SATURDAY 13TH
10:00 CMWC HEAT 1
10:40 CMWC HEAT 2
11:20 CMWC HEAT 3
12:00 CMWC HEAT 4
12:00 onwards the Cook Bros Racing IMPERIAL WHEELIE CHALLENGE (see map key 7)
12:40 Pashley SANDWICH CLASSIC main race track between Start and EC3
13:20 CMWC HEAT 5
14:00 CMWC HEAT 6
14:40 CMWC HEAT 7
15:20 CMWC HEAT 8
16:00 CMWC HEAT 9
16:40 CMWC HEAT 10
SUNDAY 14TH
10:00 SMOKIN TYRE SPRINTS - Sprint Track (see map key 8)
12:30 MESSENGER PARADE & BEST DRESSED MESSENGER COMPETITION - Messenger Monument (see map key 9)
13:00 CMWC FINAL
16:30 PRIZE PRESENTATION - Main hall (see map key 2)
This event has been organised and promoted by:
MOVING TARGET PRODUCTIONS Unit 7, Ground Floor, East Block, Panther House, 38 Mount Pleasant, LONDON WC1X OAP.
PERSONNEL:
Event Co-Ordinator, Race Controller & Loud Voice: Boris 'well, he's disqualified for a start' Pennington
London courier liaison, Race Lieutenant & Sounds Co-ordinator: Andy 'have I got the bag for you' Capp
Event Promotion & Press Officer: Richard 'how does this sound' Guard
Logistics & Site Co-ordinator: Sybil
Art Department: Jan 'give us a jersey' Hofheiz
Course Signs & Event Art: Barbie 'cooler than a block of ice' Turner
Event Franchising: Geoff 'where's my t-shirt' Lewis
Event Secretary & General Life Saving: Rosy Champion
Event Consultants: Erik 'Sure King' Zones, Achim ' good morning' Beier, Kev2
International Liaison & Event Disorganiser: Buffalo 'who's getting the cappuccinos in' Bill
Imperial Wheelie Challenge Designer: Alan
Site Captain: Danny the Guvnor
Race Typesetting: Goyle.
Programme Typesetting: Jelly T.
The Race Committee of CMWC '94 welcomes you to the 2nd Cycle Messenger World Championships. We hope you enjoy your weekend.
WHAT IS THE CYCLE MESSENGER WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS (CMWC)?
The main purpose of the Championships is to race. The Championships is for people who love riding bikes for a living, who love the rush of adrenalin as the gap squeezes shut around their legs, who like nothing better than to storm like avenging angels through junctions that scare most car-drivers. This weekend is the time for a thousand idle messenger boasts to be proven. The Race Committee has laboured long and hard to devise and construct a credible Championship format that will sort out the messengers from the muppets. May the best messenger win.
A CULTURAL MESSAGE?
Every messenger likes to race but CMWC is more than just a race; CMWC is a celebration of messenger culture. What brings all these different cities' messengers together is that even though they may not speak the same language on the radio, they are the same: two wheels, two pedals and a bag. There subtle differences from city to city but the demands that the job places on the women and men who do it are the same in Berlin as they are in San Francisco.
The job is a way of life. Slinging a bag over a shoulder and jumping on a bike has turned many an erstwhile slacker into an encyclopedic athlete with a voracious appetite. Messengers become street survivors, moving targets with only their bikes and their wits to protect them from the deadly steel pulse of the city streets. This is the attraction of the job, that keeps so many in its grip long after they have become tired of waking up morning after morning with sore legs, an aching back and a sun-tan that looks seriously uncool in beach-ware. They have the chance to create little legends every day. They can become the unsung heroes of their own epic tales of endurance and daring. They become part of the vital fluid of the city, vagabonds on the information super-highways of the world, part cowboy, part pirate, part urban icon.
WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS MADNESS, ANY WAY?
To find the origins of CMWC '94 we have to go back two years to June 1992 when we in London first heard about the CMWC. A letter arrived in the Moving Target office from Berlin. It was the 'Announcement of the 1st World Championship of Bike-Messengers in Berlin'. We thought, 'these guys think big, eh', and promptly forgot about it for a year! Then in June we heard that, yes, it really was happening, over 300 messengers from 14 nations were going to Berlin to race, there would be a tent city, bands, food and the final would go through the Brandenburg Gate on closed roads....!
So, to cut a long story short, we went. Only one team from London, but we went. And it was the most incredible weekend...
We came back inspired and we thought, what now? Where's it gonna be next year? Who's gonna organise it? In the end we decided that we would never be able to sort it out by ourselves, so we let this crazy idea drop. How wrong we were.
Achim and Stefan, of messenger, Berlin, organisers of CMC '93 faxed us in December '93 and said ' good news, friends, CMWC '94 is going to be in London!' And we thought 'wow, amazing.' Little did we realise what was to come.
Faxes were sent to all the messenger companies we could think of. Faxes came back from places we had never even heard of. The idea grew and grew and more and more people became infected with the spirit of CMWC. Word spread like wild-fire through the streets of Europe and North America to as far afield as Novgorod & Afghanistan. The energies of messengers across the globe became focused on a common goal. The concentration of trans-national pedal-power on London helped us to overcome all the obstacles on the road to the 2nd Cycle Messenger World Championships. Amandla - Abantu ebissikhili!
CMWC '94.- enjoy
Sat 13th 10am - 5.30pm
he aim of the championship races is to determine how quickly the messenger can learn the routes of our new city, how quickly s/he can cycle, and how well s/he controls their respective machines. Rather than just straight up the road, the Championship heats will test the competitors at what they do every day: on demand, hand to hand parcel delivery to a deadline. The course takes in a variety of road surfaces and obstacles, designed to test the messengersı skill at dealing with sharp turns, loose surfaces, tram-tracks (a feature of many messenger cities such as San Francisco, Berlin & Toronto), and even includes a pavement jump!
ON THE WHEEL
At the checkpoints the rider will deliver the package, get a stamp on their day-sheet or record of deliveries, and collect another parcel, going to a further checkpoint. They will have to work out the shortest route between the two taking into account the obstacles and the one way system on the wheelı, exactly as they do at work. Really good messengers will have memorised the course in the warm-up session before the start of the heats and will not need to consult the map but the others...
THE KNOWLEDGE
The exact itinerary of each of the race groups is unknown to the competitors before they start, just as a in real life, a bike messenger has no idea of where the next job is coming from and going to. This forces the competitors to use their own initiative and prevents them from simply following the wheel in front. On a busy day, good messengers re-assemble the changing jig-saw of pick-ups and drops in their heads, often without stopping to look in their map-books as they ride. A common boast is: "I had to look in the book the other day - gosh, I havenıt done that in months." Or words to that effect, anyway. We expect our contenders to know our little city well enough not to need the maps that we have given them.
The riders will continue picking-up and delivering until they have completed their runı as set by the Race Controller, and then they make hell for leather to the finish line where their completed day-sheet will be checked against a master sheet to ensure that they have collected the correct proof of deliveries or p.o.dsı. If their p.o.d.s are incomplete then they will have to go back and do it again.
A FAIR COP
Another feature designed to inject realism into the racing is the presence of traffic-policemenı who have the power to disqualify any rider seen disobeying the one-way traffic system. Of course, the police-menı can not be everywhere so expect to see lots of ducking and diving when our boys in blueı are looking the other way!
There will be up to ten heats each lasting approximately 15 to 30 min.ıs, and the riders will have covered a distance of between 5 and 10 miles. From each heat the 8 fastest finishers will qualify for the final (4 from each race group), the top 4 for the A final and the next 4 for the B final.
Sunday 14th start 1.00pm estimated finish 4.00pm
After the intense effort of the heats, the finalists face an altogether different test in the final. Where the heats tested speed, the finals will test the endurance. Over a longer distance, shirkers and donkeys will be weeded out leaving only the real messengers. It is often said that anyone can ride a bike, so one might expect a fast rider to be a good messenger. Not so, as many a speedy racer has found out.
THE HEAD AND THE LEGS
It is an open secret within the despatch industry that one bike doing one job at a time is not efficient. Messengers with bags already over-flowing are often asked, "you are going straight there, arenıt you?" by their clients. The reply is always yes! The secret of a sucessful messenger is his/her ability to carry more than one parcel at a time without keeping too many on for too long. In the final, our contenders will be tested particularly in this skill because if they cannot handle having ten, maybe twenty parcels in their bags then they are not true messengers.
MULTI-DROPS RULE, O.K.?
Using the same rules and track as the heats, all 80 starters, seeded into A and B groups based on their heat positions, will begin with parcels addressed to all 8 check-points. They must deliver them as they think best and then return to the finish to collect their next multi-dropı. The last 10 will be eliminated. In the following rounds, further eliminations will result in there being only 2 riders left on the course battling it out wheel-to-wheel for the title of Cycle Messenger World Champion. People familiar with velodrome racing will recognise this type of contest as ³devil take the hindmost². The devil wonıt be on the course though, but eighty of the worldıs fastest messengers will!
WORLD BEST
It will take 3 hours for the fastest rider to complete 15 entire circuits, and they will have cycled over 50 miles and delivered over 50 parcels. Having taken on the fastest messengers in the world and beaten them all, the winner will truly be the Cycle Messenger World Champion!
THE CYCLE MESSENGER WORLD CHAMPIONS
The two winners (male & female) will each receive a special World Championship messenger bag supplied by Zo Bags, San Francisco, and a Shimano 105 groupset (comprising all the components needed to build a bicycle) supplied by Shimano (UK) Ltd. The Championship bags are on display in the MOTION GALLERY (see key 10 on inside back cover map).
THE CYCLE MESSENGER WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM
The teams in the championships do not necessarily correspond to companies. Team Smoke from Toronto, Canada, for example, ride for different companies and are sponsored by a coffee-shop! The winning team will be decided by a points system in which the team with the lowest number of points wins. All riders who fail to qualify for the final will be awarded 80 points plus their heat position (e.g. 8th in heat = 88 points). Finalists will be awarded points that correspond to their final position, 1 point for first place etc. The winning team will be that team whose four fastest riders have the lowest cumulative score. Each member of the winning team will receive a special World Champion Messenger Bag supplied by Zo Bags, San Francisco.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Simon Snapperı Fleury
Steve Levy
Bill Webber
Jan Hofheiz
PAINTINGS
Guy Batey
Deina Johnson
SCULPTURE
Seth Barbieı Turner
Dan Knight
FURNITURE
Rory Dodd
FILM
Adam Rowley
Richard Guard
or
everything you always wanted to know about cycle couriers but could never stop one for long enough to
ask...
Thanks to:
Lisa Byrne, Creative Couriers, Robin & Jane Willis, Zero, Stefan Klessman, Avenge Bike Company, Erik Zones and everybody who ever wrote anything for a courier zine.
Moving Target Productions would like to thank:
St Johnıs Ambulance, Goyle & WCS for being complete stars, Pete for putting up with the roamings of the Buffalo; Emma; Richard; Mark; Julian Knowles; Lisa Byrne & Lee Smith for putting their money where our mouths were, Mark; Laura; Nat; Christiane; Aunty Dredd; Ollie; Max; Ted; Alex; Solly; Pete; Big Ears; Kim; Dick 2 even thoı he still needs to change that stem; Disney for being Disney; Mark from Crossland Road; Velo City; Sybil for keeping us in order & in awe, Ivor; Jethro; Danny and everybody who helped build the arena; the Toronto crew cos theyıre the best crew; James Greenbury for giving us the logo; Redı Nic; Fleeceı; Mark; Andy; Grant; Stuart Neil; Sgt Watkinson for putting us in the know; Cliff for being a model for us all; Eros Poli for showing us how far the will to succeed can get you; Gadget; CHARMing Charlie; Lucy at 99; Kenny Brown for everything; Swordfish; Sprint from Bremen for putting smiles on our faces; Pie-Being; & all the competitors from Europe for believing in us. PS Get us a coffee!
THE SANDWICH CLASSIC SATURDAY 13th 1PM
A race for trade bicycles. Sadly not many exist still in the UK, but the trade bike is used widely in European cities to deliver large boxes and packages. This race will be a circuit of the race course, requiring the riders to load up four cases of beer at the start, race to the EC3 checkpoint, deliver them and race back emptyı to the finish. Any bike may enter, but the beer has to be on the bike, rather than being carried by the cyclist themselves. This race is sponsored by W.R.Pashley of Stratford upon Avon, makers of the worlds most beautiful trade cycles (world famous post office bikes etc.), who are kindly donating a unicycle to the fastest finisher.
The Cook Bros. Racing IMPERIAL WHEELIE CHALLENGE SATURDAY 13th from 12pm (see map key 7)
A slow speed competition testing ability and balance. Competitors will ride an obstacle course consisting of typical city hazards. The highlight of this event will be riding onto a parked car and balancing on the roof. The winner will have the least number of penalty points (accrued from failing obstacles or putting their feet down or dabbingı). The prize for this competition will be a Cook Bros. Racing chain-set, from Cook Bros. Racing laboratory in California and an SRP titanium replacement bolt set supplied by NTi.
THE SMOKINı TYRE SPRINTS SUNDAY 14th 10am - 12pm (see map key 8)
The fastest rider on a course of 150m. Heats of ten, one qualifies from each for a super scary final. Every cycle messenger in the world thinks they are the fastest away from the lights - expect bulging eyes and bursting thighs! The prize for this competition will be a pair of Continental tyres supplied by Cambrian tyres.
THE BEST DRESSED MESSENGER
Cycle messengers are fashion leaders. Their high profile around town means that whatever they wear is seen by the whole of Central London, and their street-wise image is secretly admired and envied by many. Before couriers, cycling was seen as a pastime for harmless cranks with beards. Couriers made cycling hip and sexy. Not for nothing was one of the biggest selling mountain bikes called the Courierı.
OUT OF THE GUTTER
The young urban pirates aroused resentment both within the cycling community and without. Jonathan Porritt complained that messengers gave cyclists a bad name. The Evening Standard called couriers a menace to society. Meanwhile, the fashion press labelled cycle couriering as the trendiest job around and the public started to take notice of cyclists, if only because they were out of the gutter and in everbodyıs face and sometimes on their toes too. Despite the grimy reality of the job, riding a bike around town suddenly became rather glamourous and sexy.
SUPER TRENDY
With all this attention focused on couriers, it was natural that what they wore and used became fashion items. American Retro and other super trendy labels made their own brand courier bags. Suddenly the badge of the lefty student, the paper boyıs bag, was a designer item! Other products benefited from the endorsement of the couriers, amongst them various different brands of shades, old woollen cycling jerseys (as worn by such chic geezers as Eddy Merckx) and Gore-Tex jackets.
Cycle messengers have made the streets in Central London more colourful and more exciting. Despite all their protestations to the contrary, all messengers love to pose. The winner may not be the biggest poser of the weekend but whoever it is will be a paragon of street-style. Judged by Vivian Lyle of For Women, Tamasin Doe of the London Evening Standard & Adam Levy of The Face, the prize will be a Freestyle Gore-Tex jacket, which no well-dressed cycle messenger should be without.
BEST DRESSED BIKE
As sure way to start an argument between two messengers is to ask them whatıs the best bike to use for the job. There have been many fierce discussions even over such trivia as gear ratios and which exact tyre is the coolest. As an extension of the image, the bike is second to none, the pride and joy of the rider. Form is as important as function, and couriers carry many unnecessary trinkets on their bikes. It has to be cool, though, as one veteran found out when he committed the hideous style crime of putting panniers & mudguards on his bike!
The panel consists of Paul Hockneyı Burwell, 1990 Post Haste Courier Challenge winner and technical editor of MBi, Buffalo Bill, editor of Moving Target magazine, and Erik Sure Kingı Zones, of Zo messenger bags, San Francisco. With over 22 years experience on the roadı to guide them, the panel will be looking for the bike which best expresses the riders attitude, not necessarily the most expensive bike. The winner gets a ticket to next yearıs championships in Toronto, donated by the Toronto Race Committee.
This has been built on-site by Genghis. Its purpose is to pay tribute to those who have died whilst working as messengers and to celebrate the daring of those who ride the streets armed only with their cunning and protected only by the wits and a thin layer of lycra and polysterene. All 4 of the messengers killed in London have been crushed by the wheels of trucks, so the truck wheel is the centre-piece. The shards of frames that radiate from the truck wheel represent the spirit of all city cyclists everywhere, who ride on, undaunted by the challenge and danger of jousting with juggernauts and dicing with cars. The complete bike at the top is the liberating power of the bicycle, unfettered by the needs of petrol-driven vehicles.
We hope you join us in wishing the families of those have died well and pray for the continuing safety and good fortune of all cyclists everywhere.
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KEY
All shaded areas on map are out of bounds to spectators 1 - Dormitory; competitors and guests only 2 - Main hall 3 - Bar 4 - Motion Gallery and Courier Scrapbook 5 - Start/Finish area 6 - Messenger Berlin Riders/corral 7 - Cook Bros Racing Imperial Wheelie Challenge Arena 8 - Smokinı Tyre Sprint track 9 - Messenger Monument Info - Event Information Point E - Entrance/Exit point C - Checkpoint/Radio control point P - Parking WC - Toilet + - Spectator crossing point DWC - Disabled toilet; entrance rear warehouse N > - one way system Kids - lost kids |
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