New Brunswicker is cycling the world
Published Thursday July 30th, 2009
Christian Meier is making a new for himself in the professional cycling world.
Christian Meier may be perhaps the greatest New Brunswick sporting hero his province has never heard of.
While New Brunswickers typically celebrate sporting figures from the worlds of hockey and baseball, the 24 year-old Meier has been traveling the world for the past year as a professional cyclist. As a member of the American-based Slipstream Garmin team, Meier has been going wheel-to-wheel with the likes of Lance Armstrong and European pros who receive the same treatment in Europe reserved for the likes of Sidney Crosby over here.
Meier was home for a short break this summer to visit with family and compete in the Canadian national cycling championships before jetting back to Girona, Spain where he lives with his fiance Amber. His life in Europe consists of little more than training, racing and resting. Upon learning that the reporter who will be interviewing him for [here] is a fellow cycling enthusiast, Meier suggests we chat while going for a ride. It's the equivalent of an NHL player asking you to join in a game up pick up hockey.
Christian Meier attracted the attention of the professional cycling world when he was a member of the now defunct Symmetrics cycling team. Symmetrics was a semi-pro Canadian team with a strong stance on anti-doping. As a semi-pro, Meier's ability to go up hills quickly and to endure the necessary suffering that his sport demands found him placing next to top-tier professionals. Riding on a team with a dedication to racing clean would turn out to benefit him as a pro later on.
We meet in front of Sussex outdoors shop Outdoor Elements. As fate would have it Outdoor Elements is situated two doors down from the now defunct Broadway Cycle and Ski where Meier spent his winters working to finance a burgeoning racing career. He rolls up wearing his professional kit bearing the Canadian national champion jersey. He is compact and possesses next to no body fat. A strict diet and six-hour days in the saddle will do that to you. He asks where we should ride and the 45-year old journalist suggests to the 24 year-old professional cyclist that a route without hills would be just fine.
And so the two roll off for a 40 kilometre trek and a conversation about what it is to be a cyclist in an era marked by an effort to clean up the sport of doping and the return of seven-time Tour de France Champion Lance Armstrong. It should be noted that Meier placed ahead of Armstrong at his return to pro cycling this January in Australia's Tour Down Under.
As the kilometers roll by the journalist and the champ chat away on the same rural New Brunswick roads Meier trained on just a few years ago. Meier is quiet, focused and reserved but opens up after it is revealed that the journalist shares a love for his sport going back to before Christian Meier was born.
Meier reveals that his success on the roads of Europe is rooted almost completely in his upbringing. The son of German parents, Meier helped work the family butcher shop and restaurant, the Gasthof Old Bavarian in Knightville.
"I grew up in a stubborn-minded household. If you wanted something you had to do it and you had to work hard." Meier recalls. "It wasn't a strict household but we grew up knowing that nothing is ever easy. Cycling is a hard sport to begin with and I really wanted it. I was never pushed into it and I did it on my own when I was younger. Cycling was the one thing that I did on my own. When I was younger I didn't let my parents come to races. I wanted that to be my thing and prove to myself that I could do something of my own will and achieve what I had wanted to by committing myself and by being dedicated and following a good path.
"For us in Canada it's harder than in Europe because there is no infrastructure so to make it to the top you have to really want to do it. You have to really want to make it. That's the only way you can do it. I'd work all winter at the bike shop and save up all my money for my bikes and my travel to races. When you get to the top level and come to a team like Garmin you really get an appreciation of your achievement."
To fully understand Meier's accomplishments as an athlete, one needs to put things in to perspective. When a New Brunswicker makes it to the NHL or Major League Baseball, he is celebrated and followed by his local media for the entire season. In Canada, hockey and to a lesser extent baseball has an infrastructure and a system in place to help talent rise to that level. Cycling possesses next to no infrastructure or funding mechanisms to foster up and coming talent in this country. Meier's success is a direct result of natural talent and a willingness to do the work required in one of the hardest sports known to man.
While a relatively obscure sport in North America, cycling is hugely popular in Europe, second only to soccer. Meier was drawn to the sport of cycling by its epic proportions. To use the hockey analogy again, consider that an NHL game plays out on an ice surface 85 feet by 200 feet. A bicycle race like July's Tour de France plays out over more than 3,500 kilometers of road. The race will happen on windswept flatlands and alpine mountain passes that climb above the clouds. Meier thinks that once a sports fan takes the opportunity to sit down and watch a race, they will gain an instant appreciation for the sport.
"I don't think it would take much. I speak to people like my father and when the Tour is on people do watch it. My father was never a huge cycling fan. When he was younger in Germany he'd go to the velodrome and watch the six-day races and drink beer. Watching the Tour my father gets into it. It's such an intoxicating sport that if you had a chance to just watch it you'd be hooked. In America Lance (Armstrong) took cycling to a whole new level. By winning his seven tours he really brought cycling to the public. Now that he's coming back it reignites a passion. I think that's all it takes, just see the sport and you'll fall in love with it."
Meier's role on his Garmin team this year if perfectly suited for his work ethic. As a domestique, Meier is one of the team's workhorses. He is tasked with riding in front of team leaders and expending up to 40 per cent more energy so that his leaders legs will be fresh for latter stages in a race. He will drift back to the team car to collect water bottles and expend his energy bringing them back up to the peleton to provide for his teammates. Should a team leader get a flat Meier will drop back to pace him back to the bunch or sacrifice a wheel to ensure his team leader gets back in the action as quickly as is possible. It is work without glory yet Meier finds romance in it. "For some reason as much as I admired the winners and champions I always had a deep respect for the domestiques. The guys who ride day in and day out and do the work and get bottles. They'll ride two or three of the Grand Tours a year. For me that held huge appeal. You always want to be a rider and a winner and a champion but I also enjoy being a domestique. I love riding at the front of a race."
But there are the occasions when Meier can find himself up the road racing in a breakaway group hoping for the day's win. Such was the case at June's Dauphinee Libere, a short stage race in France that races over many of the same roads in this year's Tour de France route. While in a breakaway Meier had a rare moment to savour his accomplishments and to reflect on his spot in cycling's epic history.
"During the race it's kind of hard sometimes because you are suffering up those climbs. But it's a little easier in a breakaway because it's a bit more quiet. While you are climbing the Col du Galibier or the Col du Croix du Fer or the Col de la Madelline (famous mountain passes in France) and you think of the guys who did this 80 years ago when those roads were dirt roads and the stages were 300 kilometres long. You think that you are going through the same pain and effort that guy 80 years ago was suffering. It's such a crazy experience to think that you're going through the same experience and pain even though it's 80 years apart."
The professional cycling season begins in January and finishes in October. Over the summer months each European nation stages its own national tour. Of those tours, three are designated as the Grand Tours with the Tour de France being the big daddy of them all. Slightly lesser known outside the cycling world is the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) and Vuelta a 'Espagne (Tour of Spain), although they are no less difficult or prestigious. It has been suggested that Christian Meier will be racing his first Grand Tour, the Vuelta a Espagne. Only a handful of Canadians have participated in a Grand Tour and Meier will be the first New Brunswicker to do so.
The effort of completing a Grand Tour has been compared to running two marathons a day for three weeks straight. While Meier is looking forward to racing the Tour of Spain, he hints that he does have a future plan when his body is ready, to tackle to impressive task of someday racing and completing the Tours of Italy, France and Spain in one summer. As a member of the Garmin team whose anti-doping stance is among the strictest in a sport trying to shed itself of former scandal, Meier will complete the task in an honourable fashion, something that was never an issue with him.
"For me, coming from Symmetrics whose philosophy was pretty much the same it wasn't an issue at all. Garmin was a team that I wanted to race for because of what they stand for. The team takes such good care of the riders. They have a strong stance on anti-doping and they do everything possible to give the riders the best advantage possible. They get us the best bikes and the best skinsuits and the best physiotherapists. They really care and they really try to do everything possible to make you the best rider possible. I'm proud to ride for them."
While Meier's plans for August include racing with the world's best across Spanish terrain, on this particular sunny day he's being generous to his ride partner/interviewer and not exhibiting the legs that finished ahead of Lance Armstrong in January's Tour Down Under. Being on home turf reminds Meier of the beauty of New Brunswick. He plans to eventually build a house in the Sussex area where he and his fiance will settle down. He has also maintained that despite riding across the same European roads he read about in cycling magazines as a teenager, his favourite rides will always be back home. He also suggests that something as simple as a ride on a bicycle may just inspire more people to participate in one of the world's most beautiful sports.
"I've been all over the world and I always say that New Brunswick is one of the most beautiful places on earth. To go out on a fall afternoon and ride your bike in the New Brunswick countryside with the leaves changing colour is amazing. The quietness of New Brunswick and the fact that there's so much to explore and so much to see that you can't appreciate it any other way. A cool breeze on your face and breathing in the crisp air. It's such an amazing feeling."
You can follow Christian Meier as he races across Europe on his blog www.bikingbros.com
Disabled
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
