Toby Stanton's Team

I don’t know about other industries, but the bicycle business is well-known among its members for a “close-to-the-vest” mindset. Few retailers, manufacturers, or wholesalers really want to share anything with anyone. I sure don’t know what is so private and special, but that’s the way it’s always been.

You want to know how many bikes are being imported or sold? Yeah, there are numbers, but who knows if they are real. You want to know if anyone is making money – ha! Everyone says they’re broke (or breaking), or they might just outright lie.

So, when someone successful and happy and smart shares what he knows without reservation, it’s like someone opened all the windows and let fresh air into the room.

Toby Stanton is one of those people. He’s well known for his frame painting (his awesome company name? Hot Tubes!) and he is especially familiar to those young riders who yearn to be a professional bike racer here in the U.S. with aspirations of racing on the world stage.

(You can hear my interview with Toby here.)

The Hot Tubes Development Team is probably the most prestigious in the country. Toby has honed his system so that the individual team members become a tight-knit and well oiled racing machine.

Carefully and patiently, Toby has never deviated from his pointed task – to develop junior U.S. riders - youngsters 19 and under - into world class cyclists.

Starting his team way back in 1992, his desire and determination are certainly paying off right now – for example… there’s the new partnership with INEOS – Grenadiers , one of the premiere world tour cycling teams. And, alumni from his development team are topping podiums all over the place. (I really wanted to say podia to sound cool; but I looked it up and either is grammatically correct!)

American bike racing has for sure had its ups and downs. We’ve lived through enough angst and betrayal to last a couple of lifetimes with the likes of Lance Armstrong and his brazen take-down of American racing back in the “oughts” as they like to say.

My hope – along with many others I’m sure – is that we are seeing a new “Golden Age” of American bike racing!

So “chapeaux” to Toby for his commitment and laser-focused ideals to advancing our sport!

Oh, and by the way… tune in to the Giro d’Italia starting this weekend and see who captures the pink jersey!