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Mentor, Please
- Thursday Night Racing, Part I
by David Teall
 As part of my contribution toward an
oral history of the M.V.W., I would like to write about that longstanding and most sacred
institution, Thursday Night racing. This will be by no stretch definitive; just my loose
account of the evolution (or de-evolution, if you prefer) of the Thursday Night scene.
Since, as I see it, no single factor has had a more profound effect of our races than the
riders themselves, my focus will be on those individuals who have left a lasting mark on
Thursday Night. But from where [rhetorical question] have those riders come?
An original goal of this club was rider
development. Yet, from my earliest association with the Wheelmen I've heard concerns that
Thursday Nights were missing that prime goal. The basic conflict was whether Thursdays
should be developmental races — training for the more important federation events
(then the A.B.L.) where the ultimate goal was Nationals, National Team selection and so on
up the ladder, with the hopeful possibility of discovering the next George Mount. Or, were
Thursdays legitimate in being a season-long championship, (some have called them the Thursday
Night World Championships) with the local cycling enthusiast in mind? Our Founding
Fathers seemed to expound the former. When I joined we started drifting toward the latter.
In practice we've always been both.
There was originally a structured
program of development and coaching, but this structure suffered when some key members
began to leave the Toledo area in the mid-seventies. Inadvertently, my beginnings in 1976
did not include this initiation through the program. In the autumn of 1975 I was caught
by Dave Skiver. I had purchased my first lightweight bicycle that Summer, did a few
tours, and was out riding for fitness when Skiver told me about the Wheelmen. The season
had just ended, so over the off-season Dave took me out for one-on-one training sessions
with next Spring in mind. We also did some weekend rides from Fallen Timbers and, of
course, the Equinox, so by the time club races began in April, I was known as Skiver's
protege. I was able to hang with the group and this overnight assimilation, bypassing the
formal initiation, may have left some of the old guard a bit disenchanted.
In the years that followed there were
more membership relocations, and others drifted away. There were also some new faces and
the club slowly grew. New members entered as proteges and some established racers even
relocated to Toledo. The races became increasingly more competitive over the years,
but the club was getting a bad rap for being an inaccessible, elitist organization.
Would-be members showed up for one race and were never seen again. For someone new to the
sport, finding a mentor might have been the only way in. Fortunately, we've had our share
of good mentors, one of whom I would next like to commemorate. Look for Cliff Mueller,
the Pied Piper of O.O.I.P. in the next chapter.
Next
03/19/08
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