Denver Disruptors bicycle racers to roll through Commerce City

BY JOHN RENFROW JRENFROW@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Can’t get enough professional sports teams in Colorado? Good.

e National Cycling League has you covered. It’s bringing an exciting, free professional bicycle race to the Front Range.

e NCL Cup, a series, is in its rst year, and composed of 10 cycling teams composed of men and women — including the league-leading Denver Disruptors.

ey compete in three races across the country for one NCL Cup champion to be crowned this fall.

e rst event in Miami in April rallied nearly 20,000 spectators.

e league is hopeful for similar numbers as cyclists race a course around the Colorado Rapids’ soccer stadium at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City on Aug 13.

“It’s the world’s rst majorityminority and female-owned sports league,” said Reed McCalvin, the vice president of teams and operations for the NCL. “ e four founders, and then myself, a founder with a very little ‘f,’ basically wanted to help change the face of sports and equality in sports.” e founders include successful executives, tech company veterans, NFL agents, lawyers, and more, with high-pro le investors in professional sports, such as the NBA’s Bradley Beal and the NFL’s Jalen Ramsey and Derwin James. ey all have the same goal: to bring cycling to the next level on a new, even playing eld. e races are not multi-day, grueling races with mountain passes somewhere along the way like the Tour de France and ones closer to home from years past, including the Colorado Classic and USA Pro Challenge. e NCL is criterium-style racing, meaning they’re fast-paced as cyclists ride on a set race course, doing laps to gain points along the way. e women and men compete in di erent competition groups for the same team, so each side brings equal weight to the scoreboard.

A new, even playing field

And, the NCL is set up in a way that allows men and women on the teams chances to contribute to the score. Some teams, such as the Denver Disruptors, have a full team of both men and women. Other teams that do not have both women’s and men’s divisions may merge with another women’s/ men’s team for the purposes of competing in the NCL Cup Series.

For example, the Goldman Sachs ETFS Racing women’s team and Texas Roadhouse Cycling Team men’s team combined, and they’re currently sitting in third place.

“ e National Cycling League is setting a new standard for inclusivity in professional sports by championing diversity. I was drawn to the opportunity to impact and transform communities through our mission,” said CEO Andrea Pagnanelli. “With more than 50 million cyclists in the U.S., we have an opportunity to grow the passion and excitement for the sport of cycling among the next generation of fans.”

But perhaps the experience and cohesion of the Disrupters is what has them so ahead of the pack. Currently the team is in rst place with a score of 139. e Miami Nights are in second sitting at 95.

“Everybody has a mother, daughter, girlfriend, cousin, niece, what have you, that wants to see them equally represented and paid well. Sport is the great equalizer. One of our underlying taglines is ‘Make bike racing look like America looks,’” McCalvin said. ere are nearly 30 di erent nations represented in the participating teams, and several of the riders are former Olympic and worldrenowned athletes.

Why Denver?

After a year of diligent research, which included meeting advisors from a plethora of other professional sports leagues and studying cycling in America, Denver emerged as a prime candidate for an NCL hub not only to host a local team but to hold events in the future.

“Colorado is just a cycling state,” McCalvin said. “Denver makes it consistently in the top 10 cities. We had a 49-row wide Excel spreadsheet of di erent reasons, including socioeconomics, number of people that bike, what the city spends on infrastructure around bikes, all that stu . Denver was in the top 10 in nearly every category.”

Noah Granigan is one of the Denver Disruptors, as has been a part of the Colorado cycling community since he attended CU Boulder in 2014, where he was a