Area cycling pro will conduct clinic for SONJ

Nelessen to share knowledge Saturday

By: Justin Feil
   Guillaume Nelessen started to make appearances for New Jersey Special Olympics when his brother Mat started working there two years ago.
   For the past two years, Nelessen has created quite a stir by not just appearing to hand out medals, but riding and offering encouragement to other riders, in the SONJ Fall Sports Festival State Cycling competition.
   "He’s been good coming out the last two years," said Mat, the School and Community Outreach Coordinator for Special Olympics New Jersey. "Last year was when we had gone to the Junior Worlds, and the athletes just loved it. It was great having someone who had competed at a high level. Guillaume was great with the athletes.
   "He presented all the awards and all the ribbons. And he was like the course chaperone. He rode and helped athletes out by offering motivation."
   With that in mind, Mat has helped put together a new chance for special Olympians and their cycling coaches to interact more closely with Guillaume, a Montgomery resident who is now a rider for the Sportsbook.com pro cycling team.
   Nelessen will be the featured clinician at a cycling expo from noon to 3 p.m. at the New Jersey Sports Complex in Lawrenceville to promote and introduce new SONJ athletes to the sport of cycling. The expo is open to SONJ athletes from Mercer, Somerset, Hunterdon and Burlington counties. Nelessen is looking forward to the first-of-its-kind clinic.
   "I really enjoy it," Nelessen said. "It’s nice to support my team and my sponsors and to give back to other athletes trying as hard as I am.
   "Saturday is going to be more or less a clinic on basic cycling, basic training principles, what your body can and cannot do, what’s beneficial to cycling and not. A lot of people don’t know how to use their bikes to the best of their ability. I’m trying to give them as much information as I can on how to use their bikes to the fullest.
   "I’ve done a couple other small clinics. This is the first time doing a clinic by myself. It should be interesting. I won’t just be working with athletes; I’ll be working with coaches too."
   Nelessen is a factory trained bicycle mechanic and licensed master wheel builder, certified through Charlie Kuhn, owner of Kopp’s Cycles in Princeton. The clinic is the first athlete-based expo for a SONJ sport.
   "The idea was thrown to us by the Mercer County area director," said Mat Nelessen. "Cycling for this community isn’t the most popular sport. This is going to be, for some of our athletes, the first time they’ve been properly fitted on a bike and the first time they can really ride with someone watching. Guillaume can cover racing and other specifics.
   "He’s done the fall sports festival cycling event the last two years so he has pretty good experience," he added. "With this event, ideally the coaches come with athletes and can learn as much as possible."
   In addition to Guillaume Nelessen’s instruction, there will be a road loop set up for athletes. And with a real professional on hand, it’s a unique opportunity, though Nelessen looks at it as a real opportunity for himself.
   "I think within the last six months, I’ve learned a lot," said Nelessen, who is working part-time in physical education at the Waldorf School while training 20 hours per week and maintaining a professional riding schedule with hopes of making the 2004 Olympic Pursuit team. "They’re really professional cyclists. I’m a great local cyclist. Many people say I have the talent to be a great cyclist. You can absorb so much from being around these other professionals. It’s nice to be able to return some of that to someone who doesn’t know that yet.
   "And it’s always nice to see everyone there. In the cycling world, it’s not a real big spectator sport. Everybody at Special Olympics remembers who you are. They remember me to a ‘T.’ They’ve looked me up online and checked my race results. It’s pretty fun."
   And it should be quite a learning experience for the SONJ athletes and coaches who attend, and could open up future clinics like this for sports other than cycling.
   "It’s completely new," Mat Nelessen said. "We should have between 15 and 20 athlete there, a handful of coaches and a handful of parents. It’s only open to those four counties to keep it reasonable. If we have a sport that we want to grow, and we can find a venue, it’s possible to make it bigger."
   Special Olympics New Jersey provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in 23-type Olympic-type sports for children and adults with developmental disabilities. Currently, more than 13,500 athletes participate in 140 competitive events throughout the state, including four seasonal state finals.
   For more information about Special Olympics New Jersey, call (800) 650-7665 or visit their website at www.sonj.org.