Derek bouchard hall biography channel

Reporters are accustomed to terrible answers to doping questions. Weak answers, answers that don’t answer anything. Derek Bouchard-Hall answers doping questions with gusto.

“When we talk about doping, the victims of doping, there are a lot of victims,” he says. “But the greatest victims are those who were cheated of the opportunity, and that was me.” There’s conviction in his voice, he leans forward and his fists clench just a bit. “I’m pissed off about that, and I will be forever. That sticks with me.”

The new CEO of USA Cycling is now just over 100 days into his post. Those first 100 days, they matter. They set the tone. Problems are identified, if not always fixed. Changes are made. Staff is moved, sometimes removed. The organization slowly begins to reflect the new head on its shoulders.

USA Cycling has an image problem. It has structural problems, too. Entire parts of the country, entire parts of the sport, have seceded from its control. It has revenue problems. It has Volkswagen problems. It has world championship and Olympic selection problems. It has, for decades, publicly ignored its problems as it stewed, boiled at times, internally.

Though talk about doping gets Bouchard-Hall fired up, and may go a long way toward correcting that image problem, USA Cycling’s doping-related history is just one in a long list of troubles.

“If you’re in the game of trying to take an organization and make it work better, and meet its goals and aspirations, and change what it’s doing, this job is the world championships of change,” Bouchard-Hall says.

Bouchard-Hall was a bike racer, once. A damn good one. He still has the build, a few inches over six feet and so lean that the tailored suit he wears can barely keep up. He was — or is — a businessman, too, with degrees fro

USA Cycling has selected its next president and CEO — and he might be able to drop you on a bike ride.

Derek Bouchard-Hall, former national criterium champion and member of the 2000 Olympic track squad, was appointed CEO by USA Cycling’s board of directors, the national federation announced Thursday.

And while Bouchard-Hall, 44, has a substantial racing pedigree, USA Cycling chairman Bob Stapleton stressed that it was his impressive management and business experience that saw the federation select him from a pool of 47 qualified candidates put forth by executive recruitment firm Korn Ferry.

Since October 2011, Bouchard-Hall — who holds degrees from Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard — has been an executive with Wiggle, one of the world’s largest online retailers of cycling equipment, most recently serving as director of international and pricing.

“While his breadth and depth of knowledge around the sport is a fortunate plus, we hired him fundamentally for his business background — for what he’s done since he left cycling,” Stapleton told VeloNews.com. “He was hired for his understanding of modern methods in engaging in customers. Wiggle is a perfect extension of this — their business succeeds based on how well they engage and grow their customer base. That’s vital for a member-oriented organization.”

Originally from Massachusetts, Bouchard-Hall began his cycling career while attending Princeton University, where he took a degree in architectural engineering in 1992. He graduated from Stanford in 1994 with an MS in structural engineering, and then embarked on a pro racing career that involved stints with Shaklee and Mercury. It was in Mercury colors that Bouchard-Hall won the national criterium championship at Downers Grove in 2000; during his tenure with the Mercury squad he also raced Paris-Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem, and Criterium International. In 1999, Bouchard-Hall was a member

USA Cycling could face increased competition at the amateur and grassroots level with the advent of a new national sanctioning body that plans to open for business as soon as next week.

North American Cycle Sport will focus on supporting riders, promoters and local associations by providing a simplified framework for both competitive and non-competitive grassroots events, said NACS CEO Tod Manning, who insisted that the new group is not out to compete with USA Cycling, but rather to help the national governing body achieve its own mission of growing competitive cycling in the US.

“At this point in time there are a lot of folks who are looking for alternatives to USA Cycling for their events,” Manning said. “And we want to provide them with that alternative. But that being said, we are very supportive of USAC's mission to improve and increase competitive cycling across the United States.”

In an interview with Cyclingnews this week, Manning said NACS arose from concerns among a number of people in the cycling industry regarding the “direction that things were going” in the US, especially at the local and regional levels.

“Over the last several years we realized that maybe there was an opening for a different solution for grassroots cycling and the entire cycling community in the United States,” he said.

The events that NACS will target include local and regional racing along with non-competitive events like gran fondos and charity rides – basically any event that gets people on bikes.

“We don't even know what the limits are at this point in time, but we want to provide a basic path for someone who wants to put on some kind of cycling event, to give them almost an event-in-a-box solution,” Manning said.

“And we w

In a brief statement on Saturday, USA Cycling confirmed that it dismissed track cycling coach Andy Sparks from the program in response to an abuse complaint filed through its SafeSport program.

According to the statement, Sparks was accused of emotional abuse and bullying behavior. Sparks was not accused of physical or sexual abuse.

“USA Cycling will not accept misconduct of any kind and as per our SafeSport policies a full independent investigation process was initiated as soon as the issue was raised to USA Cycling,” the statement read. “Based on our learnings from the investigation and subsequent discussions with Andy Sparks, USA Cycling has determined it is no longer in the best interest of USA Cycling for him to continue in our program.”

A report on Cyclingnews.com by Laura Weislo indicated that the complaint originated with three members of the 2016 Rio Olympics cycling team. Sparks was head coach for the entire US track cycling program, but USA Cycling does not field a full national team for international competition, focusing instead on women’s endurance events. At the Olympics, the track team consisted of two men racing individual events and a five-member women’s team-pursuit squad. That team, which Sparks worked most closely with, won the 2016 World Championships and won the silver medal in Rio.

Sparks did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Bicycling. Speaking to Cyclingnews, Sparks denied the charges, saying that he has high standards and that any person charged with maintaining those risked being unpopular but added, “I take the code of conduct and athlete protection policies very seriously.” Sparks is married to one of the team members, four-time Olympic silver medalist Sarah Hammer.

Sparks’s dismissal marks the second high-profile incident recently where a male coach for a national team was let go after abuse com