What does a team director do during the USA Pro Cycling Challenge? We shadowed SmartStop’s team director Mike Creed for a day during last year’s race. 

In professional baseball, the team manager slouches in the dugout, calling plays with hand signals. In pro basketball, the head coach patrols the sidelines, screaming orders at his players. 

In pro cycling, the team director drives behind the race in the team car. He communicates with his staff via a two-way radio. But he can only talk with his riders during a handful of key points during the race. 

Talking to riders, however, is just one of the many tasks that a team manager accomplishes during a typical day at the USA Pro Challenge. 

SmartStop team manager Mike Creed wakes early, usually before 7:30 a.m. His phone is already buzzing with emails and text messages. He needs to approve a shipment of team apparel and decide on logistics for the next stage. A team sponsor wants to meet after breakfast. A talented rider is looking for a job next year.

SmartStop is one of the smaller UCI Continental-level teams, and it does not have the budget for an army of publicists, logistics personnel and sponsor liaisons. Creed must do it all. 

"You deal with a lot of small, 30-minute tasks in my job," says Creed, who retired from his own pro cycling career in 2013. "But there are 14 riders, 3 team owners, sponsors, fans, family and media, and everybody has a task.

After answering the emails, Creed laces up his running shoes. As a team director, he lives out of hotel rooms most of the year. Since January, he’s only spent 10 days at his home in Colorado Springs. If he's lucky, he can squeeze in a 45-minute run each day. 

“Keeps me sane,” Creed says, before jogging out the door. 

After his run, Creed eats a light breakfast with his Canadian rider Rob Britton. They discuss the upcoming stage, which features a hilly three-lap course around Aspen. Britton is the team's primary GC threat for this race. He's raced for several smaller professional and elite/amateur teams in the previous years, and said that, so far, Creed is the best manager he's had. 

"Mike holds people accountable for their actions in a race," Britton says. "He makes us compete for a spot on this team. If you want to race, you have to get results."

After breakfast, Creed meets with his staff of mechanics and helpers, which are called soigneurs. They examine the racecourse, and prepare the bags of food and water bottles that will be in the feed zones. Different riders prefer different drinks, such as water, drink mix and Coca-cola. 

The riders slowly arrive from their hotel room and step aboard their bicycles. Creed follows the cyclists in the team car into downtown Aspen. 

In downtown Aspen, a reporter stops Creed for an interview. During his pro career, Creed was one of the go-to riders for journalists because of his willingness to offer an unfiltered perspective. It's no different now that he's part of the management. 

After the interview, Creed steps into the bus to talk to his riders about the stage. He talks about the course. He addresses each rider and the job that rider will play that day. Some riders are there to help the team's GC specialist, Rob Britton. Others are there to guide the team's sprinters, Jure Kocjan and Patrick McCabe. 

“This is it,” Creed says. “There are big teams and guys from Europe here. Don’t take a back seat. You can’t wait for an opportunity like this. Go out and make something happen.”

After speeding around Aspen twice, the peloton heads out of town toward a climb into nearby Snowmass. The action starts early: a SmartStop rider suffers a flat tire. Creed steers the team car to a stop. Team mechanic Chris Kreidl jumps out of the car and unlocks a spare bike bike from the roof rack while Creed grabs the damaged bike. After the rider hops onto this new bike, Creed runs beside the rider, pushing him up the road. 

Creed jumps back into the car and accelerates after the rider, who has lost contact with the peloton. As Creed drives ahead, the rider nestles in behind the car. Using the car’s draft, the rider zooms back into the peloton. Some teams prefer to tow the riders back to the peloton by letting them hold onto the car. That activity, however, is illegal, and Creed does not want to break the rules. 

"I'm not a fan of extended pulls," Creed says. "I'll sometimes do it for a mechanical, but not for a rider who is dropped."

After a few quiet miles, the peloton accelerates over a series of climbs. When the peloton speeds up, so does the race caravan. Team directors must be skilled drivers to navigate the twists and turns on a typical racecourse. Creed accelerates his BMW through a tight switchback, just a few feet from the rear bumper of the BMC team car.

Smartstop’s Slovenian sprinter Jure Kocjan is dropped. Creed drives up alongside Kocjan, who is coated in sweat and gasping.

“Check my brakes!” Kocjan yells.  

Kreidl leans out the window, but there is nothing wrong with the bike. Kocjan is simply too tired to stay with the group. The race commissar pulls up beside the car to make sure Kocjan does not receive a free ride, and Kreidl lets the Slovenian go. 

“Jure is done today,” Creed says.

After two laps on the Aspen circuit, the peloton speeds back into Aspen. One of the European teams has ridden to the front of the peloton and upped the pace. Creed drives past the throngs of dropped riders. SmartStop’s sprinter, Travis McCabe, comes into view. He’s been dropped. 

Creed drives alongside the gasping cyclist, rolls down the window and extends a water bottle. 

“C’mon buddy, just a little bit longer,” Creed says. “You’re almost there.”

As Creed drives away, he blurts out a string of expletives and punches the steering wheel. With McCabe dropped, SmartStop’s chances of winning the sprint are slim. Two SmartStop riders are still in the front group. In the sprint, they finish several bike lengths behind. 

As he drives back to the bus, Creed is already thinking about what he’ll tell his riders at the post-race meeting. While his sprinters were dropped, Britton is still in contention for the GC. The feeling of success blended with disappointment is a typical one in bike racing. 

It just wasn’t our day,” Creed says as he parks the car. “It’s not the end of the world.”

About the author: 
Fred Dreier is a journalist living in Denver, Colorado. 
He has written about professional bicycle racing since 2004, and his work has appeared in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Dreier has covered the USA Pro Cycling Challenge since its debut in 2011. He regularly rides his bicycle on many of the roads used by the race.