- Hello, everybody.
I'm Jeremy Powers, the newest presenter
on the Global Cycling Network.
I'm really excited to be a part of this crew.
This is my presenter video.
(triphop music)
(metallic whooshing)
- [Announcer] Jeremy Powers!
(energetic EDM music )
Here in western Massachusetts in the sandpit,
the infamous sandpit,
where I have spent many, many hours
being a student of the sport.
And I'll tell you,
this sandpit has taught me a lot
about how to humble. (chuckling)
Over the years, I have crashed and eaten a lot of sand
and dug a lot of it out of my shoes.
(grunting)
(hypnotic hiphop music)
I'm 35 years old,
I've got an awesome wife, a two year-old son,
and a pretty cool Labrador Retriever named Moose,
who, if you follow my Instagram,
you have definitely seen a lot of
swimming in the local rivers and streams
and having a blast with me.
So for the last 15 years,
I've been traveling pretty much all over the globe,
racing World Cups, national-level races,
and pretty much everything in between.
I've won some races
(grunting) but as much as I would like to
make my videographer run around this sandpit with me
and get this whole video,
we're going to head over to my local shop
and I'm going to tell you guys more about me.
We're here in my adopted hometown
of Northampton, Massachusetts
at our local shop, Northampton Bicycle
so I can tell you all a little bit more
about who I am and where I came from.
- Here you go.
(hypnotic hiphop music)
- So I got into riding because I was a complete nut job
when I was a kid.
My mom tells me stories of crying in the shower often
because of how much energy I had.
She put me into basically every type of sport
I could ever have played,
baseball, soccer, football, traditional American sports,
but the bike was the thing that I always had a love for.
I would always ride to all of these practices on my bike
and really I found the individualism
and the ability to just get all that energy out,
the bike was the thing that was for me.
(exhaling) My favorite place to ride
is probably where I call home now,
which is western Massachusetts.
It's a pretty place, a small town feel,
but has a lot of beautiful roads, no traffic,
and really just a great cycling community
so I'd have to say western Massachusetts
is my favorite place to ride.
All of the tricks and skills
and different things that I've been doing over the years
I think had just been from, y'know,
from when you're a kid and you're ripping around.
I always used to ride my road bike off-road.
Then I'd ride my cyclocross bike
when I would be out on the mountain bikes
with other friends.
So I think for me, all those tricks and things like that,
jumping over stuff,
was just because I was a young kid
that had a lot of energy, that was super bored
and I'd practice and practice and practice.
Can I wheelie?
Can I ride backwards?
Can I jump over this thing?
Can I bunny-hop?
Can I ride my bike on my trampoline?
Whatever it was.
I always was trying weird stuff
and so I think obviously the technical skills
are probably a little bit of maybe genetics,
I don't know, practice,
but probably just being exposed to all that stuff
when I was younger
and loving mountain bike downhill racing
and trick videos and all that stuff when I was growing up
I think had a lot of influence on that.
But I find it fun
and it's definitely a cool thing to have in your back pocket
when you're, y'know, trying to make a cool video.
Outside of riding these days is a lot of family stuff.
I like to hang with my family.
I like to hang with my friends.
I love going out to eat, cooking,
kind of normal stuff.
I would say that travel is obviously a big part of my life,
especially here at GCN, and even before I was a pro.
Anytime I get to take my family or friends with me,
I'm really psyched.
I love music so anytime I get to listen to music.
I like listening, podcasts, books on tape.
Not a big reader so anything I can listen to and absorb from
is something that I'm into.
Generally just probably my number one thing at this point
is spending time with my family
and trying to not be as crazy as I was
when I was a full-time rider.
The JAM Fund is a non-profit
that I started with my two good friends, Alec and Mukunda,
and JAM is just the acronym,
so it's Jeremy, Alec, and Mukunda.
At this time, JAM Fund has an elite cyclocross team,
which has turned a handful of riders into professionals
that still live in our little area of Massachusetts
and make a living from the sport
and contribute to it in a lot of different ways.
But we also have events that support JAM Fund
that we raise funds through by design.
We did a lot of video over the years.
I would say probably the project that everyone knows
really well if they followed cyclocross
would be the Behind the Barriers
and then Behind the Barriers TV.
Behind the Barriers was a day-in-the-life show
that I started in 2010
and followed my life pretty much all over the world.
Kind of showed all the good, all the bad,
the everything in between
and we had a lot of fun with it.
I feel like it's something cool
that in 40 years I'll be able to look back on
and maybe my kids will be able to look back on
and see and know a lot about who I was as a person,
what mattered to me, and what I was doing with my life.
So technically, I turned pro as a mountain biker
my first year out of the juniors.
So that would've been 2001 or 2002.
I didn't race a lot 'cause I got really sick with mono.
I guess the Europeans call it Epstein-Barr.
Anyway, I got really sick and I didn't end up racing
for, like, six months but after that,
I did a year on the road
because all of my friends where I moved to in Massachusetts,
which is where I call home now, were riding on the road.
I went from basically a beginner road rider
all the way up to a category two rider
and then that year I got signed by Jelly Belly.
And so in 2004, I started my season as a pro
and I was 20 years old.
And then stuck with Jelly Belly for 10 years
and raced cyclocross at the same time
and now I guess I retired in 2019,
so technically I was a pro for 19 years.
Getting signed to a pro road team at that time
was quite a bit different than it is nowadays.
There were not as many programs
and it was a division three professional team.
I think it was looked at a little bit differently
because there weren't so many big teams in cycling
so the division three teams, which is what Jelly Belly was,
was part of a lot of the bigger races,
especially the ones that happened in North America.
So we got to do Tour of Georgia,
Tour of Missouri, Tour of California, Tour of Alberta.
Basically any of the big tours
that were going on in North America,
Jelly Belly was able to be a part of
and then I was able to do those races.
So lining up with the biggest riders at that time
was completely commonplace.
And that was super fun and a great experience for me
and I felt like I never needed to aspire
to go to the Tour de France or to the bigger races
'cause that wasn't something that I was interested in.
I was really focused on cyclocross
and the road riding was, for me,
something that I loved doing and being a part of.
The camaraderie of the team
and hanging out with all my friends
and kind of working towards a goal as a crew
was something that I valued and missed
when I had to be so individualized as a cyclocross rider.
So racing on the road for me and turning pro in 2004,
quite a bit a different thing
but something that I'm super grateful for
and the opportunities that it opened for me.
And I think that if I look back at it all,
I say to myself wow, that was a really special opportunity
and, like I said, I'm just super grateful for it.
Man, I rode for a ton of teams over my years as a pro,
and before it, too.
I was on a great junior mountian bike team
when I was young called Team Devo.
I was on Jelly Belly,
I was on Cannondale Cyclocrossworld,
Rapha and Focus and then my own team, Apsire Racing.
So I was on quite a few teams
with a lot of different jersey iterations,
which we, uh, (clearing throat)
had to try on a couple of earlier.
I think it's definitely the amount of teams
and the amount of organizations that I got to work with
was super fun
and I have to say that I learned a lot from all of them.
Most notable results that I had
would have to be my four national championship titles
from 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2016
and those were in cyclocross.
I was also Pan American national champion
in 2015 in cyclocross.
I did some pretty good World Cups.
I think my best place was sixth place in Las Vegas.
I definitely had a seventh, an eighth,
a ninth, a tenth (laughing)
and pretty much all the way up through there.
I'm also really proud of a ninth place overall
when I raced the entire World Cup circuit
in, I think it was, 2015 season.
I was able to race the entire World Cup
and my wife traveled with me
and I was able to be inside the top 10,
which I was really proud of
because a big accomplishment of consistency
throughout the year.
I think those would probably be my personal favorites.
There were a lot of victories in there.
Gloucester, Massachusetts, I was able to win that 10 times,
which is super cool because it's my favorite,
or one of my favorite races that I ever got to do.
And I guess, yeah, they all meant something to me.
I remember each of them for a different reason
but those would have to be probably my favorites.
Man, the hardest race that I remember
has to be the Tour of Qinghai Lakes
in the Tibetan highlands of China.
I think the race still goes on
but for me, I call that a life race.
Probably the only race
that I literally was glad to be done with.
All the other races,
I really looked forward to the next day when I got up.
But that race, I think we were at 11,200 feet
is sort of where we get to.
The first stage, maybe 8,000 feet.
Then it goes up to 11,000 and goes around this lake.
And I remember some of the stages,
the profiles were like this.
So from 11,000 here, you climbed 14,000 or 15,000
and then you go down.
And I remember one time, we're on top of 15,000 feet
and I said to the team doctor who's with us,
I said my helmet is tight on my head
and she told me that that was because
my brain was quite possibly swelling from the high altitude.
I don't think that I'm going to miss the racing.
Having done so many races,
some years I did 90 race days a year,
when I was combining road and cyclocross.
I don't think I'm going to miss the racing.
I will definitely miss the people at the races
but with GCN, I'm going to be able to be at a lot of them
and still interacting with them.
Well the reason to retire has a lot of layers to it
(laughing) but I really felt like it was something
that I'd thought about for the last two years
and we had my son two years ago.
That was a big driving factor
towards wanting to be around more.
So life changes, the circumstances change,
and being able to give 100% of myself to the sport,
which is what I felt like I had to do
to be able to compete at the highest level,
was something that I didn't think that I could do any longer
and they started to feel like sacrifices.
So I think once the sport starts to feel
like it's a sacrifice,
then you have to start to check up and see okay,
is this something that I should keep doing?
(relaxed hiphop music)
Thank you for hanging out with us,
learning a little bit more about me,
and watching my presenter video.
I'm hoping that I get to see you guys all at the races
and out there and on your TV screens.
Cheers!