As Tim Johnson crossed the finish line at the USA Cycling National Championships earlier this month, the rider's wide smile was the only thing not splattered with mud.
The Dec. 16 victory in Kansas City, Kan., was the fifth national championship for Johnson, but his first since 2000. From 2003 to 2005 he rode in cyclocross events sporadically while focusing on road racing. In 2004, he joined Spain's Saunier Duval-Prodir Pro Cycling Team, one of the elite programs in the European road racing world.
Road racing is the sport's premier, big-money area and teams such as Saunier Duval-Prodir, which send racers to events such as the Tour De France, are the best.
Surrounded by few English speakers and many superior riders, Johnson had a disappointingly uneventful season. At the end of 2004, he gave up the second year of a two-year contract.
"I floated in the minor leagues for a few years, always wanting to make the big show, and when I finally did, it made me realize that racing at the pro tour level wasn't for me," Johnson said. "I was a very small fish in a gigantic pond. It was tough to take. I spent three months off the bike at the end of '04, and questioned whether I really wanted to be a pro athlete.
"The thing that kept me in the sport and on my bike is that I really just love to ride," the Beverly resident added.
Johnson is a year-round racer - riding the roads during the spring and summer and cyclocross in the fall and through February in the United States and in Europe. He left just before Christmas for Europe, where he'll compete in World Cup events.
He is the captain for the top-ranked road-racing team in the United States, the
The Middleton native won a US under-19 championship in 1995 but made his impression on the world in 1999, when he became the first American on the podium at a world championship cyclocross race, finishing third in the under-23 division at Poprad, Slovakia.
"Think of any sport where an American broke through when we were not supposed to do it," said Richard Fries, publisher of Bike Culture magazine and the public address announcer for 11 of the last 12 US national championships. While other Americans have made an impact on the long-established European sport since, "Tim was the guy who broke through."
Earlier this year Cannondale, the bicycle manufacturer that cosponsors Johnson in cyclocross, came out with a bike named for him: The TJX. "It's a subculture, and a niche is a niche, but he's a god," Fries said.
Enthusiasts describe cyclocross - also called "cross" - as a spectator-friendly sport with a long history in Europe. The bicycles resemble road bikes, but with knobby tires and other unique features, and riders compete on steeplechase courses featuring banked turns and tightly laid out paths over a mixture of surfaces - including grass, hot top, mud, and ice. At numerous junctures in the race, riders must dismount to run over manmade barriers placed around the course.
With courses that wrap back on themselves, Fries said, "It's almost like racing in a supermarket.
"It starts out like the running of the bulls, becomes a boxing match, and then a marathon. It's the best spectator sport in bicycling, bar none."
Former pro rider Stu Thorne is the owner of online retailer cyclocrossworld.com and a partner in Bay Road Bikes in Hamilton and Riverside Cycles in Newburyport. He's also team director for Johnson's Cannondale/Leer/cyclocrossworld.com Professional Cycling Team.
"It's the fastest-growing discipline in cycling right now," said Thorne, noting that the field for the nationals had grown 20 percent every year over the past five years. Approximately 2,000 riders competed this year.
As a junior and amateur, Johnson rode for CCB/Volkswagen, a North Shore-based bicycling team that has turned out a handful of professionals.
"What [Johnson] loved to do the most was cyclocross," team manager Steve Pucci said. Pucci said the sport plays to many of Johnson's strengths, including strong bike-handling skills.
"Cyclocross races are relatively short, about an hour, and that really plays to his strength," said Pucci, who compared the furious bursts of energy mixed with short breathers to the sport of boxing.
"He can go really fast, then get his breath back and go really fast, then do it again, and do it again."
Thorne and Johnson were CCB/Volkswagen teammates when Thorne introduced Johnson to cyclocross. The 17-year-old took to it right away, and was the junior national under-19 champion in 1995.
He also became a two-time under-23 champion, and won his first US Elite National Championship in 2000.
More than one observer noted that when Johnson won his last national championship, it was also at Kansas City, at a different location but in similarly cold-icy-rutty-muddy conditions.
"He thrives on [severe] conditions," Pucci said. "His eyes get white like plates when it's rainy, icy, or muddy out. When anybody else would be saying, 'Uh, I don't want to race,' he's saying, 'nice . . .,' because it puts everybody else at a big disadvantage."
Thorne agreed that it's intangibles that set Johnson apart.
"Mentally, he's one of the toughest out there," Thorne said. "He's determined and doesn't let little things affect his race. He's mentally tough, and you need to be. There was an ice storm [before the race] in Kansas City, and [the surface] went from soft to ruts to frozen to snow and mud. Tim was the only one to stay upright. He was mentally tough enough to say, 'I'm going to get through this:' the 30-degree weather, the mud, and 150 other riders.
"You need to have something above all else, and he certainly has that."
Fries noted that because the sport requires precise bike-handling ability, Johnson took off his gloves during the hourlong race, in 36-degree weather.
"He couldn't feel his hands for two hours," Fries said.
As he prepared for his trip to Europe, Johnson was clearly happy with the win, and with his life. But he disagreed with the notion that his career had come full circle.
"The circle is going to be when I'm riding down the street with my kids, whenever I have kids," said Johnson, who is married to professional cyclist Lyne Bessette, a two-time Olympian from Canada.
"I had a paper route, delivering the Salem News on my bike, on my skateboard, and I was the kid building jumps in downtown Middleton with my friends. That's really going to be the full, full circle for me.
"As an athlete, I feel like I'm getting back to the point where I know what I can do and what I can't do, and it's making each race that much better."
