Team Sho-Air marketing director Ty Kady • Courtesy Team Sho-AirTeam Sho-Air has had many different forms over the years, but our latest incarnation is that we’re the factory domestic team for Specialized Cross Country. So, we’re their factory domestic team and then they have a World Cup team. We started out prior to that in the local amateur team, and worked our way up. Prior to that, Scott [Tedro, CEO of Sho-Air International] has been involved with motorcycle stunting with Jason Britten and guys like that in the early ‘90s, and got into cycling in the late 2000s, when I met him. Late 2006, 2007 is when I met Tedro. I was riding for the team as one of the top semi-pro cross-country riders in the nation, and he needed some help to manage and market the amateur team that we were fielding at that time. We were looking forward to getting some professionals and trying to make a splash into that. It ultimately led to us running the Specialized factory domestic team.Last year you sponsored Ben Bostrom’s off-season mountain biking endeavors.
Yeah, Ben uses the bicycle quite a bit to train, and we’d run into him at a couple of the local races in the off-season, and obviously Scott has that street bike background and was excited to talk to him. Ben was more than willing to come on-board, and we gave him some support for his race at La Ruta de los Conquistadores.
This year Sho-Air stepped in with support for the Cycle World-conceived project that brought Eric back to the grid; next year, they plan their own E-Boz-piloted squad. • Courtesy Team Sho-AirYeah, he won the Masters Division, which is, I think [riders age] thirty-plus, and then he finished fifth overall. To put that into perspective, I mean, it’s gnarly. What he did blew a lot of minds, because that race is just a suffer-fest. It’s a five-day stage race in some of the worst conditions, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t give the guy a snowball’s chance in hell to finish top-ten. So, yeah, he blew our minds just because the guy that won it for us, Ben’s teammate Manuel Prado, took three years just to get into the top-five. Ben walked in there in his first year, got fifth, and won his class, so it was actually pretty impressive, and it showed you what a legit athlete Ben is. Manny Prado was one of the first members of Team Sho-Air, and a Costa Rican native. He lives there, knows the roads, knows the weather, and for what Ben did, to just walk in there on his first year with a limited training schedule, was absolutely phenomenal. It was mind-altering, for sure.Are there any plans for Ben to race with you again this coming off-season?
He’s going to do some cyclocross with us, he’ll do some local MTB stuff, but I haven’t seen if he wants to go to La Ruta. From my talks with Eric [Bostrom], they might have some other things going on in October/November that’s not going to allow them to do it. With Ben getting his thumb worked on and just coming off the recent win at Laguna Seca, I am kind of giving him some space. Absolutely, if he wants to go back down there, we’re already supporting Manny, and we’d be glad to support Ben as well. He did tell me that it took a lot of his time and energy to train for that race, and like I said, he and Eric might have some other things going on, so I don’t know if Ben will go back down there or not.More recently, you’ve signed on as a sponsor for Eric Bostrom and the Team Cycle World Attack Performance Yoshimura Suzuki. How did that arrangement come about?
For us, Team Sho-Air is all about anything on two wheels. I gave you Scott’s background starting with his stunt-bike stuff with Britten back in the day. I’m a former AMA Pro privateer motocross/supercross guy, that’s where I came from. We’ve got Johnny O’Mara, and he’s got the credentials. So we’ve always had this sort of motorcycle background with the people involved with Sho-Air, and it just so happened that when Scott got a hold of me and Johnny, then Ben, the focus was always that cycling was cool, and it was something that we were doing actively at the time, but for us it makes a lot of sense [to be involved with road racing] if you look at Spies, Hayden, the Bostroms, and all the guys starting to realize how efficient a bicycle is as a training tool in the off-season. For us, it’s a larger arena in which we can market our company, and Sho-Air is actually a freight company, so we’re able to service a lot of industries. Our niche is trade shows for Microsoft, Sony, Intel, Panasonic, and a lot of those types of clients, but we can also do other shipping as well. For us, company-wise, it’s a great canvas for us to work on, and we’re all motorcycle enthusiasts over here.
Eric with Sho-Air International CEO Scott Tedro • Courtesy BostromWe’re hoping there’s some legitimate crossover. I think when the top guys like Spies, Bostrom, or Hayden are seen on [a bicycle], you’re going to some trickle-down. The people in the stands that want to improve their fitness, want to improve their skills, or just want to mimic the top riders, I think once that’s brought to light, they’ll be some crossover there. It’s what we’re hoping for.So now that Eric Bostrom has gotten a few races under his belt at Mid-Ohio and Laguna, how do you feel Team Sho-Air’s involvement?
Actually, so far the races have gone better than expected! A big question was how Eric would adapt to race traffic after a couple years off. Me being a former athlete, and Johnny O’Mara, we understand that to jump halfway into a season is going to be hard. The bike was a little bit of a question mark, because it’s for this Cycle World project, which is all about how [AMA Pro Racing] has changed the rules so that it’s not wide-open, money-wins-all. Eric came through good, the bike is coming through great, and hopefully these next couple of races that he goes to, maybe he’ll get us into the top-five, maybe even a podium. I don’t think that’s unrealistic right now, and he’s getting more confident by the day. So we’re pleased with it, we’re pleased with the attention we got when we came out to Laguna Seca, and how people have accepted us. A lot of people kind of wondered what was going on, but a lot of people seemed to be into it. So, we’re just looking to expand our footprint, and expand the arenas that we like to market our company in.Do you have plans for next season yet?
Oh yeah—in fact, we’re already thinking about 2011 and 2012. We’ve started initial talks with manufacturers out there to work with, one of them being Aprilia and the new RSV-4. We’re looking into that and some other options, and we’re looking into bringing in some more non-endemic sponsors to the sport. Scott, the president of Sho-Air, is very committed to this, and him and the Bostroms are long-time friends, so we’re definitely going to be moving forward on this, and we’re going to be involved with Eric in a team for 2011 and beyond. We’re making a hard push, and for us, we’ve already seen enough proof that we’re going to explore this avenue.So this season you signed onto an already established structure, but it sounds like next year the thought is to run your own team?
Like you say, this project was already set when we came in. I mean, there are a bunch of factors, right? It was already a set project with set players, and they needed some extra financial help, which we offered to really make the project worth Eric’s time, and worth Rich Stanboli’s [of Attack Performance] time. We’re going to use some of those key players, it’s not like we’re wiping everyone off the map and starting fresh. Obviously, were looking at our big hunt for a manufacturer to get behind us, to get some interest there. We’re starting the process of keeping this thing rolling and then next year, instead of being like a little test session that’s kind of fun—doing it for charity where the bike gets raffled off and Eric gets his feet wet—we want to hit the ground running in 2011, so that means we’re starting right now to piece together a team.
Ben with Team Sho-Air teammate—and La Ruta winner—Manny Prado • Courtesy Team Sho-AirRight now, we’ve got Eric signed for 2011. You know, in some of our talks people have asked us if we’d be open to getting a young rider, where Eric kind of mentors them for as long as he’s going to be around, and then kind of passes that off. Again, that’s just going to be wait-and-see. Right now we’re just dedicated to building something around Eric, and we’re not opposed to a two-man team, but again, that re-writes the budget, the scope of the equipment that you need, and the staff and all that. We want a very focused, precise effort for 2011, and we know we can back Eric with everything he needs to win next year. If we bring another rider on, we want to make sure that we can handle that before we take on more than we can chew. It’ll be a much more concentrated effort for next year.We kind of feel, after getting some background on the AMA and where it’s at, and the manufacturers that are left, that it’s very reminiscent of when we picked up the MTB national series, which we run. That thing went upside-down, manufacturers were pulling out, it’s almost a mirror image of the story, only on a whole different scale. It takes more to go race a superbike and be competitive than it does a 26-inch cross-country bike, but the story is the same, the problems are the same, and we were able to revamp our American MTB series, and we see a lot of correlation with the scene here. We hope to bring some outside sponsors along with us, and we hope to get the sport healthy again.
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