Gears and Guitars took place over the weekend in downtown Winston-Salem, with cycling events and live music. Today’s Carolina Curious looks at the driving force behind the event: the National Cycling Center.
In 2015, USA Cycling selected Winston-Salem as the site for an Olympic training facility. Private donors purchased a three-story building downtown and adorned it with a huge banner that read, “Home of the National Cycling Center.” But it never seemed to get into full gear, according to WFDD listener and cycling enthusiast Craig Fansler.
"I just want to know what happened to that project, and why it seemingly just kind of vanished," he says.
To find the answer, WFDD's David Ford spoke with National Cycling Center Director of Community Engagement Michael Hosey. He says the brick-and-mortar training facility encountered several headwinds. COVID impacted the way elite cyclists trained — switching to digital platforms, linking up to a global community and training more independently. Soaring interest rates pushed renovation costs on the century-old building out of reach. Then, says Hosey, came the ripple effects from a USA Gymnastics sexual abuse scandal.
"We had originally had the endorsement from USA Cycling from the CEO and the US Olympic Committee to be an Olympic cycling training facility," says Hosey. "And with the Olympic Committee, when the stuff happened with USA Gymnastics several years back, they had put a moratorium on all new centers, and that was another kind of notch to make it a little bit harder to achieve that original goal to have the Olympic Training Center in Winston-Salem."
Hosey says the loss of major local sponsors for the Center’s Cycling Classic professional road races brought an end to that annual event in 2020.
But he says the National Cycling Center organization continues to work in the area, just with a different focus. They operate the Safe Routes To School program, teaching elementary students about biking and pedestrian safety. And they hold a monthly veterans’ event at the Salem Lake Marina. The group bike ride around the lake is designed to support disabled veterans and wounded warriors.