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BMC's Tony Cruz tells Andrew Hood about his trip over the cobbles this week.
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Like many professional racers, Tony Cruz (BMC Racing) has a love-hate relationship with Paris-Roubaix.
With Cruz, it’s mostly a love thing with the pavé, the history and the drama of the race, but he hates it that his dreams have been torpedoed by bad luck.
Despite starting with high hopes in the team’s Paris-Roubaix debut, mechanical difficulties foiled Cruz’s ambitions Sunday and he was unable to reach the velodrome in what was his sixth Roubaix start of his career.
Cruz took VeloNews on a candid tour through his day on the pavé. Here are excerpts from the interview:
VN.com: Tell us about your race?
Tony Cruz: My bike broke, about two sectors before the Arenberg. I don’t know what happened, it must have been the bars, because all of a sudden my bars dropped, my brakes engaged and then I’m popping a front-wheelie down the pavé. Guys are bouncing off my hip. They’re yelling at me, thinking I’m hitting the brakes. I was able to squeeze between a few guys and super-man off the front of my bike onto the grass on the side.
Tony Cruz, BMC Racing Team
Teams:
2001 Saturn
2002–2005 US Postal/Discovery Channel
2006 Toyota-United
2007 Discovery Channel
2008– BMC Racing Team
Career Highlights
U.S. criterium champion 1999
1st U.S. Olympic Road Race Trials 2000
U.S. world road championship team member (2000-2002)
2008
2nd, stage 3, Redlands Bicycle Classic
5th, stage 2, Redlands
1st, stage 3, Rochester Omnium (2nd GC, 1st mountain competition)
2007
3rd, Nevada City Classic
3rd, stage 1, Tour de Nez
2006
1st overall, Tour de Nez
2nd, stage 2, Tour de Nez
3rd, stage 4, Tour de Nez
3rd, U.S. criterium championships
3rd, stage 1, Vuelta A Valencia
3rd, Tour de Nez
3rd, Central Valley Classic time trial
3rd, Central Valley Classic criterium
2005
4th, stage 9, Tour de Langkawi
7th, stage 6, Tour de Langkawi
2004
1st overall, Tour de Nez
1st, stage 2, Tour de l’Ain
4th, stage 16, Vuelta a España
2003
3rd, stage 3, Tour de Georgia
2001
3rd, stage 1, Clasica de Almeria
3rd, stage 1, Tour of Murcia
2000
1st, U.S. Olympic road race trials
2nd, Sequoia Cycling Classic
3rd, U.S. criterium championship
VN.com: Not a good place to have a mechanical, did you get your spare bike?
TC: No, well, first, Jackson comes up, and I yell, ‘give me your bike!’ I’m feeling super-good, and I jump on his bike and I cannot even touch the pedals. It’s too bad. Louder comes up, and our car is car. No. 24, and John (Lelangue) is saying he’s really far behind. Louder gives me his bike and I can barely clip in, he’s 5-6cm taller than me. So I rode that for the next 12km.
VN.com: So did you ever regain contact with the front group?
TC: I had to chase back into the group in a pavé section. It was single file when I came out of that pavé section, I was swinging at the back because I couldn’t put any power into the pedals. It was too much, then I got my spare bike, and I was coming back into the group in the Arenberg. I switch bikes, then there’s a big crash in the forest. I came in hot; all of a sudden there are brake lights. You cannot brake on the pavé. Then I am weaving through cars through the forest. This is where the first move goes. If you’re not there, there’s nothing you’re going to do. I don’t know if Boonen can come back from being back 2-3 groups out of the Arenberg. I knew my fate and accepted it and just rode hard to the second feed zone.
VN.com: That’s frustrating, especially if you were feeling so good?
TC: That’s just how this race is, everything goes smooth and you get a good result, or everything goes bad and in you’re in the second feed zone.
VN.com: How many times have you raced Roubaix?
TC: This is my sixth time, but this is the first time I was able to do my own thing. I felt awesome in training, felt good in the first sectors of pavé. Once you go into panic mode, trying to chase back, riding other people’s bike, it all crumbles quickly and it’s hard to stay relaxed. It just wasn’t the day.
VN.com: How were the conditions of the course?
TC: It was perfect conditions, not much mud, no dust to speak of. You couldn’t ask for better conditions. The mud was almost like clay, so it had some give to it. It wasn’t all icy or slippery. There was a nice layer of mud and some grass down the middle of some of the pavé, so it was really fast.
VN.com: What were your expectations for Roubaix?
TC: Before the race we were watching some videos of the race. I was telling these guys that 95 percent of what’s going on in the race you don’t even see on TV. For myself, I wanted to make that first group. I was getting yelled at a lot because I was riding too aggressively, especially by Pozzato. Tom (Boonen) was cool, because if he sees that you’re going good, he’ll be cool. You have to be aggressive, you have to have real balls to ride here and show the other guys you mean business. Everything was going good then — bam.
VN.com: So you obviously must be disappointed now?
TC: I feel awesome right now. That’s the biggest disappointment, sitting here, gosh dang it. I felt so good leading up to this race. In the race, I was riding with a smile because I could just do what I wanted on the pavé. If I was 40 guys back and wanted to be 10th, I could just shoot up. I am just watching all these other guys fight every single cobblestone out there; it was night an day for me.
VN.com: Of all your Roubaixs, how many have you finished?
TC: I finished just once and I felt like I friggin’ won the race. When I came into the velodrome, it was just unbelievable. I love Roubaix, I hate that I don’t have a result here, and I know I can do it.
VN.com: The team’s been in Europe for the past few weeks, how have things been going otherwise?
TC: So, so — the rain has been killing us. Rain and 40-degree weather for me is hard. We don’t have anything notable. We weren’t even finishing most of the races. With my form coming around here, the team was expecting a result from me here.
VN.com: What’s next for you?
TC: We race Wednesday at Scheldepris, then I get a little break before Gila, maybe a race in New York that I might ask to do. I feel awesome, but we’d rather have a result here. I feel good for Wednesday. We have Romandie for a group going there, but I am going to take a little break. Later, we’re doing Tour of Belgium, Picardie, but not doing Tour du Swiss, which is pretty controversial, since we can field a full Swiss squad with the Swiss national champion (Markus Zberg). I don’t know the exact details, but I know (team owner) Andy Rihs is upset. He should be given an entry every year simply for what he’s done for Swiss racing. That guy has the biggest heart in cycling.
VN.com: What’s your future with the team, will you continue racing?
TC: I am going to sit down with Gavin (Chilcott, team general manager) and talk about it. My two years with the team are up. I still love racing. I will probably try to do two more years and that will be good for me.
VN.com: Looking past cycling, what other things would you like to do?
TC: I am cycling ambassador for Long Beach where I live in California, which means I get to help develop new infrastructure in the city, parks and rec, school district. The city manager is big fan of cycling and of my racing. They put together this bicycling master plan back in 2000 and he just took that off the shelf and said I want you to help implement this with the different agencies within the city. It just fell into my lap and I love it. I’ve also started a consulting company, Cruz and Associates. I just had my first bike race with the city of Long Beach last weekend. It was awesome. It was like a bike fair, where you had displays of bicycle infrastructure. It was unbelievable. They did a lot to help us put the event on. Normally a city doesn’t back you like that.
