prove that I was as good as I thought I was? Or was I following the path that was laid in front of me? Each time I achieved a goal and climbed to the top of one mountain, I saw yet another and larger one in the distance and felt compelled to conquer it as well.
A lifetime of climbing each mountain I set my sights on set me up for profound disappointment when I met the one I could not best. I knew the risk involved. It’s scary to put everything on the line for one fleeting moment, but the task was so large that the only pathway to success was the zero-sum method of Olympic medal or bust.
I busted.
I left professional cycling in the wake of the 2016 Olympics wanting nothing to do with the sport at its highest level anymore. I couldn’t be a fan of racing, either. The wounds were too fresh and the nerves too raw. I needed to make a clean break. I needed to build a new life and a new identity away from racing bikes.
By the summer of 2023, I was almost seven years removed from full-time racing. I had left track cycling behind and found the comfort, camaraderie, and community I craved in the vibrant mountain bike scene found in the Mid-Atlantic region. It was wonderful therapy. Although I now find it hard to identify with the person who unwaveringly chased the dream for so long, I’m proud of what he did. I also found I was becoming a true fan of cycling for the first time in decades. I was almost out of the woods, but there was one glaring hole that hurt too much to acknowledge.
I missed my home velodrome.
I live less than 10 miles from what is now called the Valley Preferred Cycling Center, the velodrome where the dream began. Despite living in such proximity, I have only ridden there five times in the last seven years. Riding was too much of a reminder of what I used to be able to do, and spectating triggered the conflicting emotions of wanting to still be part of the show but also never wanting to go back to the dark and painful place I had to visit when training.
One day, everything changed. On July 10th I stepped into the role of Executive Director at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center. The moment represented fresh energy from an old face for the Velodrome, and the opportunity for me to face the last of my demons on my way to recovery from full-time sport.
The first week was a blur, and the first night of our marquee professional racing, Friday Nights Under the Lights, was marked by an epic thunderstorm right before racing began. In the days that followed, my team and our community rallied behind us. It was early days but I could feel the magic of the moment building as we approached the second week of Friday night racing under my guidance.
The feature event that week was the Artie Greenberg Memorial 10-Mile Scratch Race, an event honoring a member of the Valley Preferred Cycling Center’s Hall of Fame who was tragically killed before I was born. The event was always special to me. I had the honor of winning it a few times and still hold the track record for that event.
Like the previous two weeks, the night of racing was mostly a blur. And then it happened. The love affair that began three decades ago but had laid dormant for the last handful of years was reignited. As I stood on the apron of the track, starter’s pistol in hand and looking up at the riders poised for my signal, I felt a tinge of nerves and excitement. I saw the young, fresh faces on the starting line and felt their nerves and excitement. I felt the weight of the journey, the one that began at the very place I was standing and took me far away, so far away I thought I’d never come back, lift off my shoulders. I felt the responsibility to give those riders the platform I had when I was in their shoes. With that, the last vestiges of resentment towards my old life melted away.
I was home.
The gate to the infield opened when the race finished, and riders and fans mingled on the home straight. No one could put their finger on what the feeling was, but it was clear everyone felt it. No one wanted the night to be over. My wife, Shelby, walked across the track pushing our 14-month-old daughter in the stroller while our 3-year-old son rocketed by her and took off on his balance bike. He shrieked with excitement as he zoomed down the banking into the first turn, little legs flying to keep up the speed. He pushed his way back to the top of the track, paused for a second, and zipped to the bottom again.
I was waiting for him when he finished the lap. In an instant, I recognized the look on his face and the excitement coursing through his body. He won’t remember what sparked the love affair - he’s too young. I’ll never forget it.
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