Remembering Jason McRoy

I’m a very rational guy. But sometimes strange things happen. We can call them coincidence. And we’re probably right. But sometimes, you just wonder.

I’m thinking about this because of my last post, which referred to the late Specialized racer Jason McRoy. I haven’t thought about him in years. I met him back in 1995 with my then-girlfriend. Jason was extremely friendly and outgoing, wishing us luck in our first race – the beginner class of the Cactus Cup. Even though he was a downhiller, he was there flying the Specialized flag with Ned Overend, one of the sport’s true cross-country giants.

Anyway, Jason offered the then-girlfriend a signed poster of himself. He was naked in the photo, and had a helmet there to hide the package and keep the poster relatively family-friendly. She hung it up in her dorm room.

She even tacked it up in her new dorm room when the next school year started. That’s when I started working at my first bike shop, spinning wrenches and selling bikes. One night, we went out. I don’t really remember what we did – it was just a night like many others.

Except her poster had fallen off the wall. We kind of shrugged and hung it back up.

The next day, the news was all over the bike shop: Jason McRoy had been killed in a motorcycle crash.

The rational part of me says coincidence. It must be. Surely any higher power has better things to do than knock posters off the wall.

No matter what, I can say this for certain: It was absolutely impossible not to like Jason McRoy. He was clearly delighted to race bikes for a living. He seemed even happier to meet other people who race bikes, even if they’d never make a dollar doing it or stand on a podium. He was the quintessential mid-90s pro mountain biker: All love for the sport and for the other people who love it, too.