Cleveland tends to be known for some rather unfortunate things: burning river, The Drive, LeBron jilting, things like that. But we take those things in stride. If you live in Cleveland, you’ve got to have a thick skin.
Last week I made a trip down south, in part to do a clinic at the velodrome in Rock Hill, SC. I mentioned that I had driven down from Cleveland, and that we had a track that opened in August. Someone said, “oh yeah, I saw that video where the guy came off the track before the apron was built. That was awesome!”.
After the clinic they had scheduled racing. I was talking with someone, and they asked where I was from. I said Cleveland.
He said, “Shaun Wallace sent me a video of the guy coming off the track when it was being built. That was hilarious”
I didn’t ask, but I assumed he meant Shaun Wallace, the former Olympic track racer from Great Britain.
So even former Olympians have seen the “less than graceful exit”.
On a somewhat related note, in 1985 I lined up for a criterium with Shaun Wallace just three weeks after he set a world record in the flying kilo. He kicked my ass! It would have been much less embarrassing to just drop my pants in the infield.
Maybe we could get him to come do a flying kilo on our track!