World Champion Nelson the Cheetah Vails

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA---Cycling gets as much press as a wrinkled pair of pants. It gets even less type if it's not Greg LeMond or Lance Armstrong - and black people and cycling - you'd have a easier time trying to figure out what "The Matrix" is all about than finding any stories on the former.

Back in 1984, a young man named Nelson Vails, nicknamed "The Cheetah" caught the break of his lifetime when Russia decided to boycott the Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles, and got a spot on the United States cycling team.

The structure of the event was that every country were allowed just one representative to race. Vails was beaten out by Mark Gorski in the Olympic trials, and was denied the chance to compete until the Soviets got huffy and pulled out.

Gorski repeated the feat in the medal race, but Vails ran second capturing the silver medal, and a good amount of attention for his effort. The attention came mostly from friends, family and a few sponsors.

In the following year, Vails and Leigh Barczewski won the silver medal in the men's tandem sprints at the world championships in Bassano del Grappa, Italy.

Sprint titles for black cyclists went back as far as 1899 when Major Marshall Taylor became world sprint champion. Taylor left the world in 1932, but not before leaving behind a powerful saying: "Life is too short for a man to hold bitterness in his heart."

Beautiful, isn't it?

Black people didn't know Nelson Vails from Charles Nelson Reilly, and without this column you're reading today, you too might still be in the dark about the man.

He had a personality that carried him deep into the hoopla of fringe celebrity, even landing a part in the 1986 bike messenger film Quicksilver" starring Kevin Bacon. The part brought Vails full-circle because in 1983, he got his biking Jones from being a New York City bike messenger.

He got his first bike when he was six, and was given an ultimatum to ride the bike or have it taken back to the store where it was bought. Pretty much a no-brainer, young Nelson rode his tool throughout Harlem, and eventually Central Park. He trained at the PAL (Police Athletic League), YMCA, and Kids At Risk programs, before moving on to his messenger gig.

From that job with New York's Cycle Service Center where he bragged, "I did well. I was willing to work even on the rainy days", he hooked up with a top amateur race team, and eventually got himself to Olympic-caliber status after accepting an invitation to participate in a cycling development program in Colorado Springs in 1981.

He even got to train in the Soviet Union, which was a big deal considering it was well into the height of the Cold War.

Since making it to "the podium", Vails now lives in Boulder, Colorado, and spends his time cycling in recreational tours across the country (including the inaugural New York City Cycling Championship in New York City in 2002), with the West being his favorite area to ride.

So what's the function? The point? The dee-lio?"

This is a little history tucked away deeper than the Negro Leagues, and it happened just 20 years ago.

Outside of Marshall Taylor, there is a slow (like snail slow) wave of lack cyclists looking to make a lot of noise come the 2004 Summer Games.

More on them next week - but there may be some black athletes in the Games who might not be dunking a basketball against a much smaller Chinese team (at least those whose name is not Yao), running track, or any of the other publicly respectable sports.

Competitive bicycle riding has been relegated to Armstrong these days, and just in case your television gets a little fuzzy and looks like it's showing a competitive cyclist in dark skin – - it just might be happening.

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