In Search of the Mythos and Legend of Jonathan "J Money" Anderson
We go deep inside the story of the mythical man best known as J Money
“Energy and Persistence conquers all things.” -Ben Franklin-
If we are being honest, persistence leading to success is mostly a lie Cat 3 Masters mid-pack fodder tell ourselves to delude ourselves into thinking that one day we won’t be mediocre. However, there are those times, rare as they may be, when persistence pays off.
Back in 2019 when Bill released the first-ever CX Heat Check Power Rankings, an internet character slid into his mentions with a prognostication.
No one took notice at the time, but William Dowling was not deterring in his role as the one-man John Anderson hype machine. Literally every Instagram post we did in 2021, Dowling was there to remind us that we were forgetting about a man we now know simply as J Money.
At the beginning of the 2022 season, we released the Cyclocross Vibe Check Rankings. Women first, as is custom. Undeterred, Dowling was back on his beat.
At that point I decided that even if it’s one random internet commenter, the CX Hairs Bulletin exists to give people what they want, so I made a point to chat with the man known as J Money at one of the races earlier this season.
For the record, J Money has been loving his hype man’s work. “I was dying when he did it when you guys released the women's rankings. I was dying.”
Searching for the Legend of J Money
We always enjoy profiling the folks who race cyclocross at the Elite level, but rarely do we encounter an athlete who has achieved cult hero status the way J Money has. Like any good myth, any good legend, the story of J Money has many layers to it. His internet hype man William Dowling is a key part of the mythos, but there is so much more we need to learn to effectively understand the legend of J Money.
J Money is the alter ego of a bike racer officially known as Jonathan Anderson. J Money (I am going to dispense with “journalistic integrity” and just refer to him as J Money from here out) grew up in Massachusetts and started racing cyclocross in the NECXS at the age of 13. After graduating high school, he moved to Durango to race mountain bikes and cyclocross at Fort Lewis College.
Up until age 18, Jonathan Anderson was just another New England Junior racing bikes. It was when he got to Fort Lewis that the J Money mythos began. The first part being, of course, the J Money name.
“My friend and I were at a team meeting, and we were just like giving stupid names to each other. Then J Money just stuck for some reason.”
During our conversation, I shared that I felt the nickname J Money has a certain panache to it. He agreed and provided some context. “In grade school, people used to call my friend Fat Ando. J Money is a lot better than Fat Ando.”
After graduating from Fort Lewis, J Money continued to race cyclocross. “I've been racing for a bit,” he said. “I raced in college with Fort Lewis. That was fun. Now I'm out of school, and I just keep racing.” It was during his post-college years that the next part of the legend of J Money was born—the teams.
In 2019 instead of trying to join a team or develop a privateer program, J Money decided to launch his own team. A team that was focused on development. That first year it was the “J Moneys Elite Professional U65 Development Team.” Last year, the team’s mission expanded substantially and became the “J Moneys Elite Factory Professional U69 Development Ambassador Team.” (Say that 10 times fast)
After a season where he got top 10s at Jingle Cross and Major Taylor and raced 8 races in Europe from late January to the end of the season, the J Money program received a huge promotion. Like UCI WorldTour huge.
“I signed with the WorldTour,” he explained about the UCI WT: J Moneyz Factory Racing designation. “The UCI, they make you put the UCI WorldTour on it make sure you know it's a WorldTour team.”
When I talked with J Money at Roanoke, he was at the beginning of a solid swing of East Coast racing. As it turns out, J Money isn’t the only WorldTour-caliber member of the traveling ‘cross circuit. “My parents live in Massachusetts. So for these blocks, I drove down in my dad's car. He's my support guy. He's the head mechanic of J Moneyz Factory Racing. How many other WorldTour mechanics are there here?”
(As a side note, after Day 2 of Roanoke, I was chatting with J Money, and he said he was stopping by the Antietam National Battlefield on his way to Rochester. As a Civil War buff who parlayed last year’s trip to Charm City into a visit to Gettysburg, I was that much more stoked on the legend of J Money)
Thus far we have chronicled the nickname, and we have chronicled the team name. The next part of the J Money legend is clearly the jersey.
This season, the J Money WorldTour team jersey is a custom design that exudes panache.
J Money’s trip to Europe at the end of last season was not his first. He went over during the pandemic season and largely raced in his Fort Lewis Skyhawks kit.
At the start of the 2021 domestic campaign, he went in a different direction. “I don't know where I got this idea. It must have been one of my friends' ideas. They were like, 'Dude, you should make a jersey.' So that's how the jersey started last year.”
This year’s J Moneyz Factory Racing jersey is a very legit design—”It's UCI legal. What's illegal about this? As long as I'm not doing the aero bars, I should be good.”—featuring a J and a $. Simple, clean, full of panache.
“This was actually drawn by my mom this Wednesday. It was her idea to put the green in there. The one I had this summer had so many frickin’ holes in it.”
I did not ask at the time, but some investigation is clearly necessary to determine if the J$ jersey will be distributed widely any time soon.
The final piece of the J Money legend is the bike. Save the Richard Sachs team, it is hard to find a cantilever-brake bike on the Elite cyclocross scene these days. And yet J Money is rocking Giant TCXs with cantilever brakes that he’s had for 8 years now.
“It’s light and easy to work on,” he said. Plus, I feel like it’s fine for my riding style because I like to flow through corners a bit instead of jacking up the brakes and accelerating.” He added, “But I’ve never really spent any significant time on high-quality disc brakes, so who knows, maybe I am missing something.”
All this talk about the legend of J Money aside, he is having a pretty solid season thus far. When I talked with him at Roanoke, he had just wrapped up a 13th-place finish in the C1, which was his best career C1 finish to-date. After that race, I asked him about his plans for the season. “I would like to do the World Cups, but I'm not going to make it because I don't have enough points,” he said. '“This was my best C1 ever. So, we'll see. If I get selected, I'll go, if I don't, I won't.”
J Money proved himself wrong. An 11th in the C1 at Rochester and a 9th at the Charm City C1 earned J Money a selection to the Team USA team at World Cup Fayetteville. After that race, the J Money WorldTour World Tour continued at Kings CX this past weekend where he finished 4th both days.
This has been quite the journey into the myth, the legend, the enigma that is J Money. Who knows what’s next, but for now, the lesson learned here is that if you have someone start jumping in our mentions now, three years from now, we might do an overwrought story about you for the Bulletin.
I couldn’t figure out...so thanks for the reveal and the back story. He is definitely money, and now has more fans.
no shade to prior editions but this is the greatest issue of the newsletter 🥹🙏🙌