The spread of this phenomenon, as far as I can figure, went like this: New York and Toronto have been doing sprints since before I knew about them, probably since shortly after seeing it at the ‘99 Cycle Messenger World Championships in Zurich where the “Goldsprints” label was coined. A few other cities ran on the same basic hardware, including San Francisco’s west coast interpretation. I first saw Toronto’s equipment in ‘06 at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. The bug bit me, and eight months later I was helping to raise money for Chicago’s ultimately successful ’08 North American Cycle Courier Championship bid. Almost one year later, I traveled to the Bicycle Film Festival in Minneapolis where Landon, a pro-

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DOING IT YOURSELF

It’s only a matter of time, but as of this writing there is no commercial roller racing setup available for purchase; each and every racing rig out there is some sort of home-spun job. The work of Evan Farrar and others at OpenSprints.com makes creating your own timing setup fairly easy through free software and sensor designs that plug into a USB port, with printed circuit boards available to make the soldering side of things that much easier. With a pair of rollers, a bit of patience and the help of a nerdy friend, Goldsprints are well within reach.