The fast-paced, high-heartrate sport of cyclocross has been popular in Europe since the 1940s, when road racers came up with the idea as a way to train during the muddy, snowy offseason.

Today, cyclocross is a much-beloved spectator sport on the Continent. Small towns in the Belgian or Dutch countryside will virtually shut down for races that draw thousands of paying spectators. The sport has been slower to develop in the United States, but in recent years it has started to catch fire.

Joachim Parbo, 32, the Danish national cyclocross champion, recently arrived in the U.S. for his first American races, and he likes what he sees so far: Lots of intense, but friendly, competition.

"It's been just great to be among so many devoted cyclocross racers," Parbo says after placing second in an Oct. 29 race at Boulder Reservoir, his first American race. "Sometimes in Europe, people get so stone-faced, trying to break each other before the (starting) gun. Here it's sort of more relaxed."

Parbo and hundreds of other racers in everything from youth to elite categories are expected to show up at this Sunday's U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross Series Boulder Cup at Harlow Platt Park in south Boulder. Organizer Chris Grealish is hoping to turn Boulder on to the joys of watching cyclocross — for free.

"We haven't had a national series race in Colorado for six years," says Grealish, founder and owner of Boulder Denver Couriers. "I'm hoping a couple of thousand people will come over and see the show we put on."

In some ways, sunny Colorado is an atypical venue for cyclocross, which developed in gloomier climates where mud is a prominent obstacle.

"It's really designed for places like Portland and New England, where the weather sucks most of the time, where you can't do a four-hour road ride in the winter," Grealish says. "But it's becoming popular here despite our 300 sunny days a year."

Many cyclocross riders are road racers or mountain bikers just looking for a way to extend their racing into the fall and winter months. But more and more riders are electing to focus on cyclocross.

"I got into it because I wanted to keep racing when the road season ended," says Boulder's Jon Baker, 32. "But my finishes are better in cyclocross. ... I'm a decent road rider, with some good results. But I think I'm going to wind up specializing in cyclocross more, because it suits me."

Baker says success in cyclocross is as much a matter of technique as of fitness: "It's about being able to pick the best line around the course to go faster without crashing."

Katie Compton, 27, of Colorado Springs, who won the women's elite race at the reservoir on Oct. 29 and will ride Sunday, has largely abandoned the road racing of her youth for cyclocross and track racing. The short-course, high-octane nature of cyclocross makes the sport perfect for spectators, she says.

"Getting a big race like (the Boulder Cup) is great," she says. "People can see so much more than watching a road race or mountain bike race, where you see riders every 10 minutes. (In cyclocross) you see everything unfold. You have an up close and personal view of everything."

Cyclocross tends to require more intensity than road riding, 31-year-old Parbo says: "On a mountain bike you go 90 percent. In cyclocross, you do about 110 percent, until you see squares and stars."

And what it lacks in "mud, snow and misery," as Compton puts it, Boulder partially makes up for with that old bugaboo, altitude. Parbo arrived in Colorado not long before the Oct. 29 race and found that riding at a mile high is a little different than pedaling at sea level.

"I definitely got worked the first couple days being here. ... On (Oct. 29) I could feel a limit to what I can to (that) I don't normally have," he says. "I sort of blew up earlier than what I normally do, and cyclocross is all about when you blow up."

The Boulder Cup will have the distinction of offering the largest overall purse — $8,000 — of any one-day cyclocross race staged in America, Grealish says.

"This is ... a culmination of every bit of energy and ideas and effort I can put forth to show people in Boulder of what real, incredible racing is all about," he says.

Contact Clay Evans at (303) 473-1352 or evansc@dailycamera.com .


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