Round 2 of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup is ready to smash through the fields of Iowa City Saturday afternoon when Jingle Cross rolls out with the world's best riders competing for series points.
Two world champions will toe the start line at the Iowa City Fairgrounds on Saturday, going up against some of the best Europe has to offer and a cadre of Americans hoping to crack into the upper echelons of the unique discipline.
But it wasn't always this way in the race named 'Jingle Cross' because it used to take place around the Holidays. Back in 2004, a surgeon at the University of Iowa Children's Hospital and some of his friends thought it would be a kick to put on a local cyclo-cross race in the cross-country field behind his house.
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Coming from a cross-country running background of his own, race founder and director John Meehan thought it would be a good idea to start all 66 riders in the one race of the day shoulder to shoulder on a single start line. It was a classic rookie mistake.
"It was December and the wind was like a 30-mile-an-hour headwind," Meehan recently recalled for Cyclingnews. "So everyone was going downhill at about 3 mph into this ridiculously strong headwind, going nowhere all in one line. That was the very first one in 2004. It was just me and a bunch of friends and one girl doing registration in a tent that kept blowing over in a field."
It was an inauspicious beginning, for sure, but Meehan already had ideas about taking his race to another level. The week before his inaugural event, Meehan travelled to Portland, Oregon, to see the thriving Cross Crusade and the US national championships. He was impressed.
More than a cyclo-cross race
One more rung to climb
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/jingle-cross-from-grassroots-to-world-cup
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