Photo: ©Tim de Waele of Terpstra in the last few meters
Up early for the World Bicycle Relief, Bill Keith Memorial ride on Sunday, watched about 17 seconds of Paris-Roubaix on a cell phone. We were en route to the ride meet spot from Seaside to Monterey.
Then, as the ride gathered we heard that Niki Terpstra won. What a big win for both SRAM and Spesh. Also a fitting memorial moment for Bill, who we were honoring on the ride. Before he died suddenly last year, he was SRAM’s road group product manager. As I learned, Bill was critical to the success our SRAM’s growth in road, tri, and cross. Emotions were running high before the ride started.
That’s because both companies are driven by the ride, performance, and racing. As SRAM’s press release said,
The “Hell of the North” became Niki Terpstra’s “Heaven!”
Terpstra won the monument, the precious stone. After the ride and at the expo, the mood in the Spesh tent at Sea Otter was jubilant with beer coupons being handed out to fans. A Roubaix bike winning its namesake put the wind back in the marketing sails of Spesh, to say the least, after the turbulence of a trademark lawsuit.
Free beer after that win
And I spent the weekend riding a Roubaix SL4, just like the one I ride in Seattle, back and forth on 17 Mile Drive, including a long, steady pull by Gord Fraser that stretched the elastic almost to a snap…
On the climb to @SeaOtterClassic, @GordFraser rolls back to asks how I'm doing, that was nice I thought and said the elastic has stretched.
— byron@bikehugger (@bikehugger) April 13, 2014
Finally, to the race and tactics, Matt Hill observed
Funny reading people’s comments about “The Favorites” marking each other and canceling each other out at Paris-Roubaix today. Hey, folks? Did you happen to notice who finished second? That’s the reason nobody would work in that break, and why nobody was going to kill themselves to drag a group of any size onto the velodrome.
Watching the recap, I agreed with sore legs from all the riding at Sea Otter.
See more photos from the memorial ride on WBR’s Facebook and a video remembering Bill Keith.
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