The Hotlist: Episode 9

Cue tumbleweeds and whistling winds. It was a quiet week for most of Kissena’s regular crossers, but like Lee Van Cleef riding into town with a gun on his hip and trouble on his mind, a few gritty racers—not content for coffee-shop training rides with maple-bacon donuts as rewards—strapped on their spurs, and rode into towns this way and that for another round of shoot-outs. With powder burns on our hands, let’s see who’s left standing in this week’s Hotlist.

1.     Eric Ragot. Busy in a rented room above the saloon, Ragot took the week off of racing, but is still the sheriff and holds onto the number one badge.

2.     Todd McLoughlin. The gentleman solicitor with a quill in his hand and inkwell on his desk was too busy working on a brief defending the honor of Miss Audra Barkley to race. Still, he’s number two again.

3.     Konrad Ratzmann. The young gun may have been sound asleep after a night with the local dancing ladies, because he sure wasn’t racing. Staying out of a different kind of trouble means he stays in number 3.

4.     Michael Perlberg. Riding through the narrow canyons of Kutztown (cue screeching vulture circling above) turned out to be a bit of a suicide mission. Perlberg came out battered but not defeated, and his 18^th place in the 2/3/4 race is solid enough to keep him at number four.

5.     Jim Feehan. LITERALLY defending the honor of a fellow racer from scurrilous thugs on the plains of play, plus a solid 22^nd place finish in the 45+ category at Kutztown, earns him the number five.

6.     Patrick Grehan. Avoiding slaughter at “Kutztown Canyon,” Grehan instead galloped north with the 45+ open category at Hop Brook and registered a solid 7^th place…which means he deserves number six.

7.     JP Partland. Snug in the homestead with his family, tending the animals and garden, JP kept his Cannondale .45 holstered and out of harms way. Still he’s proven that when he goes out to fight, the other guys come back looking worse, so he’ll remain on the hotlist at number seven.

8.     David Stokes. Holed up in the Apothecary peering through looking glasses creating god knows what, Dr. Stokes didn’t make any house calls this weekend but remains on the list due to his snake oil magic from HPCX.

9.     Joaquin De Baca. Riding with Perlberg at the start, Deputy De Baca takes a few more bullets and comes out of Kutztown Canyon bloodied but not out of the game with a number nine ranking.

10. Nelson Martins. Next to the dude getting “leached,” pretty-boy Martins was getting his beard neatened at the barbershop in preparation for the KCC championships instead of racing this week. Still he’s got lots of company in that category and holds onto the last spot on the hotlist.

Well, that’s it folks. The fun and games are over. This coming Sunday is THE Kissena Club Championship race to end all races (until next late/summer/early fall when we do it again on the road) and stories will be told. Will Ragot collect his second club championship of the year? Or is a rising McLoughlin ready to pounce on any error? How will new guard racers Perlberg and De Baca fare against old-school bad-asses Partland and Feehan? Will the “try it out for the first time crew” collapse in muddy mix of tears and despair after the first lap? No points, no extrapolation, no interpretation, no sympathy. The next Hotlist is going to be stone cold. Your placing in this race, is your placing on the list. So there.

Jim, your insights&quiet strength/performances week-in and week-out resonate and inspire me..

Jules said:

Worth noting, Hotlist is also coming into form with his writing.  Early in the season we'd have to wait & scream till friday for the latest, and now he's out of the gate on Tuesday mornings.

#footspeed

Jules said:

Blame?!?  Somebody buy that kid a cigar!

dstokes said:

Is this an electronic shifter on Nys' bike?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/photos/gallery-superprestige-gavere-from-the-pits-and-the-race/285283

Marc Bertucco said: Nov 30 SCCX #2 in Augusta NJ. I don't know anything about this race really...but I hear Todd McLoughlin is going.

AUGUSTA a/k/a Sussex is a nice grass-rootsy race on what is usually a relatively non-technical course with one or two slightly-longer-than-usual-for-'cross climbs.  A good place for friends and family to watch because you can usually see 100% of the race unfold from one vantage point.  This race was one of the local mainstays of metro area before the 'cross-splosion of the last few years. About 1.5 hour drive from Brooklyn so it's pretty convenient.

Gobble gobble, gobb…67yyy77hb

Hotlist’s bobbly and exhausted head comes abruptly crashing down on the keyboard as he tries to type up this week’s hotlist. But we’ve got important things to talk about, namely the 2^nd Annual Kissena Cycling Club CX Championship race, so a proper bedtime will have to wait—again. Not having learned our lessons from Saturday’s newest Xbox One game, Flying Orange Iron: Barricade Protocol, the exceedingly clever Supercross volunteer crew (including, you-know-who) awoke to a repeat of Saturday’s course destruction on Sunday. And so instead of embro-ing up and going out for hot-laps, many KCC members were leveraging up bent and intertwined barricades, fixing course tape, raking leaves off new sections of the course.

The big race was subsequently postponed, but when it went off a few hours later, several fields of other racers had already torn through the course, the sun was shining, and our moods were high. Lining up in reverse order of crossresults.com points, the race that has determined, without prejudice or bias, this week’s Hotlist rankings, saw dudes like McLoughlin and Ragot start in the back row and Bertucco and Caesar in the front. Of course with just 3 or so rows, this was ultimately a symbolic gesture. A damn fine one, but no one was going to stop the freight train from the rear when the starting pistol that was Myles’ scattershot voice mumble-yelled, “Go!”

1.     Eric Ragot. Wins. Again. Club champion. Going back to 2012’s club CX championships, he’s won three races in a row. #cantstopwontstop

2.     Michael Perlberg. In a season-long battle for Cat 3 supremacy over McLoughlin, this week, Perlberg comes out on top. (Rumor has it that Perlberg used the time he might have spent actually alphabetizing the weekend’s rider release forms in favor of getting ready to race this race of all races.)

3.     Todd McLoughlin. Third! One of the season’s most consistent riders continues to rack up another top placing. He was realistically the only guy who could have given one and two a fight and not come away completely shredded. Hotlist looks forward to the grudgey re-match next year.

4.     Eric Robertson. Holy crap! Dude takes a break from making movies, does like 3 races in the last 2 years and manages to just miss the podium. Permission to take a step up to the counter and order your Bignasty Gulp of “Haterade” granted.

5.     Nelson Martins. The boy with the bubblegum bike continues to chew through the competition this year and the club championship race was no exception. Finishing less than 2 minutes behind Ragot, KCC looks to have another CX killer in the making.

6.     JP Partland. By the time 11:45 on Sunday morning rolled around, JP had already started roughly 17.4 races. Clearly the man with a rare hall-pass this fall was on a mission, and if that mission was to ride until rhabdomyolisis, mission accomplished. Hotlist suspects with less bizarre CX schedule, he could be in contention for a club CX championship podium in 2014.

7.     Marc Bertucco. Sigh. Coming into the weekend Hotlist wanted more from the guy who only really proved that he is championship caliber at three things. Leaf RAKING (old school baby), course tape tying, and evil brake-checking on steep dusty climbs.

8.     David Stokes. With a fist full of “oh-no-you-didn’t,” one of the genuine standouts from the 2013 CX season, Stokes justly “rider-protested” his way back into the top 10 of this year’s CX championship race.

9.     John Malcolmson. In perhaps his second cross race ever, Johnny Wrongway keeps it together and grabs onto the number nine spot in the championships. No word on whether he cleared the barriers by huffy tossing his bike by the brake hoods…

10.  Rene Herrara. In a fitting send off to one of the team’s strongest sprinters, Herrera throws his leg over a cross bike for the first time ever (?) and sneaks into the top 10 just before the new year, which brings him to a new team.

Looking back at all the action from the Supercross weekend fills Hotlist with much joy. And while it’s hard to argue with the podium at this year’s race, it’s also hard to wonder both what might have been had a few more of the teams regular crossers pinned on a race number, and had the level of pre-race, pre-race weekend chaos been dialed down a notch or two. Hotlist is confident, that should we keep the same race venue for next year, EVERYTHING will be just that much better. And he can’t wait!