New U. club cycling team picking up speed

Riding his bike a few weeks ago through the Avenues, Brian Reilly did a double-take as he saw Dave Zabriskie — the third American cyclist to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France — on a spin through the neighborhood.

As Zabriskie sped away, Reilly, who rides for the Utes' club team, said to himself: "If this place is good enough for a pre-Tour tune-up, then it's definitely good enough for the rest of us."

Though the sport is still relatively small here in the United States, there is a strong cycling community in Utah. "It's an impressive place to experience cycling," Reilly said. "Geographically speaking, Utah can't be beat."

Mountain roads provide world-class climbs within a 20-minute ride of downtown, and there's flat riding by the Great Salt Lake. Beautiful rides abound down south.

Utah's community and geography have helped cultivate the budding desires of riders like Reilly. The cycling team at the U., now in its second year, has turned this desire into an addiction. He joined the team as someone who enjoyed occasional rides, but within a year he had shaved his legs, bought a high-end Rahleigh racing bike and started actively training.

As a club sport at the U., the team doesn't receive the benefits of a varsity-level sports team, but there is plenty of competition in road biking, mountain biking and cyclocross against university-funded teams from Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada and Utah in the Rocky Mountain collegiate cycling conference and the nationals.

Each competition usually has a road race ranging between 35 to 80 miles (upper categories race longer), a team time trial (four-men or three-women teams racing together trying to set the fastest time on a set course of 12 to 24 miles) in length, and a criterium (multiple laps of a course less than a mile for 25 to 75 minutes; here, too, higher categories race longer).

When the U.'s team started racing last year only a handful had competed seriously. Riders have already demonstrated success, however. The team won four individual conference championships. The team also won the overall points series during the Men's A Conference Mountain bike season.

Heather Holmes won the national short-track mountain biking nationals' title last fall. Competing in the road racing nationals in Kansas this spring, she placed fourth overall.

"It was a huge improvement over last year. I'm not the greatest sprinter, so I worked on learning about sprinting and positioning before I went to the race. The road race ended in a 30-person field sprint, so for me to get fourth is good," Holmes said.