Saturday, January 23, 2010

How to be a tech support motor driver

As many of you will know, I've worked at major bicycle races all over the US as a neutral support motorcycle pilot - or tech motor driver as we'd say at the races. I did it a lot, more probably than anyone else here between maybe 1995 and 2005.

I worked for Mavic, Pedro's, Bontrager and Shimano. I worked seven Trumps and du Ponts, many nat'l championship events, Idaho Women's Challenges and Philly Pro Championships, lots of Cascade Classic and Tour of the Gila stage races, etc.

A year or so ago, I wrote a brief set of instructions for a guy who was going to work the women's event at the Tour of the Gila. He was a fine motorcyclist and a bike rider, but he'd never been inside a bicycle race.

As I read over the instructions, I thought: No reason only one guy should read these. I'll send them to the Cycling Federation. They can pass them along to future new tech motor drivers. I didn't know the specific right person at the federation to whom to send the instructions. I asked a couple of race official friends and followed their directions, sent off the copy. No one at the federation ever responded.

So - you are reading these instructions merely to satisfy your curiosity. No one who needed to read them (except the one dude who worked last year's Tour of the Gila) has ever seen them, thanks to USA Cycling. If any of the terms are unclear, add a comment and I'll try to explain. Here's the link.

UPDATE - My old friend Jim Stanfill, Operations Manager at USA Cycling, has posted a link on the Federation's site specifically for race mechanics. All's well that...you know.

1 comment:

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hello with this information surely anyone can be a tech supporter, in order to get this I read this and more information in others blog, but this my first step to my goal.