So, for some reason, cyclocross season is a winter sport. There is no real explanation for this that I can find, other than the “origins” of the sport were basically off season training for road cyclists in Europe. The other reason is that cyclocrossers love pain, punishment, and hardship and each of those things is amplified when it’s cold, rainy, snowing, sleeting, or otherwise terrible outside. Being miserable is part of the sport, and nothing is more miserable than riding a skinny-tired bike across mud and obstacles when it’s 25 degrees and wet.
We kick things off with the amazing cyclocross fail video above. This guy is hauling ass and has no time for messing around when it comes to those pesky barriers. He comes barreling in at full speed, but forgets the crucial move at the crucial moment: lifting the bike and himself over the barrier. This could be one of the reasons that cyclocross is raced in the winter, it’s so cold and miserable people just forget what they are doing right in the middle of doing it. You have to have a hook if you want to be a spectator sport. Baseball has the long-ball, football has the violence, hockey has the fights, cyclocross has full speed barrier collision explosions. What I don’t quite understand are the physics of this accident. Why does this guy go flying through the air?
Here’s another great example of things going horribly wrong during a race:
Well, they go horribly wrong for the racer, they go horribly right for the people watching the carnage. And here is crash footage from the 2009 Colorado Cyclocross Championships.
