USA! USA!

Despite it all, I remain a homer. For now.

Last Wednesday, April 2, right around the time of the Liberation Day tariff announcements, American cyclist Neilson Powless found himself in a seemingly intractable situation, in the closing kilometers of Dwars door Vlaanderen, a second-tier spring classic in Belgium. He was in the lead break; the problem was, his breakmates were all on the same team — and two hailed from cycling-mad Belgium; one of these was Wout Van Aert, one of the sport’s fastest finishers. (The third, improbably, was another American.)

My family and I actually watched the finish the 2016 version of Dwars. We’d flown into Brussels, on our way to Africa, when the airport was bombed. We were stranded in a country that was largely unfamiliar; most of the little I knew of Belgium was cycling-related, and when I learned that, yes, a high-level race would finish a 45-minute train ride away, we determined our family’s activity for the day. There we watched old men grouped around what looked to be a transistor radio, listening to race reporting, as one of them marked down bets on a handheld chalkboard. A crowd of thousands lined the closing kilometer.

While I’ve written just one, single political post, I haven’t tried to obscure my frustration with my home country and how we’ve elected to treat our own citizens, our visitors, and people in other nations — not to mention the people who were here long before my ancestors arrived. Yet there I was, standing in front of my computer, shouting for Neilson to steal a virtually impossible win.

Chalk it up to familiarity: Powless grew up just 30 miles from where I live, riding the same mountain bike trails that my kids rode as part of the NorCal high school cycling league; were he a couple of years younger, he and my son Mack would have competed against one another. He’s a young dad, married to a ballet dancer, and he speaks thoughtfully about his Native American heritage. He seems like a good dude — and he voiced pride in bearing the Stars and Strips in the World Championships.

Wout Van Aert also seems like a good dude, but mostly what I know about him, apart his position in the cycling Pantheon, is that he has famously remarkable hair. So in those final kilometers, my loyalty was never in question: I’d pull for Neilson. In sport, familiarity breeds not contempt but just that: loyalty. And I figure if someone who descends from the Oneida people can ride proudly for the U.S., then I can shout my support for him, and thus for our shared home country.

Thanks to some confidence of poor communication, overconfidence and cramping, the Belgians came up short: Powless shocked his rivals and all of cycling fandom by winning the race. The finish is worth watching.

Soon after last summer’s Olympics came to a close, I began planning our attendance at the L.A. games in 2028. Then around the evening of November 5 my enthusiasm waned. But I bet I rally: we’ll watch mountain and road biking, and hopefully several other sports. Maybe we’ll even wave a flag and cheer for our compatriots — though I sure wish we could craft something more creative than that exhausted three-letter chant.