Tag Archives: women and cycling

Mo Bruno Roy: Cyclocross, Working Pros, and the Debt of Chasing your Dreams

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Mo at the Gran Prix of Gloucester. Photo from GPGloucester.com

Mo Bruno Roy is one of the fastest women in U.S. cyclocross. The New Englander consistently places top-5 and -10 at the biggest domestic races and typically cracks the top-50% at the World Cup level. In and of itself, that’s an impressive feat. But Mo’s earned her palmarès while maintaining a full-time career as a massage therapist. In this interview, Mo talks about her entry into cycling, the struggle to find the balance between her race career and her day job, how the lack of financial support for women’s racing often necessitates being a working pro, how the demise of the US Gran Prix (USGP) cyclocross series will impact American cross and much more.

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The Top Stories of 2012

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If the Internet (or perhaps all of human history) has taught us anything, it’s that trends are very important to follow. And there is no more prevalent year-end trend than Top 10 lists. Newspapers give you their most popular stories of the year. Buzzfeed gives you the 40 most influential corgis of 2012 (it was probably difficult to narrow it to 10 influential pups).  And on the final day of 2012, The Bicycle Story gives you its top 10 most read posts of 2012.

The Most Popular Stories of 2012

1) Jacquie Phelan: The Godmother of Women’s Mountain Biking: Given her important role in both mountain bike history and introducing women to mountain biking, it is unsurprising that Jacquie tops the list. If you read just one interview from these 10, make it this one.

2) Tom Hopper: Rapha-Focus’ Master Mechanic: Tom is personal mechanic to America’s best cyclocross racer. Learn about his road to the professional pits and what it takes to succeed at the highest level of the job.

3) Presidents on Bicycles: A collection of photos from Presidents Day 2012 highlighting the long history of our Commanders in Chief riding (or at least posing) on bikes!

4) Ted King: Racing with the PROs, Advocating for Bikes: Ted King is an international pro tour domestique with the Liquigas-Cannondale squad. In addition to being one of the fastest American racers, he’s a proud advocate for cycling and the environment.

5) Steve Garro: Arizona’s Mountain Biking, Trouble Making, Frame Building Legend: Steve is another important figure in mountain bike history. The insightful interview covers the days of riding with his mountain bike crew The Mutants, his frame building, the accident that nearly took his life, and a whole lot more.

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Meg Fisher: Montana’s Paralympic-winning, 6-time World Champion


Photo from the Montanan.

Meg Fisher has six on and off-road triathlon World Championship titles, a slew of U.S. National Championship wins, and, as of a few weeks ago, a gold and silver medal in cycling from the 2012 Paralympics in London. In short, she’s a bad ass athlete. Given her palmarés, you might assume she’s been cycling since birth. But, Meg didn’t start her cycling career until several years after a tragic accident in 2002 that required doctors to amputate her left foot and claimed the life of her best friend. I spoke to Meg on her brief post-Paralympics stopover in Seattle (where she’s a physical therapy PhD candidate). We discussed her accident, her new found passion and talent for cycling and triathlon, the London Paralympics, balancing school and cycling, and more.

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Jacquie Phelan: The Godmother of Women’s Mountain Biking


Photo by Jean-Pierre Praderes for Jan Heine’s The Competition Bicycle. 

As the title plainly states, Jacquie Phelan is the Godmother. Or perhaps the Queen. At the very least, she’s one of mountain biking’s early pioneers and helped carved a path into the sport for women. She helped found the National Off Road Bicycle Association along with other mountain bike luminaries of the day like Jack Ingram and her husband Charlie Cunningham; won NORBA championships and many other mountain bike races throughout the 80s and 90s; founded the first women’s mountain bike club and continues today to promote women’s mountain biking through it. Jacquie and I spoke about her introduction to mountain biking, her early days of racing in a “man’s” sport, the foundation of the WOMBATS and more.

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Brian Vernor: Santa Cruz’s Adventurous Filmmaking, Photo Taking, Native Son


Brian at the Tour d’ Afrique, the subject of his film Where Are You Go? Photo from Good Problem.

Brian Vernor has a cool thing going for himself. The fourth-generation Santa Cruz, CA resident is a photographer, filmmaker, and adventurer who travels the world using his cameras to tell stories (and very frequently, ones about bikes). Sometimes it’s companies like Rapha or Jamis who send him off on a job. Other times its for his own projects like The Cyclocross Meeting and Where Are You Go, films that he shot in Japan and across Africa respectively. I spoke to Brian about his start as a filmmaker and photographer, his love for cyclocross, his adventure on a “rail bike,” the subjects currently catching his eye, and more.

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