Cleves 50th Year, a time for reflection.

On June 6th, 1974 about a dozen cyclists gathered for a time trial race starting at the tomb of President William Henry Harrison in North Bend Ohio. Fifty years later the event, which eventually became known as the Cleves Tuesday Night Time Trial Series, is a cornerstone of Cincinnati’s bike racing community. Cleves, as it is commonly referred to, takes place weekly from the months of May through September. Over the past fifty years more than two-thousand riders have ridden Cleves, competing more than nineteen-thousand times.

Those riders have traveled to the communities of Cleves and North Bend to ride what in cycling is known as “the race of truth.” It’s called the race of truth because unlike other bike races, where drafting with your competitors in a large group is key to success, there is no drafting permitted in time trials. Riders compete solo, racing just against the clock. At the end of the race the rider who has ridden the fastest time is the victor.

While a nightly victory may be sweet for one rider, most weekly competitors are out to lower their own personal record, and perhaps to move ahead of the rider directly above them in the series standings. Although there is only one overall series winner, racers are competing in age groups divided into five-year increments and gender. So out of the one to two-hundred annual competitors there will still be many Category winners.

The ten-mile race is held on Brower Road which has the unique distinction of remaining largely unchanged over the past fifty years of urban sprawl. One reason for its continued country like feel is that on one side the road is bordered by the Ohio and Great Miami rivers, while the other side travels along the base of a cliff and Shawnee Lookout Park. Additionally, although the course is ten miles long it is in the shape of a horseshoe, with the start and finish being only one mile apart on U.S. 50 so vehicular traffic has remained light.

This light traffic situation is what has enabled the Cleves Series to remain a staple of the Cincinnati cycling scene for all these years. Over that time the event has spawned local riders who have gone on to become State and U.S. National time trial champions, a Tour de France competitor, as well as one rider who set a USA Hour Record which stood for nearly two decades.

In cycling the Hour Record is considered the granddaddy of time trials. This is an event where one cyclist rides on a banked track using a bike with no brakes and only one “fixed gear” which does not allow for coasting. Long-time Cleves Series Champion Paul Liebenrood set a new U.S. hour record in 1984 which stood for nearly twenty years when he rode a distance of just over twenty-eight miles in a one-hour period.

In 1983 a young U.C. college freshman from Canton, Ohio was encouraged by bike mechanics working at Campus Cyclery to ride Cleves. Debbie Stephan Knickman was new to cycling and had never ridden a bike race in her life. Her first night racing Cleves she set a women’s course record. She was quickly persuaded to purchase a better bike and start racing. One and a half years later she was racing for the U.S. National Women’s team in Europe and raced in the second Tour de France for women placing 24th overall.

Another more recent Cleves standout was Jeff Swartout. While Jeff had ridden Cleves a few years in the late 1980’s it wasn’t until he came back to the event twenty-five years later that he finally hit his stride and lowered his lifetime PR by over a minute while averaging 26.3 MPH. That effort won him his age category and placed him in the top ten of all riders that year.

During that amazing year for Jeff, he also won the U.S. National Time Trial Championships in the Masters 70-74 age group. Sadly, Jeff passed away from pancreatic cancer two years later. In his honor a new time trial event that carries his name and draws national level riders was created. The Swartout Challenge Time Trial will take place on the Brower Road course this July, 16th in conjunction with the largest criterium race of the year in the Cincinnati area which will occur the previous day in Lawrenceburg Indiana, the Whiskey City Challenge.

Jeff Swartout was not the first Cleves rider to become a U.S. time trial champion however. In the early 1970’s one of the best U.S. racers was local rider Bill Gallagher. Bill was a founder of the Cleves series and held the course record from the very first night until 1980 when Paul Liebenrood bested Bill’s time by eleven seconds. In 1974 Bill was awarded a stars and stripes jersey when he won the All-America Time Trial Championships in Allentown, New Jersey by completing the twenty-five-mile course in a record 55:51.

The sport of competitive cycling can be fickle and fleeting for some. So, while the Cleves Time Trial has drawn thousands of participants over the years, annually there are usually somewhere between one-hundred to two-hundred Cleves Time Trial Series participants. Although most people who once competed at Cleves over the years may not still participate annually, they very likely are still pedaling their bicycles somewhere.

The sponsoring club for the Cleves Time Trial Series is the Queen City Wheels. QCW as they are known locally was started in the early 1970’s as an off-shot of the Cincinnati Cycle Club. When it was founded QCW was the only local club at the time dedicated to bike racing and over the years its members have promoted more than four hundred events, not counting the 1000 weeks of the Cleves Time Trial Series.

On Tuesday, June 6th QCW will be welcoming all past and current participants to a 50th anniversary party right after the race. The gathering will take place in the friendly community of North Bend which welcomes the finishers every Tuesday night all summer long.