Weekend Preview: The Hype Train is Ready for a Semi-Charmed Kind of Cyclocross Weekend
Charm City Cyclocross is next up this weekend in Baltimore
Now if the Bulletin were a straight cycling news organization, we would be obligated to approach the coming weekend with an unbiased lens, offering both sides of the story—doing our research, as it were. Sure, Christopher Blevins could have a good race and win at Charm City, but he hasn’t raced cyclocross in over 3 years, he has a bad grid position, and is he really that good?
Fortunately, we are not constrained by the norms of “journalism” and being “fair and balanced,” and as such, we are all about that Christopher Blevins hype train, and I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but CHRISTOPHER BLEVINS IS RACING CYCLOCROSS THIS WEEKEND!!1!1!
Now Bill and I have been on the Blevins hype train since January 2018 when he hopped those three little stairs during a bell-lap attack and took home the U23 National Championship as a 19-year-old. Since then, Blevins, as he should, has focused on his mountain bike career, where he finished second at U23 Worlds twice in the intervening years.
Blevins’ U23 success and a 13th-place finish in his first Elite World Cup at Albstadt this spring produced palpable Blevins hype, but it was still not too loud.
Then the last month happened.
First, Blevins unleashed a mind-blowing sprint in the last straight before the finish to pass Henrique Avancini and the German Guy to win the first-ever Short Track World Championship. Then he followed it up with a bronze in the e-bike World Championship to take home three medals in three days. With all that hardware dangling from his neck, he also still managed a top 20 in the XCO Worlds race, which is a rarity for American men in recent history.
Not to be outdone, he then sat in and sat in before launching an attack late in the last lap of the XCO World Cup at Snowshoe to pass and drop Nino Schurter and take home the first American male win in an XCO World Cup since the artist who provides this week’s optional weekend soundtrack was popular (that’s a long time, folks).
Just like the amps in This is Spinal Tap, the hype goes to Blevins.
Now there might still be some doubters about the Blevins hype, and that’s cool. Everything that everyone likes needs its contrarians on the internet. After all, cyclocross is not mountain biking. But before we make that statement, I think we need to look at how Blevins is preparing for his cyclocross debut at Charm City.
Back before he won Reno Nationals, a then-underclassman at Cal Poly prepared for cyclocross stairs by doing this:
Now a college grad, Blevins went back to campus this week to revisit the glory days of, uh, doing cool shit that gets us hyped.
Still not convinced? This skill on skinnies will certainly serve him well this weekend.
If all that has failed to convince you of the hype, just click on the link from the Snowshoe XCO World Cup broadcast and soak in the beats.
Look, we’re not saying Blevins is going to win a race this weekend or even be a factor, but like with Woutmas last fall, cyclocross is more fun with something to get hyped about, and boy oh boy, are we hyped for this weekend.
Charm City - Saturday and Sunday
Elite Women: 3:05 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Elite Men: 4:15 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Broadcast: GCN+, both days (U.S. and Canada); Eurosport, Saturday, (Europe)
Recent History
Elite Women
2019 (Sat): 1. Rebecca Fahringer 2. Carla Williams 3. Caroline Nolan
2019 (Sun): 1. Rebecca Fahringer 2. Carla Williams 3. Caroline Nolan
2018 (Sat): 1. Ellen Noble
2018 (Sun): 1. Ellen Noble
2017 (Sat): 1. Kaitie Keough
2017 (Sun): 1. Kaitie Keough
Elite Men
2019 (Sat): 1. Kerry Werner 2. Curtis White 3. Stephen Hyde
2019 (Sun): 1. Curtis White 2. Kerry Werner 3. Stephen Hyde
2018 (Sat): 1. Kerry Werner
2018 (Sun): 1. Jamey Driscoll
2017 (Sat): 1. Tobin Ortenblad
2017 (Sun): 1. Stephen Hyde
Race Preview
If you are like me and *nose in the air* view the East Coast as flyover states, then you are not super well-versed in the origin of city nicknames. I mean New York is the “Big Apple” because of that big home run apple that was in the outfield at old Shea Stadium and Philadelphia is the “City of Brotherly Love” because they boo Santa Claus, but I have no idea where the origin of Baltimore’s nickname as “Charm City,” came from.
Maybe a lot of Irish immigrants settled there? I guess I would expect it more to be something related to crabs or ships or something like that.
As it turns out, Baltimore has only been known as Charm City for about 45 years now. It turns out, the moniker dates back to a 1975 advertising campaign concocted by a group of the supposed best advertising execs in the city. The city was facing tough times in the early 1970s, and the mayor wanted to turn things around. According to history, the advertising campaign was a dud, but the name stuck. And it also stuck to the Charm City cyclocross race.
Charm City returns with a C1 on Saturday and a C2 on Sunday. It is also a part of the USCX series and will thus be broadcast on GCN+ both days. We covered this on the Media Pit, but after Saturday’s borderline debacle, the production team proved they were day two broadcasters and did a solid job producing the two races on Sunday.
There is reason to be optimistic the quality will improve again this weekend at Charm City. Working in their favor is the venue at Druid Hill Park has an open layout with good sightlines, a giant flyover stuck in the middle, and it loops back in on itself several times instead of being a big loop around the exterior of the park. I am not saying a good broadcast is a lock, but there’s reason to be optimistic.
Maghalie Rochette has been winning a lot of races in recent years, but coming into this year, she has never won a race at Charm City. In 2017 she finished a close second to Kaitie Keough, and in 2018, she ran into the Ellen Noble buzzsaw that won 7 races in a row before Rochette got the best of her at Pan-Ams.
Needless to say, a Rochette win *seems* likely this weekend. She brought the buzzsaw to the Elite Women’s field both days at Rochester and looks to be on great form entering this early part of the season. In fact, two weeks in, there appears to be a solid pecking order of Rochette-Honsinger-Mani that will only be upset by the input of a good amount of contrarian data this weekend.
In the Elite Women’s field, the action has been in that battle for the rest of the wide-angle podium in the CX Heat Check Power Rankings (which are coming next week—Bill is on notice). Raylyn Nuss, Erica Zaveta, Hannah Arensman, Kaitie Keough, and Katie Clouse have all put their names in that conversation.
I just totally made up a fake scoring system, and based on results from Rochester, Nuss currently sits in that 4 spot with Zaveta in 5th. That vibes with results from GO Cross as well, although Keough has won at Charm in the past and she had a strong ride on Sunday to build off of as she races the event for the last time as an Elite.
Now you may have heard that there’s a ringer on the start list for the Elite Men, but perusing the Elite Women’s start list, IDK if there is a ringer of that caliber, so we may be looking for that intense Midfield racing to continue this weekend.
So yeah, for the Elite Men’s race there’s a ringer in the field. I don’t want to give too much away, lest his competitors get the drop on him. For the sake of anonymity, we’ll call him C. Blevins. No no, that’s too obvious, let’s call him Christopher B.
Now some publications covering cyclocross may or may not be guilty of overhyping Christopher B.’s return to Elite cyclocross for the first time since winning the U23 race at Reno Nationals, but we are much more level-headed than that and would never, ever do such a thing. As such, while Christopher B. has things such as a “short-track World Championship” and “XCO World Cup win” in the last two months, he still must prove himself on the cyclocross course with the drop bars and the skinny tires.
Speaking of riders with something to prove, Curtis White had a tough home-state race at Rochester last weekend. The international gluespiracy took him out of the running on Saturday and he was unable to crack Stephen Hyde, Kerry Werner, and Vincent Baestaens with his megawattage at the front for the first half of Sunday’s race. You know that White wants to show he can not only beat his American rivals but also show he has the ability to take down a Belgian such as Vinny B.
Charm City was the scene of two great races between White and Werner in 2019, with Werner taking Day 1 and White returning the favor on Day 2 (click the links for Bill’s great Cyclocross Television episodes from the two races). With Hyde showing glimpses of the form he had at Peak Hyde and Baestaens rolling strong this year as well, a vintage ‘19 Kenny v. Curtis battle seems unlikely, but the racing at Rochester on Sunday does suggest we could be in for a good show.
And we haven’t even mentioned the ringer…
The Course
Charm City Cyclocross takes place at Druid Hill Park, which was established in 1860 and is the third-oldest established park in the United States, which is pretty cool. The course’s most notable feature is probably the massive flyover, which towers a good two stories above the park. The rest of the layout is largely open and flowy, with several power sections mixed in to let riders give ‘er.
This is wild, but I’m not sure Bill has ever done a track walk of Charm City, so instead the course map and a quick teaser of the flyover are below.
Optional Weekend Soundtrack
I don’t necessarily want to get too serious with the Optional Soundtrack every week by like cramming history segments into every one, and so I am going to forgo The Star-Spangled Banner and a history of the War of 1812.
Instead, the relationship is specious, but let’s crank up the nostalgia machine to Peak 1990s Dad Rock and kick it to Third Eye Blind and Semi-Charmed Life.
One fun aside about this song is last year, the lead singer of the band Eve 6 (the Heart in a Blender song band) had a moment when he started a Twitter account and started dishing on washed-up 90s artists. He had this thing where every lead singer was “The Guy from…” As it turns out, The Guy from Third Eye Blind (TGFTEB) was apparently kind of a jerk and several of his stories revolved around that.
Anyway, here’s TGFTEB.
Riders I Want to Write About
Kaitie Keough
Not that I don’t want to write about Kaitie Keough, but I am going to outsource this one. As you may have heard or read, Keough started her cyclocross season by racing three local races in her home state of Wisconsin to start her season. She also attended a few practices in the Milwaukee area during her stay there.
My man Jason McDowell of Milwaukee did an interview with her and wrote a killer story for his publication On Milwaukee. I highly recommend clicked over and giving it a read.
Stephen Hyde
I feel like as the arbiter of BACKness, I have heard some rumblings that Hyde should be declared BACK after his solid weekend of racing in Rochester. I heard those rumblings, listened for a bit, and decided that I don’t think Hyde is a candidate for BACKness this season.
In 2019, there’s no question Hyde was not on the form he showed during Peak Hyde and he was the Sonny to Curtis White’s Cher on the Cannondale p/b CyclocrossWorld team that season. However, he still won Silver Goose and had 10 domestic podiums, including a bronze at U.S. Nationals. He also finished 11th at Brussels and was the top North American at Switzerland Worlds. It was a down year, but hardly a turn in the cyclocross wilderness.
I think if anything qualifies Hyde for BACKness, it is what happened when no one was racing here in North America. First came the shocking revelation that he would not be returning to the Cannondale p/b CyclocrossWorld team and then his public statements that he was not going to pursue cyclocross sponsorship during a global pandemic and then the intense Black Lives Matter era that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. There seemed to be a very real chance that the three-time national champion—and hero for ginger cyclocross racers everywhere—would never race Elite ‘cross again.
Then came the formation of the Steve Tilford Foundation and a seeming rebirth of Hyde’s desire to pursue Elite cyclocross racing. As a new dad, Hyde is admittedly a bit tough to connect with, but I am looking forward to chatting with him in the next few weeks to learn more about his motivation and what it took to get to the form we saw last weekend in Rochester because knowing Hyde, there is a lot there to discuss.
Gimmick Watch!
Blame Canada, Eh?
Folks, if we are being honest, Bill and I fall toward the more humble side of the ego scale. I mean, we like having our praises sung as much as the next person, but we also are relatively slow to hype ourselves.
However, folks, it’s hard to not point out that there is this undercurrent building surrounding this website. There are rumbles in the ether that there is something of a Bulletin Bump that is becoming harder to deny.
To wit, last week, Bill went on Maghalie Rochette’s podcast Fever Talk, and the following weekend Rochette rolled to two-straight dominant wins at Rochester.
Now, because we are all about science! here at the Bulletin, one could chalk this up to pure coincidence, however, HOWEVER, your humble author (and noted Yankee) joined the Canuck CrossCast with Jenn Jackson and Michael van den Ham last week—and Jackson was featured in our first Blame Canada, Eh? segment—and Jackson calmly went out and WON CANADIAN MTB NATIONALS while Van den Ham won his battle of national champions on Sunday by defeating Gage Hecht.
Folks, it’s just science, there’s no denying the Bulletin Bump is real. Our phone lines are, of course, open.
Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence Power Rankings
(5) Kerry Werner’s Race Recaps (I mean, I know Kerry doesn’t need MORE attention, but these are pretty darn good)
(4) Caleb Swartz running to the finish with a rolled tubular (Srsly, go watch his gallop and give this guy’s vlogs some more love)
(3) Super Rookie Tim of the Slow Ride Podcast eating it
(2) Jennn Jackson—the extra “N” is for National Champion
(1) Finally.
