By Travis Coltrain
Mud flies into the air, splattering spectators as bikers speed past, hitting 20 mph or more. Fans all around scream and cheer, and extended hands offer beer, money, and water to the racers.
Welcome to the world of cyclocross, a combination of seriousness akin to road racing with the easygoing atmosphere of mountain biking.
Iowa City will host the World Cup of cyclocross Thursday through Saturday at the Johnson County Fairgrounds. The track that the athletes will race on, called “Jingle Cross,” will be used as one of the World Cup tracks for the first time in the sport’s history.
Nine World Cup events will be held this season, in places such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Las Vegas.
Cyclocross, founded in France, is huge in Europe and in recent years has gained popularity in the United States, despite the cultural differences in the two countries, said Tim Hopkin, the founder of the North Carolina CycloCross.
In Europe, especially in such countries as the Netherlands and Belgium, cyclocross pro racers are treated as celebrities, Hopkin said. However, most fans usually cheer for all the racers.
Brenden Hardy, a local bicyclist and road racer, said cyclocross athletes in Europe are treated in a similar manner to the way football players are treated in the United States.
Some cyclists, such as Dutch racer Lars van der Haar, who has won the Under-23 Cyclocross World Championship twice, have a fan base of thousands of people, according to crossresults.com, a cyclocross statistics website.
In fact, van der Haar’s Twitter has more than 30,000 followers. Other notable cyclists include American racer Jeremy Powers, USA men’s cyclocross national champion, and American racer Ellen Noble, the women’s Under-23 national champion.
Bryan Wenzel, an amateur cyclocross racer who will participate in this weekend’s race, said the elite men’s race is an hour-long race, typically amounting to nine or 10 laps around a track, in which racers carry their bicycles over obstacles or up steep hills. The cyclists can dismount and remount the bicycle whenever necessary.
“In years past at Jingle Cross, the infamous steep hill called Mount Krumpit has become a running section because it is so steep, especially when it is all muddy,” Wenzel said. “This is the part of the race where mortals like myself, heart rate goes sky high.”
Jingle Cross is just one of many different tracks in the cyclocross world. Each of the tracks is different, creating a new atmosphere every time a participant races on a new track. Many different forms of races are also present, even kids’ events.
Spectators are very interactive with the race — many cyclists collide with barriers, usually crashing into or near a spectator, Hopkin said. Fans will often help racers get back on the track as quickly as possible.
“It is a very spectator-friendly course, with spectators on both sides of the track; many spectators will actually offer things to riders passing by,” Hopkin said. “Some offer money, while others offer water. Some people might even have beer.”
However, all fans aren’t quite the same, Hardy said. Lots of fans heckle the racers to have fun by offering beer and money to the cyclists hoping they’ll stop.
The unique, laid-back cycling culture can be attributed to the fans as well as the riders, cyclists say. Whether it’s pro, amateur, or kids, cyclocross fans always blow up when a winner emerges over other racers.
“If you put beer, ice, mud, sand, Oakland Raider fans, rock-music fans, and a bicycle in a big blender, the result would be a [cyclocross] fans,” Hardy said. “[Cyclocross] fans are a tad different from other sports fans, because you’re probably not cheering for a specific team, or in this case a certain rider, compared to cheering for everyone racing as whole.”