Denise Ramsden Racing in Europe

Optum Pro Cycling presented by Kelly Benefit Strategies is a U.S.-based team that includes seven Canadian racers. On the women’s team are Lex Albrecht, Annie Ewart, Leah Kirchmann, Joelle Numainville and Denise Ramsden and on the men’s team are Sebastian Salas and Marsh Cooper.

Racing in Europe

After a solid month of North American racing in March with my OPTUM p/b KBS teammates, April brings the time for a European campaign with the Canadian National Team. While we have some great racing in North America, Europe has long been the designated cycling hot bed. Most male cyclists aspire to make it as a pro in Europe and for women it is home to all of our World Cups and the majority of the UCI ranked races. While a few North Americans make Europe their full-time base, the majority are based in Canada and the U.S. and trek across the pond a few times a year for specific blocks of racing. One question that we get asked a lot is how much different the racing over in Europe is compared to what we’ll see on the NRC circuit. I thought this blog would be a good opportunity to highlight the “culture shock” we go through every time we come over.
Extent of the racing
in North America you’d be hard pressed to be racing every weekend, whereas our first week over in Europe we’re racing eight out of nine days with another seven race days coming during the month. The number of girls is also impressive. At a North American race it’s a good day if the field has 100 riders. In Europe it can reach 200, and in that field there’s pretty good depth, or at least very tenacious riders.
Fans
crits in the U.S. usually get a pretty good spectator turnout but its nothing compared to what a midweek race will get in Europe. And then there are the European super fans. They’ll have gone online and printed off a picture of you to sign for them, or they’ve taken a picture of you at a previous race and brought a copy for you to keep and a copy to sign.

Sign in
normally a pretty basic procedure in North America, Europe takes it to a whole new level. Each team goes up on stage to sign in, and is then presented to a crowd. At the Drenthe World Cup a few years ago, we had a neutral start to sign in and then it was a race up the stage and to the start line; there were girls, bikes and pens everywhere.

Neutral starts
ah the neutral start … typically the sketchiest, most terrifying part of the race as everyone fights for position behind the lead car at about 20 km/h. No neutral start in North America compares to the ones in Europe, I’ve even done a neutral start that took us through a mall on a red carpet. At Flanders there were several crashes in the neutral start, one that knocked a motorbike over.

The roads
it’s such a fight to the start because the road are impossibly small. Last year we were debriefing after a race in Belgium and Rhae Shaw kept talking about the awesome bike path we had been on, but by European standards that was a full-fledged road. In North America, races would be re-routed around roads in rough condition, but Europeans pay special attention to ensuring races go over them – bring on the cobbles! The road “furniture” that decorates the road (medians, roundabouts and random poles) adds another dimension. Motobikes speed back and forth through the peloton and a flagmen hops off to indicate the presence of some sort of upcoming danger on the road. The continuous honking caused by them attempting to come through the peloton on tiny narrow roads a reminder that you’re racing in Europe

Time Cuts
one other fun part about Europe is the time cut policy. In North America, there are time cuts but they’re pretty generous. In Europe, they’ll pull a group of 100 rider if they’re too far back from the main field. Too bad if it’s because you crashed or flatted or whatever. Oh wait, and once they’ve pulled you, you’re on your own to find your way back to the finish.

Needless to say, European racing is a bit of an adventure for us North Americans. At the very least it makes us better bike racers and we appreciate racing at home much more. The two most important survival skills are being able to laugh at all the ridiculous situations and being good at scoping out WIFI.