It’s basic: a bicycle is attached to an apparatus by which speed and distance are tabulated. Like walking or forming words. The responsibility of the cyclist is to spin as fast as he can, complete the assigned distance as fast as he can and do so before anyone else does. Again, you’d be hard pressed to find a more quotidian task. Simplicity aside, you’d be hard pressed to find a more harrowing or taxing endeavor that occurs in under one minute. This isn’t the Wii, this isn’t virtual reality—it’s the stuff that belongs in laboratories, where scientists and psychiatrists alike can study individuals and their love of rolling as fast as possible while fixed in place. The parquet slopes of the velodrome are but dreams under the contraption: these are goldsprints.

Godspeed!

Popular as additions to the ever-popular alleycat—a bike race modeled after the daily tasks of a bike messenger—goldsprints, or roller races, are competitive short-distance races that can be held in the smallest of rooms. The front wheel of a bike is removed and placed on a mount, while the rear wheel is set up to spin on a pair of rollers. The mechanism is hooked up to a capable computer, which can then project racers’ speeds, distances traveled and results for the audience. More traditional apparatuses involve wooden rollers mechanically rigged to large clocks, but over the years, rollers have come into the age of technology and information. As is the wont of DIY communities, particularly the one that surrounds bike messenger culture, most software for executing goldsprints is open-source, namely OpenSprints. Support and instructions are available for download at their website, though at present, Linux is the only available, tested and reliable version of the software.

Go fast, go global

Of course, goldsprints can be reduced to a simple training mechanism for the die-hard cyclist—a way to stay inside and ride, safe from the elements. Roller races aren’t new, but they most certainly are not stale. Goldsprints may have gone unnoticed in  cyclo-cult favorite The Triplets of Belleville, a 2003 animated film that tells of a kidnapped French cyclist forced to roller race by a money-hungry mob boss. During the 1950s, roller races saw a new height in popularity, as they were staged as preludes to films and intermissions during dance competitions.

Roller racing’s re-emergence began at the 1999 Cycle Messenger World Championship held in Zurich, Switzerland. Used then as an auxiliary event to the traditional alleycat held the next day, it is easy to see how organizers could identify the untapped popularity of the goldsprint. In the intervening years, goldsprints have become events unto themselves, existing outside the umbrella of the alleycat and its constituent events. Messenger-heavy cities such as New York City, Minneapolis and San Francisco—in addition to less oft-thought of towns as Bozeman, Minnesota, Salt Lake City and Cincinnati—all boast regular, well-attended goldsprint events. North, south, east, west, rain, sleet or snow, goldsprints can and do happen anytime, anywhere.

Logistically speaking, one would only need a space big enough to house two rollers, a table for a computer and a projector to display progress and results, and enough room left over for coolers of beer and a group of rowdy fans.

Goldsprints are a modern encapsulation of cycling purity. Fewer mitigating factors are present in contemporary sport. Traffic, people, uncontrollable surfaces, objects and the like—these modern trappings and pitfalls are amazingly and thankfully vacant. This is the epitome of the liminal wherein the man, the man-made and the mechanism merge into a harlequin blur of the golden singular. Velocity is unimportant—there are no turns, straights or vectors to negotiate. Goldsprints are about breakneck speed. Pure and simple.

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KRIS UDEKWU B’08 is spinning off into the sunset.