CMWC 1997 BARCELONA
 REBECCA REILLY

Sunburn, sweat, salt water, beautiful women and parties 'til dawn. Barcelona is full of palm trees, graceful Moorish architecture and world champion thieves.
Suprisingly, for a world championship held in Europe, most of the competitors were from Europe. Even more surprising were the victories of the Germans, so seldom seen on the winner's podiums of the CMWC. The Danes took away the team and trials competition and I didn't pay attention to the sprints. Luckily for the rest of the world Lars Urban, the German individual champion, announced his retirement from racing. Unfortunately there is a Lars clone, Klaus. They look alike, talk alike, they even have the same bike. As if it wasn't bad enough that Klaus is the spitting image of, he is also quite fast.
There were couriers from as far away as Melbourne and Tokyo. Most couriers, aside from the perpetually uptight green and blue teams of Denmark and a few of the German teams, were on the whole less interested in racing, and more interested in hanging out and partying. Nearly everyone rides hard. There had been talk in past years of a handicap differential where one could earn points by how high his/her blood alcohol content was. It takes uncommon strength and force of will to race with a hangover. Undoubtedly there would be a different range of champions if this measure were instituted.


Boston missed, but not forgotten
The Boston Blackout tradition was upheld with three naked couriers in the Friday PM group ride with Scott Free, LA, Lambchop, Multicity, and a Tokyo messenger. And in the individual races Little John of DC was caught in the Spanish press in a full frontal nude shot which was published the following morning.

International cooperation and policing
A German messenger exclaimed of SF Bok Choy, "You are not a very fast rider, but you are a good messenger, you are a good navigator", in regards to Choy's performance in the Saturday Alleycat. The same Bok Choy also reigned in an unsportsman-like Italian messenger after the Italian messenger pulled down Wendy of SF in her race. The Italian messenger's punishment: a plate-full of Spanish rice thrown in his face in retaliation.

Broken collar bone, trips in the ambulance
Due to guardrails laid flat, a 12ft. ramp and various other obstacles, many messengers went home with souvenir road rash. One SF participant went home with her very own broken collarbone and stitches in her scalp. A Dane, upon landing on his stem, suffered from temporary mind-numbing pain as he contemplated his mangled testicles.

New faces, new places
Most notable of strange places where messengers eke out a living: A competitor from Budapest where no one seemed to think there were messengers, and a real character, Chief, from Guatemala. According to Chief there are bike messengers all over Central America and they don't make shit. For their "princely" wages, they are expected to carry ridiculous items such as propane tanks. Imagine a cargo bike race with flammable gases?

Danish team van torched
No one knows who did it, but Saturday morning the Danish team found their team van full of the charred remains of their equipment at Trevol Missatgers headquarters.

Ganked bike recovered on group ride
In a party on a plaza near Las Rambles the night before the group ride, a bike was stolen from a reveling German courier. On the group ride the next night the unfortunate thief was seen sitting astride said bike and in the true messenger spirit, was intimidated into surrendering the bike.

International track skid competition
In alleycats on the East Coast of the US, there have been track skid competitions to determine who is able to skid the longest. Long-time track veteran, Scrooge, poo-pooed the validity of the length of skid saying that the ultimate purpose of such a maneuver was to stop, with skidding far having no actual purpose in the art of riding brakeless. For future track skid competitions there may be two companion parts: one being for longest skid, and another for the precision skid, i.e. being able to stop on a dime. Track bike riders were for the first time recognized for their unique skills, prompting much curiosity from the Europeans and indeed inspiring a Norwegian team member to invest in such a vehicle.

Cargo bikes go hard-core
A nice aesthetic change to the cargo bike race was the inclusion of heavy metal and hard-core live bands as the race proceeded into the night. The glimmer of silvery kegs seemed to blend perfectly with the marrow-shaking bass in the background.

Vancouver Agitates for Air and Beer
At the forum to decide the host city for the CMWC 1998, the Vancouver messengers lobbied for "big air" and plenty of beer, rallying the support of the London messengers. Ultimately, after a promise bidding more beer than Zurich, DC won the rights to host the CMWC 1998.

If you're bummed that you missed Barcelona '97, you'll have plenty of time to plan for Washington, DC in 1998. And if the Memorial Day Mayhem was any indication of how much fun DC will be in '98, competitors better prepare themselves for a wild ride. AZ, the president of DC CMWC, has vowed that CMWC '98 will be safer, have fewer wrecks, and will span three days instead of two so that events such as the sprint competition will not be forced to crowd competitors. And by the way the author, Lambchop, has a correction for the NY street race, Acropolis. The second place winner was Derek from TO. Derek is a fine and handsome man and I would like to extend my gratitude for not beating this author to a pulp when I saw him in Barcelona for my very big oversight. To anyone else whose race results I forget, or screw up, I'm sorry, that has never been my strong point.