One Bad Apple
Two years ago, I raced my first ‘cross race and fell immediately in love with the sport, despite having my ass handed to me on a silver platter. That race was in Powderhorn Park, one of the sizeable plots of parkland that Minneapolis has to offer.
Turnout for the race was amazing and spectators were everywhere. Everyone I talked to loved the course. It was well-organized.
And it wasn’t on the schedule for 2008. Why? They couldn’t get a permit to do it again. One of the goofiest of the rumors was that we tore up too much grass. Turns out the reality of the situation was that one of the racers took a shit in someone’s front yard.
That “someone” happened to be the dude in charge of some goofy neighborhood association in the area, and used the incident as an impetus to not only prevent the race from being held at Powderhorn Park again, but I’ve heard rumors that he’s gone so far as to try to block any cyclocross events from occurring in Minneapolis city limits. I’d chalk those up to just rumors, however. (Boom Island isn’t happening because of construction on the island. And Theo Wirth is happening this year.)
The point of this posting isn’t to lament the guy making a stand against the Powderhorn Park event — his negative reaction is understandable (but probably a little over-the-top). The point is that there are too few races in the cyclocross calendar as it is, and if we act as poor citizens in the neighborhoods they’re held in, we ultimately push ourselves out of the sport we love.
