Events: 2020 Strade Bianche

(2020) Fifteen years ago the National Hockey League called it quits for an entire season on account of bickering about money. While fans ho-hummed that their weeknights were suddenly free of televised competitive hockey, a group formed an idea. A genius idea.

Ice hockey possesses what is arguably the most recognized trophy in all of sports. Few around the offices of creakybottombracket.com can identify the championship trophy for American football. Nearly no one can pick baseball’s trophy out of a lineup. Does basketball have a champion’s trophy? While we are at it, does the Tour de France give out trophies? Usually we have stopped watching by then. But hockey has the Stanley Cup. That means the 35-pound silver cup with its five bands belongs to the National Hockey League. Or does it?

Back to that vacated season of 2004-2005, and a group from Ontario, Canada, made some ruckus in the sporting world. For a beer league to make headlines for reasons other than night owl ice slots meant something was up. As it turns out, the group called the Wednesday Nighters decided to sue for the right to play for Lord Stanley’s chalice. claiming the NHL did not actually have the right to block competition for the Cup. Admittedly it started as a joke, but it progressed into a lawsuit, which went as imagined: The League ignored it just long enough for the playoff time to elapse and the League was back on the ice the following season.

This is more than just a lovely story, because it was recently revealed that the 2020 Strade Bianche bike race has been canceled over Italy’s concern for coronavirus. 

Talk about opposite arcs from the Stanley Cup example. Strade Bianche started as an amatuer event that wiggled its way into a full-blown Spring Classic. First raced in 2007, the the 184 kilometer (114 miles) race features 63 kilometers of white gravel roads (strade bianche) through Italian wine country. Some years have displayed bombastic dust clouds floating over awakening vineyards. The 2018 edition saw the rawest version of Tiesj Benoot winning a muddy, cold race as well as a dramatic finish by Wout van Aert who struggled up the finish ramp.

All this got us thinking. Instead of having the 2020 results say “Race Canceled” what if we all lined up at the start of the Strade Bianche course then raced the course on March 7? Think of it as the “Saturday Morning-ers” but for bike racing. Italy owns the roads, not the UCI. It would be altogether correct to say some chap or lady from his/her Cafe Racing team took the 2020 Strade Bianche crown. Submit the result to UCI, edit the entry on Wikipedia, and brag forever that you got (whichever fake) finish place in the canceled 2020 Strade Bianche. This result wouldn’t even get interference from the courts.

Considering we won’t be anywhere near Europe, let alone Siena, someone else can claim victory tomorrow. That’s ok. If more races get canceled we may entertain chancing the forfeited race for social media bragging rights. Who are we kidding? We’ll probably be found at the coffee shop looking at each coughing patron with suspicion.