Lawson Craddock’s French bicycle ride helps restore the Alkek Velodrome.
Houstonian makes Tour de France fall a funding opportunity
A year after Hurricane Harvey began drowning much of Houston, there will be a grand celebration at the Alkek Velodrome on Friday night. As many as 500 are expected for a night of racing revelry and no small amount of relief at the bicycle track, whose inner bowl filled with 8 feet of water and sludge during the storm, then needed three weeks to drain.
Originally built for the 1986 U.S. Olympic Festival, the Cullen Park venue was constructed smack in the middle of the now-infamous Addicks Reservoir west of town, and water does what water does. But, when it finally dried up, the grounds were a foul-smelling mess, the patched-up concrete track was falling apart and most of the stable of 50 special track bikes had been rendered unrepairable.
There were plenty of reasons to fear Harvey’s devastation had killed bicycle track racing in Houston. Alkek operates on “100 percent volunteer help,” said Doug Evans, the race director there since 2013, and was spending every dollar it brought in to make ends meet and keep the aging track as safe as possible.
“I was paying for a lot of stuff out my own pocket, just to get it done,” Evans said. “We receive zero funding from any (government entity). We’re located right in the middle of a city park, but we have to mow our own grass.”
Then, however, something bad happened to a local guy who cut his teeth competing on a bike at Alkek, and that led to something really good happening for the future of the Velodrome and the future of track racing here.
Lawson Craddock, the area’s most accomplished cyclist and the first to start, never mind finish, the Tour de France, turned a terrible first-stage crash in the Tour on July 7 into the improbable dollars-from-heaven cash bonanza that will transform the Velodrome into one of the nation’s best, state-of-the-art venues. In time, it might become a magnet for future big-time American bike racers like Craddock.
Negative becomes a positive
The mishap of the young man from Cy-Fair has been well-chronicled.
A couple of hours out from Noirmoutier-en-L’ile on an island off France’s Vendée’s coast, Craddock got thrown into the crowd when his front wheel struck a water bottle dropped by one of the other racers in a feed zone. He was left with a bloody gash over his left eye, which required nine stitches, plus a hairline fracture of his scapula. He finished the day not knowing if he could continue in the race.
But, if he could, he vowed that night, he would use every turn of the crank toward Paris to raise money for the Velodrome through a “gofundme” site.
Given the OK to keep racing the next morning, he set up the site with help from his dad and then pedaled off in pain.
“I basically put up $2,100 myself … and asked people to do the same, pledge 100 bucks per stage,” said Craddock, who was personally sponsoring the kids’ cycling league program at Alkek. “I didn’t know how it would go, but it was worth trying.” Indeed.
At last count, nearly $280,000 has been raised to fund new elevated, flood-proof storage and replacement bikes for the Velodrome. Another $15,000 will come from Austin’s Mellow Johnny’s bike shop T-shirt sales — they sport an upside-down No. 13, which was, fittingly, Craddock’s assigned number in the Tour plus another $11,000 for the auctioning off of his Education First-Drapac Specialist Team Tour bike and likely as much as $25,000 from Karbach Brewing Co. The brewers who make Craddock’s favorite post-ride drink are giving $1 per case for each one sold through the end of the year.
Other individuals have cut checks for as much as $10,000. A specially designed pair of “#HoustonStrong” shoes with the city’s skyline featured on them brought in another couple of grand.
Do the math and the total might eventually approach $400,000.
All Craddock had to do in return was pop Tylenol by the handful — the strongest pain medication he was allowed to take under the UCI rules — shrug off the knife in his back and ride nearly 2,100 miles around France.
The former U.S. junior champion finished last — every day, in fact — but experienced his greatest cycling triumph/epiphany. He calls it “career defining, the most important thing I’ve done, or that I’ll ever do as a cyclist.”
A huge source of inspiration for him? The Texans’ J.J. Watt and his Harvey Relief fund, which grew to almost $40 million.
“Look at J.J., what he did for Houston,” Craddock said. “That totally motivated me. Things that last are things like these. I’m a big fan (of sports), but I rank athletes on how much they give back.”
Craddock, 26, to be sure, ranks at the top of Evans’ list.
“We were nowhere close to covering the cost of repairs needed before Harvey hit,” he said. “But, because of Lawson, we’re going to be able to get everything done and be able to establish an endowment to cover future issues.
“Most (riders) would have called it quits after the kind of crash he had. But not this kid, not Lawson. What an outstanding person he is. A totally selfless act, that’s what Lawson did. And I can’t say enough about his family.”
City’s first family of cycling
Craddock’s father, Tom, who owns a roofing business, also used to race competitively and escorted his sons (brother Parker is two years older than Lawson) to the Velodrome for the first time not long after they got off training wheels. Before Harvey battered the area and before Lawson took his header on that French roadside, Tom and his wife, Ellen, were supporting a spring criterium series at Bear Creek Park. Every penny netted went to the Velodrome.
If there’s a first family of cycling in Houston, it’s definitely the Craddock clan.
Tom Craddock rode extensively in the Pyrenees this summer, a trip pre-planned around Lawson’s routinely finishing on the Champs-Élysées in Paris for the second time in three years. So he and Ellen were standing among the spectators waiting for the peloton to reach the Col de Val Louron-Azet during the 17th stage when Lawson spied them.
Racing for nothing at that point except his pride and his gofundme mission, Lawson stopped, dismounted and came over for an emotional hug.
“I’ve got a whole new respect for tour riders, especially after seeing the climbs and seeing Lawson doing it with one arm,” Tom Craddock said. “It’s hard to say where he got the strength, struggling at the back every day, hanging on without any (drafting) help. His reaction time was slowed. It was hard for him to turn right, to break on descents. … I’ve started telling people that some day I‘d like to grow up and be like my son.”