 Welcome, everybody, to the 33rd Annual US Bicycling Hall of Fame Induction here in Davis. Yeah. I'm Bob Bowen, I'm the President of the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame and the board, and we'll introduce some of our board members here in a bit. But we started hosting the Inductions in Davis in 2008. Some of you who are here, we used to be in the, you'll Freeborn Hall just a couple blocks away. But we're here in the Activities and Recreation Center, and it's an appropriate name for the activities of cycling. And so the Hall of Fame Museum in Davis opened in April 2010. So our thoughts are with the folks throughout California, dealing with the fires in Northern and Southern California. One of our former inductees, Roy Nickman, had planned to be here tonight, but he's also a firefighter. So I think he's probably a little bit busy. So anyway, our thoughts are with them, but for the next two hours, we want to celebrate the folks we are inducting into the Hall of Fame and enshrining into this organization, and some of the amazing stories about their lives and careers. So as most of you know, who have been in Davis, or even for one day, some of you, how many of you, this is your first time visiting Davis? My goodness, well, welcome, yeah. So you probably noticed there are a few bikes on the streets around Davis. 365 days a year, day and night, they're all over the place. Some of them even stop at stop signs. And we have little kids, five years old, riding their bikes to school, and we have bike lanes everywhere. And so we kind of take it for granted, but we know that throughout the country, it's a special thing. And just going all the way back to the 60s with bike infrastructure. And so we want to get more people to incorporate bikes into their lives. And according to the census, four out of every 10 trips in this town, a bike is involved. You're going to school, you're going to work, you're recreating. And so we want to do more of that. And we have schools compete against each other, who can have the most riders and the highest percentage. And we want them to take that kind of approach to their community out throughout the United States. So we're kind of proud and as part of the fabric of the community. And we're appreciative that not only the city of Davis, which lets us use the three-story building, which is part of the Hall of Fame and Museum, and also helps support us. And then all of our other sponsors we'll talk to in a little bit. But anyway, as you can see, bicycling is an integral part of the fabric of the Davis community. Now, we're honored tonight to have some of our previous Hall of Fame inductees. So maybe we'll wait till the end here. We'll have you guys stand up. So from 1997, George Mount, modern road and track child stand up George. He's a member of the board. We have 2006 contributor Ted Ernst. No, he couldn't make it tonight. He sends his warm regards. But Tom Shuler, 2007 is here. Tom Shuler right there. Another former racer. 2007, Bernie Anderson contributor in the BMX world. Bernie is here tonight. 2008, modern road and track. Jeannie Golay is here. Jeannie, stand up. 2009, Clayton John, BMX world. Again, off road. There he is. 2014, Inga Thompson. Yeah, there she is. Modern road and track. 2015, contributor Andy Tauss, who's also on the board. Andy is right there. And then Roy was going to welcome all of you coming back. And we appreciate your ongoing support. And this is really our premier event of the year, the induction. And we have year round activities and educational outreach for the Hall of Fame. But several of our national board members are also here. So if you could stand at Kendra Wensel coming down from Portland, Oregon. Kendra is here. Peter Nye from Oak Harbor, Washington. There's Peter Nye. John Hess from Davis is over there. John Hess, Manny Carvajal from Davis, right there. Keeps the bills paid. Ray Cipollini from Stanhope, New Jersey is in the house. And our induction chair, Brody Hamilton is over here. Brody Hamilton and ex-officio are museum collections manager, David Takamoto, where it's over in the corner. Yeah. Also, the curator of the Marin Museum of Bicycling, Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, Joe Brees. Where's Joe? Joe is over there. Joe Brees, there he is. And we'll hear some more of it. We have USA Cycling in the house. We have a whole table from USA Cycling. Welcome to Davis. And also want to mention from the great city of Philadelphia, the former mayor, Michael Nutter, is here tonight. He is right here, right there. And I'm told that his wife is a pretty good bicyclist, too. Didn't she just win something in a championship competition? Yes? Well, there you go. Congratulations. Congratulations. So by the end of this evening, we will have inducted 161 honorees. The first was Pop Kugler. Those of you who've been at the museum, you'll see that. That was in 1987. And that was back in Somerville, New Jersey. And that's where the Hall of Fame began, because that's where the Tour of Somerville is. So some of you may know that the Hall of Fame is a pretty humble organization. It's run by volunteers. And they're committed to preserving the past of cycling and inspiring the future of cycling. And we do everything we can to not only educate people about the stories of the people you'll hear tonight, as well as educate folks, whether they be in elementary school through college, about how cycling can impact your lives. So everything you do by coming tonight, you're donating auction items that you can purchase, can help with new exhibits, with programs, with outreach, with education. So I also want to mention that the Hall of Fame has just become a member of the International Association of Sports Heritage Group, which is a group of halls of fame of sports throughout the United States and Canada. So we're starting a network with other groups all the way across the tradition, basketball, football, soccer, to pro-rodeo and curling. And there's even a mascot hall of fame outside of Chicago that just opened in the last year, which is pretty cool. Anyway, so to our inductees and the sponsors, please stay in touch. We don't want you to just come once, get inducted, and then we never hear from you again. But we need your help. We need your support and stay with us. Support the program, serve on a committee, help develop other supporters so we can keep these stories being told. We have people writing us into their will as a bequest and helping us any way they can. So we are appreciative of our sponsors on the printed programs on your tables, on the back. Some of our sponsors have helped me tonight a possibility. We appreciate them. A lot of local folks and some of the national groups. So thank you so much. And when you have some great silent auction items out there, and afterwards, we're going to have some online auctions, right, Brody? And that's going to start when? Monday. So on Monday, so on the back of your program, it'll talk bidding for good. We have some great items there. Brody will talk about it in a little bit. And some of the great activities and trips and artwork that you can bid on, and also things like fund an item to help us keep improving our museum exhibits. For 50 or 100 bucks, you can really help. And those of you who toured the museum since last year have seen some of the improvements, as well as we're working on being able to be able to call up all those videos that we'll be seeing some of them tonight on demand. So we have big dreams. We need the support. We appreciate your help. And we want to continue telling the stories of people like Karen Bliss, and George Banker, and Sean Petty. And we're going to be reaching out to not only Davis, but other communities across the country, because they want to be Biketowns, too. And they want to celebrate the history of this sport. So right before intermission, we're going to show you a little preview of a new exciting educational concept, a total immersion thing that we can do through the internet to help educate people about the history of cycling. So be a member, volunteer, help us out. You get the deal. And then also, after intermission, so at the end of the program tonight, you'll be able to purchase the book that you'll be hearing about from Michael Cranich here in a little bit. And he'll be able to autograph it and answer questions. Because his real job is reporting on politics in the Washington Post in Washington DC. So this is hopefully a nice break for him coming out to Davis instead of all of the fund that is the circus that is Washington DC. So hopefully, you're having a good time out here. And he was able to come out and join us and fly across the country and be part of this. So with that, I would like to start with our first inductee, which is kind of a challenge because George Banker passed away in 1917. And so you'll see some of the background here a little bit. And then we'll bring up Peter and I with just a little anecdote about that. So please welcome the first video of tonight's the inductee, our Hall of Fame inductee, veteran road and track competitor, George Banker. Let's see the video. George A. Banker, veteran road and track. George and his brothers started riding in the early 1890s for the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Banker left Pittsburgh in 1894 to join a group of ambitious riders sailing to Paris as the vanguard of professionals competing for cash on tracks. Far from America were the governing body opposed professionals for sullying the sport. Baker turned 21 years old and won the inaugural Grand Prix de Paris match sprint contest. He won $1,000, which is worth about $28,000 today. For the next six years, he raced abroad, a star among the biggest names of his generation. At the first World's Professional Sprint Championship in 1895 in Cologne, Germany, Banker won. But officials threw the race out and ran it again the next month and he finished second. He finally triumphed at the 1898 World's Sprint Championship in Vienna, Austria. Banker maintained a busy schedule with tandem races, pursuit races, and pack races from two miles to 10 miles. He won about 80 Grand Prix races in cities around France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Algiers, and Morocco. Banker is recognized as America's first World Professional Champion Sprinter and the first American to win two World Championship medals. In 1900, he returned to Pittsburgh and opened one of the city's first automobile dealerships. George Banker, 2019 inductee, as a veteran road and track competitor. All right, George. So I'd like to ask Peter Nye to come on down here as he's coming up. George didn't have any kids and we worked with the Heinz Museum in Pittsburgh to find some of this information. But Peter Nye is coming on up. He's the author of Hearts of Lyons, the kind of definitive history of racing which is going to come out with the second edition next March. So Peter Nye has a little anecdote about historic bike racers. Peter Nye. Thank you, Bob. That was very good. And I love that music in the background. One thing to bear in mind about George Banker's achievements, 1895 he scored the silver medal at the Worlds and won the Grand Prix to Paris and then it took him three years but he finally won the World Championship, 1898 in Vienna, Austria. And we need to bear in mind, in a historical perspective, the $1,000 that he won from the Grand Prix to Paris was more than, well, was double for winning that one race. It was double what the average worker in the United States made for a year. And bear in mind also that the basketball had just been invented in 1891 at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts and was slowly in 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894 was slowly gaining acceptance around college campuses in the Northeast. So bicycle racing was already established as a professional gig and international in its concept. So unlike basketball, which was still growing. Anyway, that's perspective. Thank you. So as Peter will tell you, we can't forget the folks who really laid the groundwork that everybody's standing on their shoulders. And so it was very challenging back then, especially some of the equipment and the lack of support and the whole idea of amateurism where if they actually wanted to live, they had to leave the country. And so transitioning, and by the way, Hearts of Lions, if you've never read it, it was originally published in 1990. A new second edition is coming out next March. So Peter and I as well as other books, Six Day Racing. So the history of cycling is still being developed. Speaking of that, earlier this spring, a new book was published about Major Taylor. So 30 years ago, the U.S. Biscayne Hall of Fame inducted Marshall, Major Taylor into the Hall of Fame. And the story that our keynote speaker tonight to tell us an amazing story of perseverance and courage and dealing with racism and Jim Crow laws. And this is 50 years before Jackie Robinson became known in the national sports. But as Peter mentioned, bike racers were the highest paid professional athletes. And some of them had trading cards. There was a whole series. So bike racers were the biggest deal in professional sports. And if you were African American, it was a challenge because there were a lot of barriers to that. And so I'd like you to welcome our keynote speaker coming out from Washington, D.C. to join us tonight. The author of the book, Major Taylor, Fastest Man in the World, please welcome Michael Cranich. Thank you, Bob. Thanks for inviting me here. Thanks to the Hall of Fame for having me to this event. It's such a great honor to be here in Davis. I've never seen so many bicycles in one place in my life. I went to college in Syracuse, and if the same thing happened there would be a lot of cross-country skis because the climate's somewhat different. If you could put yourself in the year of 1896. In May of that year, the Supreme Court voted 7 to 1 in the case of Plessy versus Ferguson to basically separate the races and institutionalize Jim Crow laws. The prevailing justice said that blacks who thought that separating the races put a stamp of inferiority upon them, well, that was just their problem and interpreting it that way. Only one justice, John Marshall Harlan, disagreed. And he said, in our country, the humble are the peers of the most powerful. But he was one single voice. And if you were living at that time and you wanted to hear about the ruling of the Supreme Court, and if you looked at the New York Times, the next day, you might be surprised to note now that that story did not appear on page one. On page three, under news of the railroads, this story appeared because the Plessy versus Ferguson case was technically the separate car act of Louisiana being challenged, where a black person had tried to ride in the same car as whites, and that case made its way to the Supreme Court. So underneath the top story of news of the railroads, which was about agricultural transport on railroads, was a reference to Plessy versus Ferguson. At the time, for whites, this was just a minor railroad matter. But for blacks, this was not separation. This was segregation, plain and simple. And so if you were living at that time and you were upset by this ruling, or outraged, as you should have been, you had to wonder who could stand up and disprove the racist theories of the time a cyclist could, as it turned out. If you read The New York Times two weeks after the news of Plessy versus Ferguson, you would have heard the story of a young boy, he hadn't yet turned 18, I believe, at that time, and his name was Marshall Major Taylor. And there was a story in The New York Times, first time his name appeared in that newspaper, saying that he was a marvel. He'd raced in Connecticut under the tutelage of a bicycle manufacturing executive named Louis de Franklin Bertie Munger. Munger had discovered Major Taylor in Indianapolis, where both had lived at the time. There was tremendous racism there, and eventually he convinced Marshall Taylor to move with him to Worcester, Massachusetts, where Munger set up a new bicycling company as well as one in Connecticut, and it was there on those roads that The New York Times had described this incredible Major Taylor. At the time, racing was done by blacks and whites, but whites were the prominent racers of the time. The big racers, big races, the big money went to the white contests. It would have been very, very unusual indeed that a major professional event would have had both races mixed. In fact, the League of American Wheelmen passed measures that prevented blacks from becoming members, but there were ways for blacks to compete. What happened was seven months after the Plessy versus Ferguson case, Major Taylor walks into the office of Madison Square Garden, and at the time, Madison Square Garden was by today's Madison Square Park, a beautiful building designed by Stanford White, and the most famous sporting event of the day was the six-day race. Cycling at the time, as was just mentioned, was more popular than baseball, than boxing. It was the most popular sport. If you can put yourself in this time period, there were maybe 300 automobiles, and they were basically experiments built by bicycling manufacturers. They didn't have rakes, they didn't go backwards. On the streets of New York City, there were about 150,000 horse and buggies and so forth. In the country, there were maybe five million bicycles. Bicycling was the sport of the day, and it was the way to get around for most people in major cities. So it would have looked more like Davis today. There's a wonderful description of New York City in the nighttime when all the cyclists put lanterns on their bikes. And a writer at the time said it was like seeing rivers of fire going down the street. What a wonderful image of that time. Cycling was just the be-all, and the six-day race was the greatest sporting event of the day. Major Taylor walked into the offices of the promoters of the six-day race. There were two gentlemen, there were rather routine gentlemen. They promoted baseball, and they promoted cycling. And Major Taylor wanted a license. By this time, in amateur races, he'd done extraordinarily well, and he wanted to brace his first real professional race. And his mentor, Bernie Munger, felt that this would be a way to convince people that blacks should be treated equally. He was pushing this not just because he wanted Major Taylor to ride on a Munger-made bicycle, which he did, to promote the brand, but also to promote equality. So that was a rare quality himself that he had in wanting to do that. So Major Taylor asked these gentlemen for a racing license, and one of the promoters said, we can't do that. If we give you a racing license, there'll be riots in the street of New York City. And the other promoter said, shouldn't you be shining the shoes of the white gentleman on Fifth Avenue? Major Taylor said, no, I should be given the right to race equally against these other racers. I've won so many amateur contests, and I have just as much right to be here as anybody else. And not only that, if you put me on the racing with the white racers, you can promote this as a race of white versus black. So let me ask the gentleman with the slideshow to put up a slide or two, and I'll show you what Major Taylor looked like around this time. If you can put up the first or second slide. This is Major Taylor around this time. He does not look like a person you might say, well, there is a very large, strong professional athlete because he was a skinny kid. That's what he was, but he was considered even at this time, and is what I think is one of his first professional photographs, a great racer. If you go to the next slide. This is Birdie Munger, who I just mentioned. If you go to, I can't click anything, so I'm asking the gentleman to go ahead. This is Arthur Zimmerman, who wrote a book. He was a great professional cyclist himself. You may have heard of him. He wrote a book called Points on Training. He met with Major Taylor in Annapolis, gave him a lot of the tricks of the trade. Major Taylor really listened carefully and absorbed a lot of the lessons from Arthur Zimmerman about how to eat, how to train. Go ahead. This is Madison Square Garden of the day where the six-day race occurred. This wonderful building doesn't exist today, but what a magnificent structure it was. If you can just put yourself in that time period in Madison Square Garden, 10, 15,000 people could fit in. The place was so filled with smoke and the grime from the barbecue and the dust from the ground. Major Taylor later said that his fellow riders were so covered with grime and soot they could have passed for his brother. You can go to the next slide. Okay, so to go to the six-day race. Before the six-day race started, all of New York was enthralled with this race. Racers from around the world came to compete in the six-day race. The newspapers of the day, this is before radio and film and so forth, the newspaper wars loved this stuff. They wrote about all of the racers coming from all over the world. No one got more publicity than this man, Eddie Cannonball Bald. He was shoot from like a ball from a cannon. So he got his nickname when he was sprinting. He was the great sprinter of the day. He was, his picture was on the cover of magazines, products. He was a superstar before that phrase was even used. So Eddie Cannonball Bald, who was not only a racer, but a great racist, was someone who Major Taylor would line up against. Before the six-day race started, there was the preliminary match of a sprint, a short sprint, and that created an awful lot of excitement, such an incredibly fast race, compared to waiting six days for a result to come in. So the day came in December of 1896, when Eddie Ball and others faced up, Major Taylor was given his license. The promos did agree that they would attract a lot of interest by promoting it as black versus white. So they lined up on the starting line. Major Taylor had been trained by the South Brooklyn Wheelmans Club and all those folks were there. And the starters pistol went off. They went around the lap one time. And you can just imagine the incredible screams. There were a lot of blacks there who had heard Major Taylor was there, representing the race really. And they came out in great numbers. It was an incredible attraction. Second lap and then third lap. And as they came near the finish, Major Taylor actually was in front. And he believed that he had won and he threw his hands up in victory. He was really new to this. It was very confusing, incredibly noisy. And the Wheelmans Club screamed at him and said there's one more lap to go. And at that moment Eddie Ball shot just like he famously always did, like a ball from a cannon and tried to go ahead. And Major Taylor put everything he had into it in that last lap and he won that sprint. And it was an incredible event because it was really the first time that you can see a race such as this where a black person had been given the right on the greatest stage of all to compete against whites and had won and it became a sensation. Newspapers covered this from around the world. Eddie Ball was mortified and made many racist comments that I quote in the book about Major Taylor. And this was just a preliminary match. So then much later in the same day, the six day race was set to start. And again, Major Taylor had agreed that he would compete. He was a sprinter. He was not built to be a six day racer. I mean, nobody really should have been racing six days. It was an inhumane sport. People would say it would take 10 years off your life. The idea was you'd go around the track at as many miles as you could in six days. You could take time off if you wanted to but whoever had the most miles after six days was the winner. So they would take an hour off here and hour off there and compete. Oftentimes it was 18 hours a day of racing. Incredibly, incredibly difficult racing. So when Major Taylor lined up for the six day race, he looked to his sides and Eddie Bald was not there. And he was shocked. He looked up, finally there was Eddie Bald with a starter's pistol in his hand. Eddie Bald was a sprinter. He knew he had no chance in a six day race. He wanted nothing to do with Major Taylor in another contest. So he said, I'm gonna shoot the starter's pistol and did not compete. As the six day race went off, Major Taylor had never seen anything like this, never experienced anything like this. He loved the idea of all the crowd shouting but after 18 hours of racing on the first day, he was incredibly tired. He had never done something like this. He wasn't really prepared or trained for something like this and yet he maintained. Birdie Munger was there. He gave him a mixture and he said, if you drink this mixture, it'll help you race nonstop for hours. And so Major Taylor drank the bicarbonate of soda and kept on going, not knowing that this was really doing nothing for him other than the motivation. On the third day, Major Taylor was still competing. Many others had dropped out and at one point he started hallucinating. He put his arms on the bike and laying down and then he finally said, there's a man chasing me around the track with a knife and then at one point, he just slammed into the railings around the track. He was so incredibly tired but his manager and his trainer somehow convinced him to keep on going. If he failed, if he withdrew, there would be such mocking of him and it would be so bad for blacks in general. Major Taylor had this incredible motivation. As a 15 year old, he had actually written a letter to a cycling publication saying that blacks should have equal rights. This was an extraordinary thing to do for a 15 year old. You can see where his heart was coming from and Birdie Munger had made clear he wanted him to do this for the greater social purpose. So the race went on, more and more people dropped out and incredibly Major Taylor was able to complete this race. He raced all six days. He didn't win. He came in I believe it was seventh place but completing this race and having won the preliminary sprint, he got extraordinary publicity. It was an extraordinary triumph for Major Taylor to do this and over time over the next year or two, he became what I call in the book one of the most chronicled African-American men of his day. What I want you to take away from what I'm talking about, you all know that he was one of the greatest cyclists in the world. What I want you to take away is the idea that he was also one of the great civil rights icons of his time. He also developed incredible training methods. If you just skip, we'll go really quickly through a couple more slides. I know the time is limited. He was one of the first people on an integrated sports team. Go ahead. He was mocked. He was ridiculed. The prejudice against him was extraordinary. He was beaten up on the track time and time again. And nonetheless, he persevered. Go ahead. Eventually, he became more and more a trim, more athletic, and his physique went under this incredible transformation. Go ahead. This is him racing in France. Remember the picture I showed you, the first one where he's a scrawny kid? He was five foot seven, about 150 pounds at his peak racing forum. He developed this incredible technique. I actually have a chapter in the book, an appendix where I talk about his training methods because they're so impressive and ahead of his time. He gave prejudiced amounts of eggs to get protein. He wrote that if I'm an ounce over or under weight, some of the cyclists in this room probably can empathize with this. If I'm an ounce under or over my weight, then I'll lose my competitive edge. Go ahead. He put this photo in his own autobiography. He wanted to show people, this is what I look like in perfect form and in perfect shape. And that's the photo he put in his autobiography. So the transformation is incredible. Next slide is shows how they promoted his races, black versus white. This was a race against Eddie McDuffie in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Go ahead. This is his family, Daisy his wife, Sydney his daughter who I interviewed when she was 96 years old in 2001 and first became possessed with doing this story. Go ahead. This is what he looked like on the cover of many magazines in France where he also competed. Go ahead. This is him competing in France. I'm skipping through chapter after chapter and split second time for him. Go ahead. Now I want to leave you with a couple of things. We could talk for an hour about this year or that year. I went earlier this year on a book talk to Chicago. In Chicago they have the Major Taylor Trail and this wonderful quote which actually brought tears to my eyes. When I read it in a word I was a pioneer therefore I had to blaze my own trail. The double beating is just so wonderful. And maybe there's people who are in the audience who can push their own missapality especially in underserved areas to create major Taylor trails all over the country. This is in Chicago, other areas have talked about it but really his message should be brought out and those words you couldn't think of a better way to say it than I applaud the Chicago Major Taylor Club. Everywhere I've spoken I have found that there are major Taylor clubs. Many of the events I've gone to the clubs turn out in their major Taylor kits. It's the most wonderful thing. Really my favorite thing of doing the book tour has been meeting all the people of major Taylor clubs who are really wanna promote the word not just of someone who was a great cyclist but what he meant for African Americans in general and for our country. If you go ahead to the next slide I wanna leave you with this quote because some people talk about major Taylor really wasn't that outspoken and so forth. He actually was and I really think I make a case in the book that and I'll read it for those who can't see it. At a time of great inequality Taylor said his life should be remembered for fighting for simple justice, equal rights and a square deal for the posterity of my downtrodden but brave people not only in athletic games and sports but in every honorable game of human endeavor. Major Taylor became national champion. He became the world champion in 1899 in Montreal, Canada and he said when they played the Star Spangled Banner in Canada he had never felt more American and it's such an honor for me to be able to be here and tell major Taylor's story. Thank you very much. If you have any questions or wanna share some other stories Michael will be here after the program. So after intermission, after the program today you can buy the book, he will autograph it. There are incredible stories about major Taylor. It's a great resource and like he said he interviewed Sydney, major Taylor's daughter and Indiana is trying to do some things about recognizing major Taylor. Teddy Roosevelt was a big fan of major Taylor and yet at the end of his life there were some sad moments and he died penniless and there's some other stories about how the Schwinn family got involved in that. So it's a story of perseverance, of bicycling in American history. So we appreciate Michael coming out and he will be here after the program, buy the book, have him autograph it. By the way, one of the last great remaining locally owned bookstores is selling it today. So it's not going to Amazon or anything it's actually going back into the community. So Avid Reader is here tonight to sell the books at the end of the program. So thank you and we do have a major Taylor bike in the museum and our collections manager we found one of the ways major Taylor helped support himself later in life was to publish his autobiography. And we have a copy of a book where he inscribed it to W.E.B. DuBois in his own handwriting. So we have that as part of the collection. So anyway, as a great inductee to the Hall of Fame and you're talking about some of the technology of the day with books, but also the Hall of Fame is trying to push the technology and tell some of these stories not only in this area and in education but also on the internet. So we have a little promo here before we go a couple of notes before intermission using some technology to tell stories. We have a new initiative from Learning Curved about 360 degree immersive video. So we have a little video we wanna show real quickly about hopefully the future of some of the ways we can tell these stories. You wanna roll that? Stand up in the back there is a producer of that right there. You have some questions. We're looking for some help to take this idea so that we can tell some more of these stories not throughout the country and around the world through the internet. So that's Learning Curved, 360 degree immersive video types of technology. I'd like to introduce the chair of tonight's induction committee, Brodie Hamilton. You having a good time? Are you having a good time? Okay, good, good, good. Michael, that was fascinating stuff. I'm gonna get the book and I wanna inscription one little tidbit since I know a little bit about the history of vehicles and such and New York City, the time you were describing the late 1890s around 1900, one of the biggest issues New York City was dealing with with 100,000 horses was 2.5 million pounds of horse manure they had to deal with every single day. And we think we go to interesting conferences nowadays. Back then they had conferences, city conferences and they dealt with horse manure. So things have changed. Well, maybe not. You know, some, yeah, Washington they're still dealing with that. I mean, probably more than that, I just said. Anyway, to piggyback on Bob, I wanna welcome you all here. We really appreciate folks coming out for this event. It takes a lot of work, a lot of time. We plan for about six months. Normally tomorrow we would be, or Monday we'd be calling to reserve the room again for next year. And then in May, June, we start planning again. So it takes a lot of time and energy and what I wanted to do now is thank the members of the committee because they put in so much time to pull this off. And it always goes so smoothly, but there are all these details that need to be taken care of. So as I call your name, please stand up and then we'll give them a round of applause for the great job. Bob Bowen, John Hess, I want you to stand up, guys. Jeff Shaw, who's over there in the corner, Larry Swanson, David Taco-Mutter-Wertz. Come on, David. Oh, he's short. It's hard to tell when he's standing up. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. And Kate Bowen, right over here, the beverage. So thank you all very much. And as I mentioned before, the best part is they come back each year to do it again, so it's just fantastic. And also, the voice you hear on this is Bob Bowen. The material put together in large part is Bob Bowen. And along with Jeff Shaw, the editing and everything to put these presentations together and they become part of the Hall of Fame and ultimately will be accessible by people that want to do a little research and learn more about the inductees. So it's an important part of not only the program tonight to honor the inductees, but also for the future. Yeah, I'm skipping through some stuff here because I want to move along. But George Mount took people for a bike ride today. Where's George? Thank you, George. Did everybody make it safely? You don't know. What George tends to do is he starts the race and then he just leaves everybody. And then he goes, no, no, no. You hung around for people? Okay, yeah. Yeah, right. As Bob mentioned, please note on the back of the programs, the sponsors that have made tonight possible and a special thanks to USA Cycling for their nice donation this year to help us with the event. And it would not have happened without the sponsors and without all of you coming. So thank you very much. And also a big thank you to Cliff Family Wine, who, Cliff Family Winery, who provided the wine and New Belgium Brewery for providing the beer. And each year, local Astrolitia flowers provides all the flowers. This wonderful arrangement up here and everything on the table, all donated to the USA Cycling Hall of Fame. We're gonna take a break in a moment, about 10, 15 minutes. And we want you all to go back and make some bids on some items back there. The proceeds go to the Hall of Fame to help pay for this event. And if we make more than the cost of this event, we've got some other things that we can spend it on, as Bob just mentioned in terms of the meeting or the video he just showed. A reminder that the holidays are coming up. So don't just think of what might be of interest to you, but maybe other family members. And some of the great trips there will probably have some of those on our online auction as well. But as Bob mentioned, the online auction will go live on Monday. We're gonna have some neat stuff on there. The special item is a Dixie Flyer from the Walfours Bicycle Company up North. And all decked out with Shimano, thanks to Wayne for making arrangements for those components to, excuse me, components to be donated by Shimano, so we really appreciate that. And don't forget to pay on your way out the door. If you bid on something and you win, last year we had a few people that just kinda cruised out and we had a few things left, so we had to call them and make arrangements. And then there is a bicycle that we're auctioning off and it comes in men's and women's size. It's a local bike shop that has provided that and it comes in multiple colors. If that's not the bike you want and you don't wanna take it home with you tonight, we can arrange for you to go buy the bike shop tomorrow and get the bike that most fits your fancy in same style. And if you're out of the area, we could probably arrange for it to be shipped by getting one that's not put together yet. So we're gonna take about 15 minutes. We're gonna go back there and put some bids down and then we're gonna come back and induct a couple more people. So thank you again very much for coming. Final bids, please. So we're all ready. If everybody has a seat, we've got the lights off. We're gearing up and queuing up our next video. So our third inductee tonight is a contributor to the sport, Sean Petty. We'll watch the introductory video. Sean Petty contributor to the sport. Sean Petty has promoted and managed cycling programs at the highest levels in the United States and internationally for over 34 years. From 1985 to 1990, he managed the 7-Eleven Cycling Sponsorships for Men, Women, and Juniors Road and Track Teams, including the first U.S. Pro Men's Team in the Tour de France, a national road series, a national track series, and 7-Eleven's sponsorship of the 1986 UCI World Championships. From 1994 to 2014, Sean managed an array of programs as a team leader in various capacities with USA Cycling, including support of the 2000 Olympic Games, 18 World Championships, sponsorships, communications, and memberships. He ended his 20-year employment at USA Cycling as the chief operating officer. Petty now serves as a volunteer board member for several cycling organizations, including USA Cycling, Union Cycliste Internationale, UCI, and Bicycle Colorado. He is the only UCI Road Commissioner member from outside of Europe. As a strong advocate for women's cycling, Petty has served as the race director for the USA Pro Challenge Women's Race in 2015 and the women's Colorado Classic from 2017 to 2019. Sean Petty, 2019 inductee as a contributor to the sport. Before I invite Sean up to, we just yesterday received a letter from the CEO of USA Cycling, Rob DeMartini. I'd like to read it very quickly. On behalf of USA Cycling, I would like to extend our sincere congratulations on your election and induction to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, your significant contributions to our sport and our organization are appreciated by everyone at USA Cycling and throughout the industry. You are a great resource to me and many others in the sport and we are truly happy to see you get this meaningful recognition. Sincerely, Rob DeMartini from USA Cycling. So now, please welcome Sean Petty. Come on down. There he is. Appreciate it. Well, I'm certainly on the heels of the major Taylor presentations, kind of humbling to be alongside someone like that and who had real battles. Mine have never been at that level so can appreciate being along with someone so great and a lot of the folks who are here in the Hall of Fame. I'm so honored to be standing before you tonight as a U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame inductee. Throughout my 34 years in cycling, I've always strived to contribute to the success of people and the sport. So to be included as a contributor is tremendous validation and truly humbling. Growing up as a Husky kid in Texas, I'll be honest, I didn't even know cycling was a sport and much less a sport that embodies so much beauty, passion, courage, athleticism and sheer determination. And I certainly couldn't have imagined one day being a member of the sports Hall of Fame. I'd like to thank Ray Cipollini for nominating me and thank you to the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame Board of Directors and all of the people who voted for me who thought I've contributed enough to the sport to earn a place alongside so many people who I know and respect. And I'm fortunate to have worked with a lot of my fellow Hall of Fame members and blessed to call many of them my friends. A lot of them are here tonight in fact. As highlighted in the introductory video, my journey and really my love affair with cycling started in 1985 when I joined the South Incorporation. I was excited to be hired as a sports marketing manager for 7-Eleven. I was told I was going to manage all the 7-Eleven cycling programs. Fantastic, I said. But I was thinking to myself, excuse me, you don't know a dang thing about cycling. However, I couldn't have asked for more welcoming, talented and patient group of people from which to learn. Jim Ackowitz, Tom Shuler, and the many members of the 7-Eleven men's and women's teams who I was lucky enough to work with became family. So much so that our men's team has a reunion every five years, so we have a good time. While the 7-Eleven men's and women's teams had already made cycling history in the lead-up to an F in 1984 Olympic Games, I came on board in 1985 when the men's team turned professional and along with Greg LeMond really blazed a trail for all the U.S. professional men's teams that would follow. My crash course in cycling had me witness history right away, including the 7-Eleven men's team winning two stages in the 1985 Giro d'Italia, which set the stage for the 7-Eleven team to be invited to the 86 Tour de France. The 86 Tour was a watershed moment for USA Cycling, as you all know. The 7-Eleven team was the first U.S.-based pro team to compete in the Tour and made history right away in its Tour debut. 7-Eleven's Alex Theta was the first North American to wear the yellow race leaders jersey and Davis Finney became the first U.S. rider to win a road stage in the Tour de France and of course Greg went on to win the 86 Tour becoming the first U.S. rider to do that. The 7-Eleven team's success is well-pronical and I was honored to be at the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame Ceremony along with Jeff Pearce in 97 when the team was given special recognition. As much attention as the men's road team got, I was proud to be part of the investment and commitment to the women's team, junior development and track cycling. Our women's team led by an incredible success of Inga Thompson and Rebecca Twig was a powerhouse that featured some of the best women in the world and we proudly supported them well. I was telling Inga recently that sadly in the late 80s we were paying our women's team riders more than many of the professional women are being paid today. Clearly, that's not right and my more recent efforts as a member of the UCI Road Commission and as race director of the women's only Colorado classic stage race are focused on bringing parody, promotion and revenue to women's cycling. This beautiful sport has taken me around the world during my 34 years in cycling. With that in mind, I have a few random thoughts so bear with me as I bounce around various topics and experiences. One comes to mind the Orida women's challenge we were talking about women's racing. It was light years ahead of any other race for women then and even now. Jim Ravdow was such a visionary who unlike the UCI at the time believed women could race longer, harder stages than UCI rules allowed. The women race for 17 days and amazingly everyone survived. I believe our 7-11 team won that race four times in a row and Inga won it three times. Right Inga? In 1985, in a relatively obscure, let's see, Mayor Nutter here, in a relatively obscure suburb of Philadelphia, the legend of the Manioc Wall was born. The US Pro Championship was a magnificent 156 mile race that went up the wall with a 70% grade 10 times. And, yes, true, as Tom Shuler. Each lap the party grew and the crowd was as loud as any of I experienced anywhere in the world. The 7-11 team didn't win that race as often as we wanted, but we had memorable wins with Eric Hyden the first year and Tom Shuler in 87. And who would have thought a bike race would be a launch pad for an eventual presidential candidate? Yes, the 1989 Tour de Trump was a memorable affair. Today's politics aside, it was a great race from the outset with network TV and we were elated to have D'Agato Lourdes in win the race. For me, the most surreal moment of the first Tour de Trump was in Baltimore. It had been determined that the overall race leader and the stage winner would be invited to the 280 foot Trump princess that was anchored in the Baltimore Harbor. Since Davis Finney won the stage and D'Agato Lourdes in was leading the race, Oach, Davis, D'Agato and I were part of the group that was given a guided tour of the entire yacht by none other than the future 45th president of the United States. So interesting times for sure. And a lot of kind of political, historical along the way as well, the 1987 Tour de France started in West Berlin, which required us to drive the team cars through East Germany. We were told to stay on the highway or they couldn't be responsible for what happened to us. And that was encouraging. While in West Berlin, some of us visited the famous checkpoint Charlie and peered over the wall towards the barbed wire guard stations in darkness that was East Berlin. It really made us appreciate our freedom. 12 years later, I was with the US team at the 1990 track world championships that were held in Berlin. The velodrome was actually in what used to be East Berlin, the transformation of the city after the wall came down was amazing. I returned to that place where I stood at checkpoint Charlie and the only sign of the wall were the bricks in the road that indicated where the wall between West and East Berlin had once stood. Another one, there was a picture in the video there. I was the US team director at the 95 Tour of China where our team support car, which you saw was an ancient taxi with no shocks that had more than 600,000 kilometers on the odometer. The pollution was so thick, you couldn't see the sky in Shanghai or Beijing, but that somehow seemed appropriate since the race was sponsored by a cigarette company. Kent Tour of China, I'm not kidding. I returned to Beijing in 2008 for the Olympic Games and the city had been transformed to a clean, shiny, modern facade and the air was clear, at least during the Olympics. And another picture that was up there was, I got to spend, who would have known? Got to spend three days driving Robin Williams and Eric Idle of Monty Python fame around the 2001 Tour de France. Never lapsed so hard for three straight days. So back to my career path in 94, I switched colors from the red, white, and green of 7-Eleven to the red, white, and blue of USA Cycling. USA Cycling will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2020. And I realized I've been involved with the organization in leadership or board positions for 25 years of its 100-year existence. Almost fell over. For some of you here tonight who represented the USA in international competition, you know the tremendous pride of representing your country. While I didn't compete for the USA, I was very proud to support and provide US athletes in road, track, mountain bike, BMX, and Cyclocross, the resources they needed to be successful at the World Championships, Pan Am Games, and Olympic Games. I've been proud to represent the USA's interest for the past 14 years as the only member of the UCI Road Commission from outside of Europe. I've been fortunate to attend 51 World Championships, five Olympic Games, and one Pan Am Games in various leadership positions. I've watched Cycling's presence and impact at the Olympic Games grow from metal events and only road and track to the addition of three American-born disciplines with mountain bike in 96, BMX in 208, and now freestyle BMX will debut in 2020 in Tokyo. There are so many incredible memories during my time at USA Cycling, but there are two particularly profound events that made me incredibly proud to be an American. Excuse me. One was at the 2001 Mountain Bike World Championships in Bale, Colorado. These world championships were tremendously significant because they were scheduled to start September 12th, 2001. Just one day, excuse me, after the 9-11 attacks. I was head of the US team, and along with the UCI and teams from around the world, we questioned if it was appropriate to hold the event at all. Like the rest of the world, we were shocked, confused, and in pain. The decision was made to move forward with the championships since all the teams from around the world were there and couldn't get back home anyway because all the US airports were gonna be closed for the foreseeable future. And all the athletes and teams wanted to send a message that the terrorist actions wouldn't dictate our lives. So with heavy hearts, everyone raced. It was even more impactful to see the Star of the Stripes jersey that week and support our team received from all the other countries. The final day featured the Women's Cross Country Race. Alison Dunlap was our best hope for a medal in that event. In one of the most moving, emotional, and inspirational rides I've ever seen, Alison won the world championship that day with enough of a lead to grab a large American flag from a spectator before she crossed the finish line. The weight of everything that happened that week and what Alison accomplished brought her two her knees and tears just past the finish line. Those spectators and our entire US team joined Alison in crying those tears that day. Brian Lopes won the downhill to do a world championship as well. So we got to hear our national anthem played twice on the podium that week. Hey, it's always special to hear the Star Spangled Banner play at Worlds or Olympic Games, but hearing it played that week was breathtaking. It was a brief moment of celebration in an otherwise very dark time. The second biggest patriotic moment I experienced was being able to march in as a member of Team USA at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney. I was team leader for the cycling team. We were a diverse group of about 800 athletes, coaches that included everyone from professional basketball players to athletes you've never heard of from the other 30 Olympic sports. And we walked in as one team. You could feel the collective pride of being Team USA. It was amazing. So I walked through that tunnel and onto Olympic track. The lights, the crowd and energy hit me like 10,000 volts of electricity running through my body. It was incredible. What made it even more special was that I got to march in with my wife Gail who was working for the U.S. Olympic Committee then. But my greatest accomplishment, greatest experience and greatest source of pride throughout my entire career has been my family. And they're with me tonight. I wanna thank my wonderful loving family who has allowed me to chase my passion in cycling. The passion I didn't know I had when I started out. My wife Gail, daughters Erin, Kristen and Morgan and my son Travis. Hey everyone, stand up there. Oh. By the way, all the kids were born in Olympic years. So that was impressive. I couldn't have done any of this without your unconditional love, patience and support. I'm so very glad to share this honor with you all tonight. And thank you again to the Bicycling Hall of Fame. And again, I couldn't be more honored and humbled to join you and join Karen tonight as well. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Just all of the videos and the speeches tonight are being recorded. So if you want a copy of that, check with Jeff Shaw over there at the end. They cut DVDs and for a small fee, they'll send them to you. So because when you're immediate and you hear these stories, these anecdotes, they're from the heart, it's really special. So you can continue and share those with others if you wish. So now our final Hall of Fame inductee for 2019. We have another little video for the Modern Road and Track Competitor, Karen Bliss. Take a look. Karen Bliss, 2019 inductee as a Modern Road and Track Competitor. Karen Bliss was a 1981 graduate of Quaker Town Community High School in Pennsylvania. She began racing for Penn State University Cycling Club in 1983. After college graduation in 1985, she joined other aspiring bike racers in 1986 at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. She raced full-time until her retirement in 1998. Along the way, she also earned her master's degree in public relations from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Bliss averaged almost 100 race days per year and due to her strong sprinting ability, collected more than 300 career wins on the road and track. She competed in the world championships five times and was on the US national team from 1987 through 1998. Bliss raced all over the US and Europe as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada and Japan. Bliss was a seven-time national champion, three times in criterion racing and four times in track points racing. Karen also had great success as a road racer in stage races. Karen Bliss living in winning the first stage for the second year in a row. Field sprint and I think we were counting on that which was a good thing for me. But it was really aggressive with international riders here. They've been really strong in the past two races we've done on the East Coast. So there were a lot of attacks and of course it was really hard at the hill. The group split on the hill like it always does. Always comes back together, which it did. Karen was the 1997 USA Cycling's road cyclist of the year and she was named the winningest cyclist in North America by Bellow News. North American, professional platoon champion, Karen. Claire Leveringston. So psyched. This is probably one of my best wins ever and I am my thank you there and I'm just over there. She also served as the representative for athletes on the USCF, USA Cycling Board from 1996 through 2000. After retiring, Bliss stayed involved in cycling as a sport director, a public relations coordinator and a sponsorship manager. She worked at Bicycling Magazine and spent 15 years at her original sponsor, Fuji Bicycles where she became the president of the company. Karen Bliss, 2019 inductee as a modern road and track competitor. And now please welcome Karen Bliss. This is really an honor and a privilege. And honestly, I have had so much fun rehashing all of my race stories and reimagining all the places I've been to and traveled to and all the people that I've been with. As you can tell though, my voice, it just happened today. It's really sad. I had a really great speech plan, I practiced it. So I've asked because this is gonna be hard to listen to for 15 minutes. So I've asked my teammates and my friends to come join me and help me tell my story. And you'll have to excuse them, this is last minute for them. So if you guys wouldn't mind coming up. So what I did was I broke down my race career into five stages. So I was lucky enough to have my friends and my family here who represent those five stages. And I put some stories together around them and these people. So I'm gonna start with stage one, if I can find it. Sorry, prologue, I'm sorry, I'm starting with the prologue. Starting with the prologue, which I'll go through and then we'll get to these guys. Starting with the prologue and with my dad who's here, Larry Bliss, who's been with me every step and every pedal stroke of the way. My dad's the one who got me into cycling. We started riding when I was in high school and we kept on riding together throughout my career. My dad still rides at 78 years old. He's also the one who keeps me humble. I raced in more than 1500 races around the globe and I averaged 100 race days per season for 15 years. My claim to fame as a cyclist is that I had more than 300 career wins. My dad would say and did say that I was one of the most notable bike racers who never graced an Olympic or world championship podium. I can hear him now telling my mom, I meant she persevered, she had a consistent career. But really, I get it dad, I know what you're trying to say. But truly my mom and dad were my biggest fans. My dad traveled to Lyon, France for my first world championships in 1989. And when he couldn't get to a big race, he would go for a bike ride in my hometown of Quakertown, Pennsylvania at the same time that I was racing and it didn't matter if that was in Stuttgart, Germany or if that was in Tokyo. My mom, also one of my biggest fans came to many of my races. She came and watched me every year, the 15 years I raced at the Tour of Somerville. This doesn't hurt by the way, it's just painful for you to listen to. So the difference between my dad and my mom as fans, my mom, after one Somerville race, thank you. I rolled around to the back straight where they would hang out every year with a picnic. My mom gives me a big hug and she says, honey, that's really great, you won the race, but do you really have to go that fast? So thank you mom and dad, you're a huge reason why I'm being honored here tonight. Stage two, or stage one, sorry, is Susan DeBias, who was my travel, I met at Penn State and she was my an adventure, if you would say, and I'm gonna let her tell the story that I was gonna tell. I joined the Penn State Cycling Club in I think 1983 or something like that, but anyway, it was pretty clear, Karen was the alpha female of the Penn State Cycling Club and I was very much like a total goober. So I was hanging out at the back of the pack and just minding my own business and Karen, who was clearly the star, but yet willing to give some advice to a newbie cyclist, comes, she glides back to the back of the path and she says, are you wearing underwear? And I was like, uh-huh. And she said, no, that's really not cool, don't do it again. And so I never did. I was terrified of her. We ended up working at a ski shop, bike shop together and until we both graduated, she had to wait for me to graduate four and a half years. We didn't have jobs. We were terrified of living in our parents' basement. So we were like, we had no plan. We had absolutely no clue. We decided to move out to Colorado together. She had won a Toyota Corolla in a bicycle race. Well, you won $500 in a bicycle race and she bought a car. We loaded that car up like with, I think we had 10 bikes, skis, bikes, wheels, like whatever, we drove it out to Colorado. We moved to Breckenridge, Colorado. We lived, we found a, we showed up like New Year's Eve in Colorado, which is a really bad idea. We found a one room apartment with a creepy real estate agent. We had 10 bikes, a turbo trainer, and we had one sink and one toilet. And so we needed a plan really quick. So I'm like, all right, I'll get the job with the shower and you get the job with the food. So I got a job with a locker room. She got a job at a Mexican restaurant. So we had food. And then we lived in that place for a couple months and she got the call from the Olympic Training Center. Like you got accepted into the camp and that's the end of stage one. I just want to give a quick plug to Susan. So Susan and I were like, these companions in adventure. And when we did go out west together, you know, we have these big dreams and very little money as you heard. But I wanted to say that Susan went on and she is now the general manager of Babalot Tennis Rackets. So, you know, there was something behind that youthful optimism that was genuine. So I'm really proud and very happy to be your friend. Okay, stage two, I'd said, okay, this is my fun stage. So after I got past that first part of my stage, I got on the Fuji Santor team. And in my fun stage, who could better represent than Jeannie Gole, my fellow Hall of Famer. Who was my teammate? And she's going to tell a couple of those stories. Hi, thank you so much. So great to be here. So, let's see, Karen and I and our Fuji Santor teammates traveled around the country and our Kitted Out Nissan van totally wrapped. It was super cool. And every week we would look through the Bell News Magazine, which came out every week. And we were looking for all the race ads with the biggest price list. And that's how we charted our path across the country. And we would pull our winnings, which was usually just enough to get us to the next race. We would crash on the couch of some poor unsuspecting relative or friend of a friend and park ourselves there, sometimes for weeks. We followed the Wheatthin series, not only because it was a great series, but because David Pelletier, the PT Barnum of the bicycle racing world, would pay us in cash behind the timing stage after each race. Cash was king. And we paid attention to the other races that when we were traveling to the other races, we knew which ones we had to stay in town for a couple of days for the checks to pass to clear. So it was, we were in survival mode. So I also introduced Karen to Gainesville, Florida, which was a pleasure of mine. That's where I discovered cycling, and it's an awesome place to bike race and ride and go to school, go Gators. Gainesville was the perfect winter training ground, especially if you were a sprinter, because there were no hills to break up the pack. All the group rides were fast. You had to learn quickly how to handle your bike, how to ride smoothly in a national on not overlap wheels or brake at the wrong time and how to be an excellent wheel sucker. So here's to my teammate and excellent wheel sucker. Thanks, Jeannie. Jeannie was a lot of fun to travel with, definitely. She also secretly got a couple of my Fuji Sentor teammates to come to this event, which I really appreciate. Patty Cashman, who was on the ride today and Annie Sarotnac, who's here. Quick story about Annie. Annie and I drove in that same car that Susan was talking about from Colorado Springs, where we were both at the Olympic Training Center to the Torre, Texas in 1986, and something happened to the car, whatever. So we had the bikes on the top of the roof and we're like, oh, well, okay. I remember a couple of miles back, there was an automotive place. So Annie and I take the bikes off the roof, ride backwards on the highway toward this place, get in the tow truck with the guy, go and pick up the car. And the guy's like, ah, it needs another part. And we're like, well, okay, great. Can you go get it? Cause we need to go for a bike ride. So that's what we did. Went for a couple hour bike ride, guy fixed the car. We had barely enough money to pay the guy. And anyway, those are our fun stories. Thanks, Annie, for showing up. And thank you, Jeannie, for showing me how much fun cycling can be. All right, now we're on to stage three, thank you. Stage three is sort of the last part of my cycling career. So I had crazy adventures with Susan. I had fun with Jeannie. But the last part was really, I was taking it a lot more seriously. And at that time, I wanted to get on the Saturn Cycling Team. And Tom Shuler, who's here tonight in another Hall of Famer, actually got me on that team, which I really appreciate. He was the team manager. It was really, really amazing. It was finally a livable salary. It was fully supported and sponsored. Every rider had two bikes, a home bike and a race bike. We got a huge suitcase full of cycling gear. It was just nothing that somebody at that time could not even imagine. And one quick note about Tom Shuler's, I like to call him an early feminist because he convinced Shimano that it was a good idea to outfit both the men's and the women's teams with Durace after they originally sent Durace for the men and Ultegra for the women. So thank you, Tom. Also during that time, I became good friends with Kendra Wenzel. So Kendra and I were not only really good friends, but we were training partners and we were competitors. So there are a lot of stories. And I've asked Kendra to tell one about, and plus the fact that we were both sprinters. So we went head to head many times. Kendra was on Timings. I was on Saturn. So there was a lot of digging out in sprint finishes. All right, so the story that Karen asked me to tell was from the Killington Stage Race in 1998. We were finishing up the Sunset Loop. It was a 60 mile sort of hilly, but not so hilly to break up the field. So we're coming into the finish pack of probably 50 riders were flying toward the finish. It's slightly downhill, two miles straight and you can see the finish way down. And I think we had a tailwind too. It was super fast. We're screaming along. It would have been really cool to have drones back then to see that because we're just, we're moving. It looks like chaos, right? Unless you've been a bike racer, it looks like chaos except it wasn't. Because what was happening up front is that you had the black, yellow, and red of the Saturn team on the left side and the purple, red, and white of the Timex team on the right side. And at the end of each of those lines was Karen and myself. And we, again, we're flying. And just about before we're gonna jump, Karen looks at me and I look at her and we smile. Because this is what you train for. This is what the intervals are for. The miles, the hill climbs. I mean, all the times that we've been driving the bus to the finish, just trying to get there so that we can get to the crit in that stage race, this is what it was all about. And I don't, she and I will never forget that. It was such an amazing feeling, just doing that thing that you love the best and we were all feeling it. So it was an honor to race with Karen and I'll let her finish the story. That was the next part of the story. So I tell the story a lot because it really was, for me, like the pinnacle of what it felt like to be a really good bike racer, just being on top of your game and knowing that your teammates are out there really just killing it for you. And it was like, you know, I knew Kendra's strengths, she knew mine. It was just incredible feeling. But I tell this story and everyone always asks, who won? And I say, well, that's not the point. The point is, this is just what it feels like to be like really like, you know, having your moment. But at the end of the day, okay, I won. But I told Kendra that I was gonna tell the story and she was quick to point out. All right, remember, Karen, you had the 53-11 and I only had the 53-12. So on to my last stage. On to the fourth and final stage, which is really the story about my life post-racing. So I stayed in the cycling world. I started as the marketing manager of Fuji Bicycles, my original sponsor, in 2004, 15 years later, which was just this past summer. I became the president, which was quite an honor. And during that time, I'm proud to say that we continued their sponsorship and I was proud that we sponsored many riders and teams and supported many grassroots efforts. And I'm gonna let Lisa tell the story about her and her husband, Michael Nutter. So we're a post-racing career. I have no idea who Karen is. I'm a fitness cyclist at the time. And so, sadly, the only thing I ever really watched in terms of cycling was the Tour de France every now and then, and knew virtually nothing about women's cycling. And so it's been amazing to meet you women to know what you've done and to also now sort of be part of your life. So thank you. But back to Karen. My husband, who was mayor of Philadelphia at the time, and I were working together with Karen to lift up and elevate the Philadelphia, the international, we renamed it, I think it was the International Cycling Classic. And it was a big deal because it was a chance to sort of reset the race. And there were a couple things that were curious to me and Karen and I, at this point, had started riding together at my husband's suggestion. And so my husband told her at some point, you know, my wife, she's a cyclist. Like, I just watch it, but she really does ride. And I remember, I'm just a fitness cyclist. I'm not really like them. And so Karen says, okay, sure, I'll ride with your wife, whatever. And so we go out, she meets me at my house and she brings a bike, which was generous of her, it was a Fuji, of course. And I think that bike is still in circulation in the family. And she was sort of surprised that I had my own bike and I actually had my own pedals. And I said, well, I need to put my pedals on the bike. Like I knew that much, that I needed my own pedals. And so she's like, oh, okay. Well, and then she proceeds to mess with the pedals and try to get the pedals off. We were about 30 minutes in, we haven't even left my house and this girl can't get the pedals off. So I said, well, were you a professional cyclist that not or not? Like, I don't understand why you don't know how to get pedals off. I understand why I don't know how to get the pedals off but why don't you know how to get the pedals off? So a lot of you not, we ended up taking the bike to a bike shop to get the pedals off. I said, so let me understand this. You never touched the bike. You just sat on the bike and rode the bike fast when you needed to. Cause clearly you don't know how to fix any of the bike. So, so, so Karen had in her mind. Oh, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm gonna go on a ride with, you know, Mayor Philadelphia's wife. And so we'll be out for a 10 mile spin and be back. And so 40 miles later, she was like, oh, this chick can actually ride. So that began our friendship. I earned her respect on that ride and she certainly got mine because on that ride, we shared a lot of stories. And as we continued to ride together, I got a little bored with a lot of the road riding cause I'm not a great, I'm not great up the hills and there's a lot of hills where we live. And I got tired of having her wait for me at the top. And I was like, you know, this is okay, but I really am looking for a new challenge. And I was about to turn 50 and she said, you should try track cycling. I was like, track cycling? What's that? And she's like, oh yeah, haven't you seen some novella drums? And one thing, blah, blah, blah. I was like, okay. So she takes me to Traxxar town and then we entered this corporate challenge. And it was totally corny, but it was fun. And lo and behold, I loved it. And at some point on one of our rides, we decided, I decided that I'm going to, for as part of my year 50 journey, I was gonna learn a new sport. So I said, hey, why don't I make it track cycling? I'm gonna learn how to be a track cyclist. It's a competitive level. Masters, cause I'm old, I'm 50. Well, I'm now almost 55 by the time I'm 50. So, so Karen said, great. Like, you know, I want to be on this journey with you. And so this is the kind of friend she is. And I really understand this until recently, like what, how much this meant. But here she was as a professional cyclist and she's gonna go compete with me at the USA Cycling Masters level competition. And we were at Rock Hill and we were, we just, I mean, this sort of recovery ride one day and it was, it was Rock Hill, it was hot. It was like 100 degrees South Carolina in July. So we pulled up at a red light and I look over and Karen was sort of behind me and I look over to my left and this big pick of the truck pulls up and he's got the hugest Confederate flag I have ever seen in my entire life just flying. And he looks at me and I look at him and I look at Karen and Karen just slowly moves up between me and the truck. I was like, yes, that's where you're going to be for the rest of this ride between me and these people here. So I just want you all to know that now when she an amazing bike rider, she is a rider die and a literal sense friend. And so thank you for that, Karen. Let me just add on to Lisa's story real quick that yes, I was like, I'm going to ride with a mayor's wife but I was so impressed and still continue to be impressed that she found her sport at age 50 and has gone on to win a US national championship in medal at the Worlds. And I said this earlier, she was of the era of Connie Paris-Gavin and I really believe she would have given Connie a run for her money for the world championship title for sure, amazing athlete. Okay, so I'm done with the stages and I just want to close and thank my family for being here. I really, really appreciate everyone from the East Coast making the trip. So my brother Andy is here, my cousin Danny, my two aunts, Alice and Kathy are here in addition to my mom and dad. My husband, Rob Jellin is here. Quick story about Robbie. Robbie and I dated in high school and we re-met again 20 years later and I'm eternally grateful to him because he really arrived back into my life at a time when many people in this room I'm sure can relate to which is when you're at the top of your game as a professional athlete and then all of a sudden you retire and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm starting at the bottom of whatever it is I'm starting. So I really want to thank my husband Rob for helping me believe in myself and continue to believe in myself during that tough transition. So a couple more thank yous to all the women who've come before me, who raced alongside of me and who continue to pave the way for future U.S. stars in the sport. Quick aside, I had a Peter Nye who was up here just quickly gave me this book. What is it, Peter? Queens of Pain. I just quickly got to review it today. He's reviewing it. It's coming up and it was just impressive that women's cycling did not start in 1955 like we all thought it did. It started back in 1800s, late 1800s. So really good, good story and I think Isabelle Best is the author. So when that comes out, I would suggest anyone who's interested in the history of women's sport to check it out. I really want to thank the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame and Bob, Kate and everyone else really were a stupendous in helping us get our act together here and also really appreciate your efforts in keeping the sport alive and keeping our stories alive. So thank you very much. Well, I don't know if I can follow that. I sound like the Godfather. Anyway, we're ready to wrap up here and Bob's gonna make some final comments but you've seen a number of videos up here. The lights have come on, they've gone off, there've been presentations up here and I just wanted to again thank Jeff and his crew over here. They've been here almost the whole day setting up, getting their sound system to work with the ARC sound system, producing the videos and everything else just to round this off and make it a super evening. So thanks Jeff, one more time. We didn't know we'd have Karen in the bliss band up here tonight, so that was excellent. So a couple of final announcements, any items in the silent auction that haven't been purchased, you can buy them, rip it off for the minimum amount and take it to the front when you check out. The Major Taylor book will be on sale right outside this door and Michael Cranich will sign them for you. And then Sean and Karen, I wanna meet you over here, I wanna give you your plaques and then we will have the paparazzi take pictures of the class of 2019 in front of that area and then you can mingle and hang out until we throw you out of the room. So we appreciate everybody's support and thanks again, Davis Media Access. Taking somebody's life and trying to boil it down into three minutes is a huge challenge and Jeff, Sean, Davis Media Access do a tremendous job and so we appreciate that and we'll keep that forever in the archives of the museum. So that's it, the 2019 induction is over. Good night everybody, we'll meet you in the corner here, buy your books. Thank you.