BICYCLE COURIERS TURN ON THE HEAT AT COMPETITION PUTTING PEDAL TO THE METTLE BICYCLE COURIERS FLOCK TO TORONTO FOR COMPETITION
By Anne Swardson
Washington, August 14, 1995
TORONTO, AUG. 13 -- TORONTO, AUG. 13 -- The most they usually get from us is a grunt and a signature. But this weekend, the world's bicycle messengers got their very own world championship competition.
They came 600 strong, from 15 countries. There were couriers with tattoos, couriers with green hair, couriers with dreadlocks, bald couriers, couriers with British accents, couriers with no clothes on, couriers who speak Danish, couriers smoking cigarettes and couriers smoking pot. Nearly all were lean, tall and hairy, and all, during this weekend when Toronto's climate resembled Washington's, were very sweaty.
The competition attempted to replicate the conditions under which a courier works. So in an industrial district west of downtown Toronto, couriers riding in heats of 60 competitors had to deliver three packages to preset locations, pick up three more and deliver them too. No cars were present in the closed-off competition area, but to keep things realistic, the couriers did have to lock their bikes. And apparently, as in real life, the addresses were hard to see, as Washington courier Andy Zalan found when he missed a delivery point. That put him out of competition for the final round.
Some 20 couriers had come up from Washington with high hopes. This is the third year of the competition, which was held in London last year and Berlin the year before that. Both were won by Germany's Andy Schneider.
The iron-thighed Germans swept the event again this year, with Lars Urban of Bremen coming in first and Thomas Sauerwein of Karlsruhe second. Ivonne Kraft, also of Karlsruhe, a part-time courier and part-time trampoline teacher, won the women's division.
Urban, who aced the title of German national champion courier in a competition six weeks ago, said he had whipped himself into shape by bicycling, with a group of competitors, from New York to Toronto in five days. Some 100 couriers from Germany competed in the event, the largest delegation from any country. Urban explained the secret of his success as "a combination between the legs and the brains."
The top finisher from Washington was Urk the Commander, he of the green hair and no other name, who placed somewhere around 20th. Urk, who has been a courier for 13 years, said he dyed his hair because "I just like green. It's like the driving range and the putting green." He stopped doing courier work six months ago because "Washington, D.C., is a very angry city. I got beat up by 10 street vendors one time."
Bad luck hit the members of the Washington delegation even before they arrived: One group got in a car accident on the way up, damaging several bicycles. A courier named Cisco bent his frame back into shape, but was skeptical it would last long. "A $2,000 frame, and now it's worth 50 cents," he said.
Zalan said he usually rides nine hours a day in Washington, with 20 minutes for lunch if he's lucky. It's not a bad job, he said: You get in shape, and you can pull down $100 a day. More for big jobs, like delivering boxes of candy to every member of Congress. "I've delivered cigarettes, candy, mugs, all kinds of bribes. Wine bottles are a pain in the {expletive} , and big architectural rolls are annoying," said Zalan, 23. "Generally you're pretty much ignored. But what are you going to say to a courier?"
To Ben Stewart, 25, being a courier "is really capitalism in its purest form. If you work hard, you make money." For him, that means bicycle deliveries to National Airport or to Maryland; astonishingly, he said, some couriers turn down such opportunities.
The weekend was a chance for couriers to commune, to share their love of bicycles and dislike for authority. Fretting at a delay in the start of one heat, a courier shouted, "Waiting time don't pay!" Responded the race official: "Have a mental beer. Chill out, man."
Courier styles differ from city to city as well. Stewart noted that German couriers run six or seven deliveries a day, Washington couriers 30 to 40. Toronto couriers, not surprisingly, obey the law, as Canadians usually do.
"We run red lights. We're intersection artists," said Stewart. "They don't here. Of course, if they do, they get a $200 ticket."
Among the countries represented were Germany, Denmark, Norway, Britain, Japan and, reportedly, Afghanistan. At a local courier hangout called the Standby Cafe, participants partied extensively, which may explain why one Washington courier vomited at the finish line. About 40 of them also took a nude bicycle ride around downtown Toronto sometime in the wee hours of this morning.
The final round of competition was a grueling marathon, in which couriers just kept going until all but the fastest were eliminated. That meant that by the time Urban crossed the finish line, he had been sprinting, stopping, locking, delivering, picking up and unlocking for an hour and 10 minutes. He must have wanted to keep going too: At the finish line, he failed to put on his brakes in time and crashed into the waiting crowd of photographers, knocking several over. Then Sauerwein collapsed as he got off his bicycle and had to be revived by the many German team assistants.
For the Washington group, it was a chance to show the flag, literally. A courier named Wally cycled up from Washington, roughly a 12-hour drive by car, in 13 days carrying a District flag, which at the competition was proudly displayed with a Canadian flag.
There was some dissatisfaction at the considerable level of disorganization of the race officials, but also a recognition that disorganization is an occupational hazard. As Stewart put it, "Anything we do that we don't get paid for is going to be pretty disorganized."
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at messvilleto@yahoo.com