Professional cycling is on its way back to Canada with the news that St Catharines native and former Tour de France rider Steve Bauer has pulled together sponsors and athletes to field a team in 2010.
"An e-mail from Lance Armstrong to BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie helped set the stage for a new Canadian assault on the Tour de France. When it dropped into Balsillie's inbox more than a year ago, the message broke a logjam that had long frustrated Canadian cycling legend Steve Bauer. Bauer, who retired from professional racing in the 1990s after winning 14 yellow jerseys at the Tour de France, had always dreamed of assembling a Canadian team to compete in the world's greatest cycling race, but found himself stymied by logistics and funding. That ended with the e-mail from Armstrong to Balsillie, a keen amateur cyclist. Balsillie invited Bauer to go for some bicycle rides with him, and listened as the best cyclist this country has produced detailed his dream of a Canadian racing team"
link: Balsillie buys into what Bauer's peddling - The Globe and Mail
Professional cycling has been a tough sell here - not helped by the drug scandals of the 1990s - but it has a loyal, if small, following. Bauer, and American Greg Lemond, inspired me to get on the bike and work my way up to cycling "centuries", for the shear joy of it; and to touring on some of the same roads and over the same passes in the Pyrenees that the Tour de France follows every summer. Steve hung as a poster boy on my door for years inspiring me to look good in lycra and making a life-long fan of professional riding. That was a professional-riding-generation before Lance Armstrong beat back cancer to become the greatest rider the world has ever seen.
Team Spidertech, with Bauer's leadership and Jim Balsillie's money might just be the thing cycling in Canada needs to return to the public's consciousness, to where it was when Bauer was one place away from the podium on les Champs Elysées. Wish them well. Allez! Allez!
