The story of Cyclocross Nationals at Fort Steilacoom and the infamous "Tape Incident”
In 2019, Cyclocross Nationals came to Washington state. The event was the culmination of years of work to fulfill all the conditions needed to put together a successful bid for USA Cycling. The organizing committee consisted of MFG Cyclocross co-founders Zac Daab and Terry Buchanan, as well as Dean Burke and other key members of the Tacoma Sporting Commission.
Daab and Buchanan knew that, given the time requirements (One week of setup, one week of racing, plus teardown and cleanup), hosting the event within Seattle city limits wouldn’t be feasible, so they looked farther afield. Lakewood, home to Fort Steilacoom, was the clear choice. With a close-by airport, ample parking and amenities, and a course location with plenty of potential, it was their best shot.
The goal, says Daab, was to make it an authentic Pacific Northwest experience. That meant multiple challenging technical sections in addition to hard runups. The weather would be a wildcard, but organizers hoped for overcast skies and wet but not saturated ground for challenging racing conditions.
Course designer Rich McClung worked hard to make the course memorable, while also making it positive for racers: it needed to have ample passing opportunities, have pits that bisected the course precisely in two to make sure a mechanicals didn’t prematurely end anyone’s race, and also incorporate the technical sections Daab envisioned.
Though the focus for many is on elite racing, Cyclocross Nationals has a whole week’s worth of racing for age group athletes as well. In fact, by the time the elite races were underway, Daab says the organizers were breathing a sigh of relief that everything they’d worked for was happening.
On course, a new story was being written. In the women’s race, heavy favorite Katie Compton was, for the first time in over a decade, beaten. Young upstart Clara Honsinger’s victory heralded a long-awaited changing of the guard in US women’s cyclocross.
In the men’s elite race, everyone was expecting fireworks. US men’s cyclocross had been dominated by two riders since 2014. Jeremy Powers and Stephen Hyde emerged victorious in every single national championship in that timespan, with Hyde taking three titles and Powers four. By 2019, however, Hyde’s powers were on the wane and going into nationals, Kona-Maxxis rider Kerry Werner was the odds-on favorite, with a bevy of other contenders, including Gage Hecht, Curtis White, and Lance Haidet, a notch below.
One of the easter eggs of the course was the pro-only section located above the southern end of the park. It included a very tough Euro-style runup with a steep chute on the way back, and it would make its presence known by shaping the outcome. Racing was tight from the gun, with youngster Hecht able to find a gap after the first lap. Coming out of the nasty pro-only descent at high speed, he got caught in a rut (unlike the rest of the course, this section hadn’t been tracked out by amateur races) and was catapulted sideways through the course tape. Somehow managing to avoid the throng of spectators, and also remain upright, he carefully slowed himself, then turned hard left through the tape and onto the course.
Werner, now approaching the same spot at the same rate of velocity, found himself with nowhere to go and was forced to dive from the bike into the mud and tangled tape left in Hecht’s wake. Though Werner was quick to remount, and seemingly uninjured, this incident would dictate the race. Hecht rode the rest of the race solo to win the title, with Werner ultimately finishing fourth behind White and Hyde.
This tape mishap sparked polemics and armchair quarterbacking (from all corners, but especially Werner’s trade teammates) over whether or not some kind of foul had been committed. Should Hecht have been penalized for not looking before reentering the race course? What would be an appropriate punishment for leaving the course and reentering it and interfering with someone else’s race? Was Hecht’s victory tainted in some way?
Both the racers in question seemed to shrug it off as a racing incident with no ill-intent behind it. But because of its seeming impact on the final result, it garnered significant and ongoing attention. To be fair to Hecht, he had the gap already. Werner’s crash just cemented it in place and helped shift the momentum in Hecht’s favor. To date, neither Werner or Hecht has won a subsequent national championship.
The onslaught of Covid-19 would shock the world just months later, upending everything, including the following year’s cyclocross schedule, and no #cxnats were held in 2020. Fortunately, they were back in 2021.
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