Episode 55
“Some of it’s fabulous, some of it’s not but it’s what we do and I wouldn’t change it for the world at this point”
Fancy this guest’s accent? We do too. We are delighted to have this week’s guest, Pete Taylor of Star Track, return to the pod. Joan and Pete discuss parity in programming, Star Track’s UCI team, summer racing plans, as well as a good old fashioned catch up between friends.
Website: http://www.startrackcycling.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StarTrackCycling
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startracknyc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/startracknyc
Thanks to B Braun Medical Inc. for sponsoring the Talk of the T-Town Podcast. BBraun is a global leader in infusion therapy and pain management, B Braun develops, manufactures and markets innovative medical products to the healthcare community. They are also strong believers in supporting the quality of life in the communities where their employees work and live.
Transcript
Joan Hanscom:
Welcome to the Talk of the T-Town podcast where we discuss all things track cycling, broadcasting from the Valley Preferred Cycling Center. I’m your host and executive director, Joan Hanscom.
Joan Hanscom:
Welcome to the Talk of the T-Town podcast. I’m your host, Joan Hanscom and this week I am delighted to have yet another return guest to catch us up on what he and his program has been up to since we last spoke. Our guest today is the always delightful, one of my favorite human beings, Pete Taylor from star Track. Pete, welcome back to the podcast. It is always delightful to chat with you.
Pete Taylor:
Well, thank you. I’m glad this is audio because I’m blushing. Thank you very much, it’s very nice to be back here, nice to see you and Moira again and thanks for having me on.
Joan Hanscom:
We like to have return guests on when something special is accomplished. So we’ve done it with a few past guests, El Smith after she reached her goal of winning her national championship, Kim Geist as she launched the Kim Geist Academy. And you Pete because you are coming up on some pretty impressive milestones this year with star Track, so let’s start there. For those who don’t know, Star Track is a New York city-based cycling program with, oh, I don’t know, a million kids that participate in it. But Star Track is coming up on its 20th year anniversary, which in and of itself has to be some sort of cycling industry record, teams just do not have this type of longevity. So 20 year anniversary, you had 39 kids participate in the national championships last year. This year you’ve set the audacious goal of getting 50 kids to nationals, so let’s start there. How many kids total are in the program? Because it isn’t really a billion.
Pete Taylor:
Doesn’t that sound scary.
Joan Hanscom:
It’s a big percentage!
Pete Taylor:
I’m scared already. Yeah, in 2021 I think our numbers were around about 160 riders and that spans into the elites as well. So probably the after-school program was around about 150, 148 riders I believe and we are on Monday to Thursday and Saturday mornings. And so it is probably worthwhile letting everybody know what we actually do. We’re a three phase program, whereas we have an afterschool program so just getting kids on track bikes at the Casino velodrome there in sunny Queens, we have a junior race team and we also have an elite race team. So in theory they all lead onto each other and it becomes a developmental pathway. And yeah, we had 39 riders at nationals, we had a lot of girls, which was something that we’ve been really trying to focus on and this year, maybe 50 and a lot more girls again. And the girls are nicer than the boys aren’t they, that’s [inaudible 00:03:45].
Joan Hanscom:
Well, I’m biased! But that speaks to that inclusiveness and Star Track’s focus on diversity of participation and your longstanding commitment to bringing diverse participants into your program. Do you want to talk about that? Because I think you were focusing on it a lot earlier than some.
Pete Taylor:
I think you said it better than I can. It’s been our core mission for almost two decades now. It’s great to see everybody else getting on board with all of this and turning an eye to diversity and inclusion, for us it’s just been what we’ve always done. We’ve gotten kids from every background you can imagine and trying to introduce them to cycling and to track cycling and it’s been a hell of a ride, it’s been fabulous. And as you say next year he is our 20th anniversary, for us we love the diversity of what we have.
Pete Taylor:
The women’s thing has always been very important for us to get as many girls as we can and we were trying to get 50/50 parity between girls and boys, which we managed to do just before COVID. We just hit the 50/50 and then COVID came along and everything stuttered and I’d imagine we are probably around about 40% girls now, 38%. Yeah. We haven’t run the numbers completely, but that’s going to be our focus again for next year is just to bring more females into the sport. Just more kids from every background you can imagine and we are the melting pot and our pits at nationals reflects that. It’s quite funny, really. We’re every size and shape and color in the world for us.
Joan Hanscom:
Hearing that, we obviously had set our 50/50 goal as well. Like you, I think COVID had an impact though. We didn’t go backwards, we just didn’t grow. But I think it’s so important, right? Diversity broadly speaking, not just the male/female participation, I think track is the most opportunity of any of the cycling disciplines in so many ways because programs like yours, programs like ours help lower the barriers to entry. Track bikes can be loners, they are simple machines to maintain, they are less expensive when you’re at least speaking about the introductory level. You don’t need two of them like you need for cyclo-cross at an elite level, right? There’s so many ways that track cycling has the upper hand in terms of fulfilling a diversity mission.
Joan Hanscom:
And not to mention location, right? I think velodromes on the east coast are just a melting pot by nature of where they’re located and I think that’s terrific. And it provides that opportunity and then certainly it’s cool when you see programs like yours, like you said, pulling kids from every walk of life and every community. And then you see what happens at T-Town during the UCI months when there’s people from every country represented and it shows what’s possible in the sport. So I do think track has such an opportunity there to lead the way.
Pete Taylor:
I think what’s been easy for us, and ironically I’m talking to the director of the velodrome, is that what has happened is that because we’ve needed to move forward in a developmental way, in a pathway, by having T-Town has been the best thing. Because we bring the kids off the street where we are, we start developing them and then the natural progression is then for the ones that want to do that, and it is completely voluntary, they can go racing. So we can race at Casino on a Wednesday night, things like that, but generally at Star Track kids are racing Star Track kids.
Pete Taylor:
So the ability to be able to just come two hours down the road to T-Town and to start racing kids from other parts of the country and from Pennsylvania, it’s been perfect because now we really have this pathway that moves from just, I call them the wobblers. We have the wobblers and then once the wobblers get on and they actually become a lot more confident and they find their feet and eventually they want to start racing, it’s like this avenue that’s open and they go onto, well if you want to do this you’ve got to go to T-Town next.
Pete Taylor:
And we tried to bring kids and one of the things that we did a few years ago is to get a mini bus and that has been instrumental in us getting kids to different places. For argument’s sake, we did our winter training camp this year in rock hill in February and we had over 20 kids, probably about 25 kids or something so crazy like that, which is the biggest turnout ever. And I think the majority of those kids did not go to nationals, so it’s a whole new world of kids that are going to race.
Pete Taylor:
And then we try to do that and try to lower the barriers, as you say, the barriers are everything. Because the barriers are so restrictive for kids to getting into any sport. We’re not soccer, we don’t just need a pair of boots, we need a lot more of other things. But if we can just work with our friends and our neighbors and we do a lot of donations and bicycles. People have given us fabulous pieces of equipment and as a 501(c)(3) we can give them obviously a tax deduction letter and we get equipment for the kids. And we try to lower those barriers on a weekly basis.
Joan Hanscom:
Yeah, I think that’s so important with a sport like ours where, like you said, it isn’t just strapping on a set of sneakers and going out and running. It’s travel, it’s all of it, it’s kit, it’s bike, it’s shoes. It’s not just the bike, it’s the whole package of stuff and none of it’s cheap. Sports in general is not cheap, kids who play hockey face the same challenges. So it’s nice that both your program and the T-Town program have found ways to try to help bridge that gap of participation. It’s important.
Pete Taylor:
Yeah, there’s a lot of synergy between the two programs actually which has been really good.
Joan Hanscom:
So you teased up something though, Pete, there. You teased up that Star Track has really created a developmental pathway, which is something I’ll push on a little bit later because I think that’s been a question that has plagued our sport for decades in the US. But let’s gloss over that for the time being and jump to the UCI team. So you’ve taken a big step in the pathway and now you have a registered UCI program in addition to all the other stuff you’re doing, because you’re not busy enough! So who’s riding on your UCI program this year and how did they get there? How did you come to this position?
Pete Taylor:
A lot of stuff that happens is just that we get frustrated. Dave and I and Mike, we see a lot this, and Shelly of course, don’t forget Shelly. The thing with that is that I find that there’s very little places for more of the elite riders to ride and that necessitates really then going to Europe and to other countries to get the riding experience and the depth of competition that they can. Or the alternative is to wait until everybody descends on T-Town and you haven’t got the speed or the experience to be able to live with them and you can’t even qualify for Friday night. So we’ve got to find a different way to get people through into that next level, so the natural progression again was to create a UCI pro team, and you know what we went out and did it. And we would’ve loved to have been the only one this year, but John Croom went and pulled the rug out from underneath me and started his own team as well.
Pete Taylor:
So wish them all the best, because John’s a good guy and we love to see more people out there trying to bring US track cycling up to the next level. For us as well, we have people that are again coming through the program, how do we get them the rides that they’re going to need? And for the most part we’ve tried very hard just to go and do races here and there in Europe but we had to become more legitimate, even to the point that we want to get to World cups, Nations cups as they are now. So this year our UCI roster is Grant Koontz, the man with the mullet, got to love him, all business at the front all party at the back. Ryan Jastrab has now joined us and we’ve got some young man called Billy Taylor, young Anton Gibson who is a wonderful pursuiter. Joe Christiansen, Josh Hartman, Mia Deye.
Pete Taylor:
And that’s about it right now for the UCI roster. Obviously we have a lot deeper elite team, but they’re the ones that are actually going to try to make it to the bigger and better races. We’ve actually partnered that with Felt bicycles, which has been a very good thing. They’re quite excited about a new venture, as are we, and Hincapie sportswear. Rich Hincapie and his lovely wife Drew have decided they’re going to help us out very much, which is great. And on that note, the Hincapies have been probably our longest standing sponsor. George has always been supportive and Rich, they’ve been supporting the afterschool program for probably about 12 years at this point. Now they’re joining us on this bigger journey which is [crosstalk 00:15:33].
Joan Hanscom:
That’s very, very cool. And hopefully we’ll see y’all represented then at the Hincapie Fondo that’s going to be happening at the track in June, which should be…
Pete Taylor:
Yeah, that’s going to be pretty exciting. And I was talking to Rich and I know that initially the interest that’s actually there for the Fundo is massive, it’s probably as big as any Fundo I’ve ever done.
Joan Hanscom:
They have it dialed now, what they produce is really just so top notch in terms of the product that they produce. And I’ve rid the course, it is different than, for example, Greenville where Greenville’s pretty chill except for one or two big climbs. When we took Rich out on the course in Pennsylvania, of course, we don’t have those big climbs, it’s just punchy, right? Up, down, up, down, up, down and I think that’s challenging for folks who are used to riding a different way, right? If you’re used to long, sustained climbs than doing the… Sorry about the cat losing his mind. If you’re used to doing long, sustained climbs, those short, steep, punchy things, they’re challenging. So we had Rich moaning and groaning on some of those steep, short ones so it was kind of fun. But the course is terrific, it’s a mix of essentially gravel and paved and it’s got a real spring classic vibe to it which is super cool. So I think people are going to have a good time.
Pete Taylor:
That is cool. I think it’s going to be a real good thing for the area as well. They’re going to bring you a lot of interest in the area and then if we can keep that vibe and that excitement going through to UCI season and on that note, looking, because I pore over the UCI calendar now on a regular basis and I was speaking to Moira about it a few weeks ago. Yeah, there’s not a lot of UCI racing around the world at that same time so I think the glitterati of the world cycling is going to descend on T-Town this year and it’s going to be incredibly exciting.
Joan Hanscom:
The early signs indicate yes. I think that when we had the dates originally they hadn’t announced the timing of the Nations cups, the timing or locations of the Nations cups. But we did speak with the UCI when we put in our inscriptions for the dates and I said “Hey, look, we’re being forced to inscribe before you announce your Nations cup, so can we have some assurances that if we ended up with some really geographical challenges you’ll let us move the dates?” And it turned out that their Nations cup dates were incredibly convenient for the T-Town block, right? With Canada then into T-Town and then immediately following the next one, it couldn’t have worked out better I think. We did have to shift the dates a little bit, but I think what it’s really teeing itself up for is exactly what you said, a summer of, it just makes sense to come to T-Town. Because of where it lands on the calendar and because of the racing opportunities, so it’s pretty exciting.
Pete Taylor:
No, it’ll be great because you can stage in Pennsylvania, which is quite a cheap place to live, have all your ride and all your training, everything you might need and then be able to just go to each Nations cup. Yeah, it’s going to be pretty exciting and we’re obviously scared that we’re going to qualify, it’s going to be that tough.
Joan Hanscom:
Yeah, it’s going to be interesting. I think too, we set all kinds of attendance in participation records in 2019, we broke the participation record for the World cup, I think it was ’96 or ’97 I can’t remember, but we broke that participation record. We had 28 countries, more than 204 athletes and I’d love to see us break that record again this year, that would be kind of nutty so we’ll see.
Pete Taylor:
I’ll put 10 bucks on the table that you’re going to break 300 athletes this year [crosstalk 00:19:58].
Joan Hanscom:
It would be super cool and the shortened quad helps that, right? Points matter. So it’s going to be interesting.
Joan Hanscom:
So now I’m going to go to the controversial part of the discussion, sorry Pete.
Pete Taylor:
[inaudible 00:20:15].
Joan Hanscom:
Oh! You mentioned that you felt like you had to go UCI to further the developmental pathway and to grow the sport and you mentioned that John Croom did the same thing with his UCI program and that it was good to see other people taking up that charge with growing the sport and the development of the elite side of the sport. And I wonder, without getting you in trouble, this is a conversation that’s come up a lot about our federation and how they develop athletes and what the pathways for development are. And I’m not trying to get you in trouble here, or myself to be honest, just to have a frank conversation about development. How do you see this all aligning with, I don’t even know what they call it now, the Olympic Development Academy, ODA right?
Pete Taylor:
Yeah, I don’t know.
Joan Hanscom:
How does your program work with USA cycling I guess is the question. Are we running on parallel tracks? Are we feeding their programs? What do you see as this [inaudible 00:21:26]?
Pete Taylor:
I think for us, it’s probably a little bit of everything. We can feed, we can run parallel. Right now for us, the ability for a rider to be able to ride a World cup has to be down to time standard and whether or not they’ve got the backing of the NGB. And at this point, or in recent years, USA cycling hasn’t had… I’m trying to find a way to put this delicately. No they haven’t had the backup and the support they’ve really needed, obviously it’s been very well documented that COVID absolutely kicked them fair and square in the teeth and they’ve been struggling to get out of that for quite a while now.
Pete Taylor:
That said, there seems to be a whole new push of funding and coaching going on right now with the elite side of the house and that’s very welcome. But historically we haven’t been able to get into that place where we can rely on the federation to help get the riders to the bigger and better races around the world because they cost a lot of money. So for us, if we can find that reason and that funding to get a rider to these bigger and better races, we’ll end up with a better rider and we’ll end up with a rider that’s got far more experience and far more talent and will be able to go on. So if you like, in some ways we’re going to bridge a gap and in other ways we are just going to say, look, you obviously cannot do this right now for one way or the other. If it’s funding, if it’s the fact that that athlete isn’t ready, then hopefully we can bridge that gap.
Pete Taylor:
And the riders we’ve got, they’re all very okay with that because they know that they’re going to go to a lot of these bigger races and get their teeth kicked in. It’s going to be a really difficult transition to get up to that next level and one of my buzzword or buzz phrases of the last 18 months has been manage expectations. So we try to manage those expectations in a way that, this is part of a journey. And at this point we haven’t got that developmental pathway at USA Cycling so we have to create it for ourselves and I’m one of the few out there, seemingly, I actually like USA cycling. I like what they do, I like the people that are behind it all and I think that they’ve had, historically, a very job. If we can help them out of this, maybe we can get there in a more streamlined and functional way.
Joan Hanscom:
I think you nailed something there in those comments. A lot of people I think don’t understand how the funding model works for USA cycling and they get quite upset that USA cycling doesn’t have endless buckets of money to spend on development. And I think you’re correct in that COVID hurt the organization a lot in terms of how their revenue streams work and rebounding from that is a challenge. I think having the Tokyo games get off schedule also hurt them a lot and when you don’t perform, I don’t want to say perform to expectations, but when you don’t fully have the games you were anticipating, having that impacts your funding again.
Joan Hanscom:
So it digs the hole a little deeper for them and I don’t think there’s any pointing there, I think it was an incredibly hard and challenging circumstance that they faced and then you find yourself really struggling to get out of that hole. And so I think it’s terrific that programs are stepping up to do exactly what you said, which is bridge the gap and yes, for our listeners you should have seen Pete’s face just now because my cat is doing insane things.
Pete Taylor:
Some black flash going from one side of the screen to the other. Yeah that is the thing and look, make no mistake about it, they underperformed at the games and that’s a given. Obviously the partly line would say no, we did just fine, but it wasn’t really what they wanted and now there’s going to be an incredible amount of pressure to find podium-capable athletes by the time the Los Angeles games come along. And that issue of almost trying to take big leaps to get to that level is going to be a very hard thing, whereas all the other countries have this thing where their developmental athletes trickle down, they percolate through from being youngsters to their elite program. If you look at GB for argument’s sake, when Jason Kenny retires it’s a bit of a blow, but it doesn’t really matter that much to us because from this quad there’s probably a dozen kids that are out there that can all break ten one on their day and then go on and on and on and on.
Pete Taylor:
So yeah, the depth they’ve got is so much better than ours and I think that’s the same for most of these countries, even the Australians and the Kiwis and everything else. For us, we’re caught in that no-win situation where we have to get the riders the experience of the bigger races, but they cannot get the bigger races because they haven’t made that national team level, they haven’t made that time standard. Or even the fact that the NGB hasn’t got the money to physically send them to races. If we can just keep going, for us this year is going to be our learning year. It’s going to be finding that happy medium so that next year will be the year where we will push quite hard for the bigger events. Right now we’re just going to find our own feet.
Joan Hanscom:
Right. And then I suppose, like you said, it’s really not all eyes on 2024, it’s all eyes on 2028.
Pete Taylor:
Yeah. I think ’24 is almost getting to the point of being a distraction for this country.
Joan Hanscom:
I would agree with that. I think you’ve got to, in my opinion and you can tell me I’m wrong, I think one of the challenges we have with track in our country is that we don’t have a very broad applicant pool, right? There aren’t many tracks for one, but then two, we don’t have many kids going into cycling anymore the way say, in the 80s, there was a gazillion kids racing bikes. So you don’t have that depth of talent pool to pull from.
Joan Hanscom:
And then kids are finding other sports so it’s challenging to find… The reason why, in my opinion anyway, something like the NFL is, those are the 1% of the 1% best athletes in this country, right? Because they start in Pop Warner football and the cream just keeps on rising, right? They go through Pop Warner, they play junior high, they play high school, they play collegiate and then they’re all of a sudden playing the NFL. And by the time you get to that NFL level player, you’ve taken a huge broad swath of talent pool and you’ve just continued to squish it down.
Pete Taylor:
That’s why I always refer to as percolating, because it just drips through.
Joan Hanscom:
And they just have a volume that we don’t have, right? It’s sheer numbers. And I think the UK, because of how their Federation is set up and because of how it’s resourced and because of the size of the country and the number of velodromes, it’s a lot easier to get a broader pool of talent that you’re then percolating, right? That you’re whittling down.
Pete Taylor:
Exactly. For those that don’t know, Great Britain is probably about the size of New York state and I think, off the top of my head, there’s six indoor velodromes and five of those are probably a good enough standard to run any European, Commonwealth games, whatever. I think we could point to the Canadians as well. When they created Milton and that velodrome was created and built we went there, I know Andrew Harris had a few kids there, we went there for the first ever provincials. And I remember just for my son Billy being there, we podium at every event. Really did well, fantastic and it had just been built. And then a year later we went back and we couldn’t even get near the podium. The Canadian kids absolutely crushed us. In a year they were just so much better and they had this depth of rider field that we would be so envious of.
Pete Taylor:
And that whole mindset, and then this happens a lot in the UK as well, with the weather they go, “Okay, it’s May. Put your track bikes away, it’s road season.” So you go and ride road and you ride road, road, road, road until you get to October and they go, “Okay, put your bikes away it’s now track season.” And they just concentrate on track and it works so well. That model works so well for so many different countries and obviously we would be completely reliant on having a indoor velodrome to do that and as corny as it sounds, if you build it, they will come. You will get the rider base. Certainly for us, if we had a indoor velodrome in New York, even something small like the Detroit velodrome is something that would be so wonderful for us in terms of development of more athletes and we could run programs 12 months a year.
Pete Taylor:
Because right now we can’t open up Star Track until the second week in April. The racers work, we do a lot of indoor training and winter camps and things like that, but for the most part if we had that velodrome we would be so much further ahead of the game than we are now. And then the frustration comes that we’re going to do all of this and we’re going to work really, really hard and then we’re going to get to October, in our case November, and we’re going to go, “Shut it all down. We’ll see you again in April.”
Joan Hanscom:
That is a challenge with the continuity and I think it’s a challenge now too, I think, for the countries that you just cited that say summer comes, put your road bikes away when the track season has now shifted to be a summer season again.
Pete Taylor:
Yeah, well that’s changed a lot of things. From my personal point of view is that right now people have to see a perceived value. So if that value for these other countries is that you will become a better sprinter and your road game will be that much better, then that’s their value. But right now, for us to try to sell an indoor velodrome to somebody, it’s like trying to sell ice to Eskimos. There’s no value in it and someone has to be an enthusiast first before they’ll ever see the value.
Pete Taylor:
And the same for the athletes. We’ll have all these kids and I would imagine, I don’t know the numbers, but I’d imagine we’re probably over 1600 young people in New York that’s been through the Star Track program over the last 20 years. And out of that 1600 you could probably count the people that have carried on on two hands. The sad thing is that these kids say, “Well, we love doing the sport. We love riding, we love racing but why do I keep on going? Because there’s no value.” We can now push the college thing, that’s something and we’ve probably had half a dozen kids going to colleges now, but at the same time, if I play soccer, I’ll play lacrosse, I’ll play football. Whatever it is, then that’s going to be a much better pathway for me in my life, whether or not I make it to the next level of the sport. But that value of that sport is there and apparent for most of the other sports but certainly not for cycling, especially not for track cycling.
Joan Hanscom:
Yep. 100% agree. It is a challenging space in which we play. And yet, we persist.
Pete Taylor:
We still do it!
Pete Taylor:
It’s funny because no matter how many times we do it, I still sit there with you guys and cringe at the eliminations and wait for that crunchy noise. And some of it’s fabulous, some of it’s not but it’s what we do and I wouldn’t change it for the world at this point. As the last time I was on here, my previous life became apparent and I’ve had a lot of people that have asked me about that. They go, “I didn’t know you did that.” Well, that was a whole lifetime ago now but it’s such a different world that I’m in now and I really, really enjoy it.
Pete Taylor:
And I enjoy it and I really want to see these kids succeed and I think a lot of them are finding it easier to succeed now. If we’re all on the same page, you guys at VPCC, USA Cycling, all the people that use the velodrome. And that’s the nice thing, myself, Andrew Harris at Edge Cycling, we all get on very well and it’s great. And I think that there’s this unspoken idea that we’re all trying to do the same thing ultimately.
Joan Hanscom:
Right. Exactly.
Pete Taylor:
There’s competition and we love the competition and we want to see the guys in blue do it, other people want to see the guys in red do it. And eventually, hopefully it all pans out for everybody.
Joan Hanscom:
So Pete, you just said, this is your life now and tell us what your next adventure is? You said you’re packing up the van tomorrow and tell what’s what’s up.
Pete Taylor:
If the van gets out of the shop in time, I’m off. So yeah, I’m sitting here in my office and I’ve got one of them great big wall calendars, the four foot by four foot things. And so I’m looking up at it now and as I said before, the Hincapies are wonderful supporters of what we do. Every year they have a spring series of crits, so we’re going to support them so I’m actually going to be going down to the Carolinas tomorrow and I’ll be away for over five weeks because we will be doing [crosstalk 00:38:39]
Joan Hanscom:
Wow.
Pete Taylor:
Yeah, we’re going to be doing all the races that they have plus we have our elite training camp in Rock Hill at the end of April. And then coming back, first week in May running into Bear mountain for the New York State road championships. So yeah, every weekend in my little dry race calendar has got a race of some description at this point, which is a wonderful thing. A year or two ago, nothing.
Joan Hanscom:
And then it all turns on to T-Town right after that.
Pete Taylor:
My yard stick all the time is Somerville, which I’m really pleased that Somerville’s back in the Memorial weekend.
Joan Hanscom:
Yeah.
Pete Taylor:
So we will do Somerville on Memorial day and pretty much I’ll move to Pennsylvania for the foreseeable future just to get all the training done and the racing done here.
Joan Hanscom:
At least you get to stay put though, right? You get all the UCI dates in T-Town and you go straight into nationals.
Pete Taylor:
Right. And that’s what I said, it’s a wonderful resource to. We can train here, we can race here and with a little blip of road nationals, but that’s not too bad, they’re in Virginia. And then all the UCI races are going to be massive and I’d love for people to come out and see it because we need a crowd. With a crowd, these guys perform even better and once we do that I think it’s going to be superb.
Joan Hanscom:
Absolutely.
Pete Taylor:
Yeah. And then the track nationals and maybe we’ll get our mythical 50 kids at track nats. Then I’m probably going to go on vacation in August.
Joan Hanscom:
That sounds lovely.
Pete Taylor:
That’ll be the plan, anyway.
Joan Hanscom:
You’ll have earned it, Pete. You will have earned it if you get there.
Pete Taylor:
Yeah. And then we go through September and October, we’ll be at some European track races. So we’ll go over to Europe and I’ll practice my schoolboy French.
Joan Hanscom:
There you go. Well, it sounds like a big 2022 is coming up for you and the Star Track team and we wish you the very, very best of success and continued success, let’s say. Always delightful to chat and catch up, Pete.
Pete Taylor:
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Joan Hanscom:
We love talking with you and we love what you do and we’re happy to play a part in what you do.
Joan Hanscom:
So that’s all for this episode folks, it’s our request that if you like the pod please give us the stars, the checks, the likes, the hearts. Help us grow the podcast because we can’t keep doing this without listeners, much like Pete we are a 501(c)(3) that is dependent on donations and support. So the more people that listen, the more likely we are to attract attention to the program. So help help the program out, kids! Thanks for listening and have a lovely week. That’s all for the Talk of the T-Town podcast.
Joan Hanscom:
Thank you for listening. This has been the Talk of the T-Town podcast. I’m your host, Joan Hanscom. Thank you for joining us for this week’s episode. Head over to our website at thevelodrome.com where you can check out the show notes and subscribe so you’ll never miss an episode.