“You have the wrong approach. You want to win games in the last period, but a well-conditioned team wins in the first ten minutes, maybe less. The opponent is destroyed not just on the scoreboard, but their will is broken when an opponent comes out hard and fast.

-Anatoly Tarasov

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” - Douglas Adams

I apologize if this newsletter comes across a little flat, but the banality of staggering success has numbed us to how great we truly are. But before we get into the team stuff, I’ve gotta give a shout out to my Dollar-a-Day athletes. 

As I told you in the Newport News Newsletter (which you totally read because you’re obsessed with us) the plan for Athens was to go out and make it brutal.

In the pre-race meeting, I split the team into three pods: Quantity, Quality, and Failsafe. 

First run in 1980, The Athens Twilight Criterium is set adjacent to the University of Georgia campus. 

The “twilight criterium,” as a racing format, is a popular one in America. Over the years, we’ve traveled to Boise, West Chester, Tulsa, Easton, Littleton and many more to race their twilight criteriums. Athens by no means has a patent on the name.

And yet, ask any bike racer in America, “did you race Twilight last year?” and they will have an exact answer for you. Yes or no. They were in Athens, or they weren’t. 

I’d love to tell you this’ll be quick. I’d love to tell you I won’t get all bleary-eyed sentimental about a four corner crit. I’d love to tell you we won. 

But I won’t lie. I may be prone to hyperbole, but I will always be honest with you, at least in essence.

Embarrassingly, not one of our athletes won an Olympic medal this month. Not even a bronze. We’ll probably fold the team in shame. 

I won’t bury the lead: Our very own Ivanie Blondin became Olympic Champion (again), defending her title in the Women’s Team Pursuit in speed skating. She and her teammates, Valerie Maltais and Isabelle Weidemann, mowed down the Dutch team for nearly a second in the final.