DU’s club cycling team has exploded onto the club sports scene after laying dormant for several years.
Justin Rose, David Muecke and Joe McNabb began the preparations for restarting the club last summer and spent most of the fall organizing the team.
Their efforts were rewarded with 60 club members, 28 of whom are active racers, which is, as Rose said, “pretty darn good for a first year.”
The team is co-ed and is diverse in both age and ability. Rose, vice-president and captain of the team, is currently ranked number 1 in Division II while there are others on the team that have never competed in a bike race.
“It’s amazing to me the diversity of the team, we have 18-year-old freshmen and 40-year-old law students,” Rose noted.
The team is classified as Division II because of DU’s size. However the cyclists still race against Division I schools like University of Colorado and Colorado State University. The other Division II schools in DU’s division are Colorado College, Mesa State, University of Northern Colorado and Colorado School of Mines.
According to Rose, there are 10 to 12 professional cyclists that compete in Europe that also ride in the same races as DU.
The team, while in its infancy as a program, faces intense competition yet has held its own, battling back and forth with CC for the lead in their division. DU has taken first against Division II schools in several races thus far and the team feels confident in its chances for going to nationals.
The top two teams from each division are invited to nationals and only the top eight riders on the team may be eligible to compete.
The season consists of a stretch of eight weeks of competition, beginning in early March, followed by a week off before nationals start. Each week of competition contains multiple races, usually two or three of the following: a road race, a team time trial or a hill climb. Denver’s season started in Colorado Springs at the Air Force Academy and since then the team has traveled to Salt Lake City and Durango. The national competition is held in Kansas.
There are three categories that cyclists race in: A, B and C. Category A is for the fastest and most experienced riders while category C is for the less experienced riders. Rose noted that DU has riders in all three categories. Riders who have never raced before will compete in category C while cyclists like himself compete in category A and will vie for an invitation to nationals.
DU’s cycling team has found a niche on campus and appears to have all of the components of a club that will continue to thrive and grow in the future thanks to the initial contribution of its three founders.
