colored cyclist

i just started road cycling and i wanna go pros...but when i join my local bike club i realised i was the only black guy there..... i was wondering, has there ever been professional black riders....other then major taylor

 

Sure, there are. While they are few, they are there.
Erik Saunders, who only recently retired from cycling rode as a domestic pro for many years. He has a web site, though it is a bit hard to decipher... www.eriksaunders.com
There's also Rahsaan Bahati http://www.bahatiracing.com/ who is a current pro and rides for the relatively new team Rock Racing.

I'm sure if you looked around you could find some more guys (and maybe women too) in the pro's and semi-pro's.

Africa itself actually has some pretty exciting and competitive pro racing. OLN carries the Tour de Fasso - it happens very early in the season, before the spring classics and features the best of the African teams and riders. They are very good, very competitive riders. It would not be suprising if we begin to see some of these guys recruited to bigger continental teams someday.

 

thx alot..im hoping one day to see a few in the tour de france...maybe even myself..lol

 

Rahsaan Bahati actually just won the CSC Invitational. Dude can ride.

 

Gregory Bauge is coloured!!!! He's the current world champion of olympic sprint and one of the best sprinting pistards of the world!!!!! (check google images... or any track section on a site as cyclingnews...)

Black people have exceptional white fibers... perhaps they've the best ones (as athletics shows), but cycling is not very diffused among them...

 

is that the guy from france?...also has there ever been on in the tour de france?

 

Nono, he's only a pistard. He does not do road.

 

Before anyone thinks a pistard is something naughty (it sounds like it ought to be in English ) it means that he rides track!

 

Plenty of black guys racing in the Caribbean at the moment. The teams from Guadaloupe are very strong as well as St Martin/St Maarten and Martinique. I'd expect to see some of their riders joining the pro ranks soon.

 

Look up Marshall Taylor,a true pioneer of cycling.

 

nelson vails, scott berryman, a bunch of french bmx racers

 

If we're going by lack of "ethnic people" in a sport as a barometer for potential success, I think Tiger Woods shows you'll be winning all the grand tours in about 5 yrs time.

 

Who is to say though that white and hispanic people are not naturally better at cycling? And before you think it's racist, I was blown away watching the Olimpics to hear a white runner (Nicolas Macrozonaris) say that he dreamed of being the first white guy to run 100m in under 10s. Geesh - every race is under 10s! So, if blacks are better runners, who is to say that whites and hispanics are not better cyclists?

 

You can't compare the two situation: we have a resistance cycling (climbing one) and a explosive cycling (flat races, track races). We do not have enough data to see what's better, since (for cultural reasons) there is still no diffusion of cycling through black people. Maybe in the future, if the same diffusion of cycling between white and black (as in the athletics) would be reached, we could say something.

 

As long as you aren't judging Hispanics by my slow, fat butt....

 

I agree; time will tell. I would like to think that whites are good at some sport though.

 

Shuffleboard my pale face friend.

 

Swimming is the other big Olympic sport I can think of.

 

Nah, he's judging by Fast Freddy and Tinker Juarez!

 

Interesting topic. I think it is just a matter of time.

Michele Ferrari, in "Lance Armstrong's War" discusses the dominance of the Eest African atheletes in marathons as to one of the reasons why he felt Armstrong and other cyclist would be better off to ride at a higher cadence similar to what the E. African runners would use during a marathon. It was always thought that a runner was working more efficiently with longer strides. Then the Kenyans, Ethiopian's and others came around and used a shorter quicker stride. Thus, dominating their sport.
I'm not sure if Ferrari had the original theory on higher cadence = better efficiency, but one would think that you could take many black athletes and find they could be fantastic cyclists.

I also recall reading that the physiology of West vs. East African individuals is completely different, making the two camps suited for different types of success in sports.

On a side note, I often wonder why we haven't seen a huge following of asian riders at the pro-level. Maybe I'm completely ignorant on this topic, but I would think that the success several asian countries have had in endurance sports, along with the high usage of cycles for general purpose would = a rise in interest and production of world class asian riders.

Maybe it all just comes down to exposure, genetic luck, and hard work.

dave