Cory Williams is the co-founder of L39ION of Los Angeles — the team he built with his brother Justin to change who races and watches American cycling. Multi-time US national criterium champion and one of the most followed pro cyclists on social media, he has used his platform to widen the sport's audience, mentor underrepresented riders, and rebuild the credibility of US criterium racing. For Roadman listeners, his perspective on the business of racing, sponsorship, and community-building inside US cycling is uniquely informed.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
01Cory Williams has hit 1,640 watts in a sprint. He only needed 1,100 watts to win the biggest race of his career. The gap between peak power and race-winning power is the actual coaching question.
02The Williams brothers' route into cycling: their dad made them ride a turbo trainer for two months before they could get real bikes. Justin won the 144-mile Belize Cross Country twice — the family race their dad never won.
03Anthony's Stelos meltdown story: 70kg climber put on the Chicago crit with 90kg sprinters, got off the bus mid-route, sat on the side of the road, called his girlfriend to come pick him up, and lied to the team that his passport had failed border check. Career-defining "what am I doing with my life" moment.
04LA cycling logistics are brutal. Cory rides 30 min to a bike path, 30 min on the path, 30 min to PCH — an hour and a half of car-trashed lights before getting to actual road riding.
05Self-consciousness about lycra is universal among new cyclists from non-cycling cultures. Anthony used to wear gym shorts over his kit through Dublin to avoid being seen by football mates. Cory grew up at races from age 3, so it never registered.
Cory Williams has done 1,640 watts in a sprint. He only needed 1,100 to win the biggest race of his career. That gap between what you can produce and what actually wins races is what this episode of the Roadman Cycling podcast is really about.
Key Takeaways
Williams is a 65 kg sprinter who held 300 watts for three and a half hours in a road race before winning the bunch sprint. That's the part most cycling coaching advice doesn't address. It's not your peak power that wins races, it's whether you can still access your power after three hours of racing. Williams puts it plainly: power and speed are not the same thing. He's seen riders posting 1,900 watts on their training files who don't win anything.
The other thing worth taking from this episode is how Williams built Legion Cycling Team's commercial model. He understood early that sponsors need a visible return, not just a logo on a jersey. Instagram became his primary income source before most professional cyclists even considered it. He built Legion's entire model around that. Give sponsors a visible return, build an audience, make the commercial case. That's why Legion is moving to continental level with full team salaries while most conti outfits are paying bare minimum and expecting maximum.
You Might Also Like
The broken economics of professional cycling sponsorship comes up across several episodes. The Dark Truth Behind Team Sky's Marginal Gains covers how team budgets get spent and where the value actually goes. If you want the other side of it, the Pas Normal episode looks at what happens when a brand genuinely gets cycling culture right.
CLAIMS FROM THIS EPISODE
Each tagged with the strength of evidence behind it.
STUDY
Cory Williams has produced a peak sprint output of 1,640 watts, but won the biggest race of his career with approximately 1,100 watts — illustrating that race-winning power requirements are typically lower than peak ability and timing/positioning is the differentiator.
Source: Cory Williams race power data
ANECDOTE
The Williams brothers (Cory and Justin) were required by their father to ride a turbo trainer for two months before being given real bikes — a barrier-to-entry approach the brothers credit with filtering for genuine commitment versus equipment chasing.
Source: Cory Williams family history
EXPERT
The Belize Cross Country (approximately 144 miles) is one of the biggest cycling events in the country — Cory's brother Justin has won it twice while their father reached top-five but never won despite multiple attempts.
Source: Cory Williams family racing record
ANECDOTE
LA's car-dominant urban infrastructure adds approximately 1.5 hours of riding through traffic before a cyclist reaches genuine training terrain — a structural disadvantage Cory has navigated through Legion Cycling Team's training and event programming.
Source: Cory Williams personal training experience
KEY QUOTES
“i'm stronger than he is but he's faster than me so we we always uh complimented each other”
“before social media even took off i understood the value of giving something back to the sponsor and that's why we are where we are now”
“he had a bike and he put seed all the way down he's all right you ride every day for two months and then you can get into it”
Corey williams welcome to the road man podcast dude thank you for having me corey i feel like i am the whitest man you're ever going to talk to so i needed to level up my street fail a bit and now corey it's an honor i've been following uh you and your brother's journey for quite a while now and we were just shutting off air we almost overlapped in a team for the same year yeah we were uh on the stellos i think were you a year before me or after yeah you know i wrote 2013 and then i provisionally agreed to come back for 2014 and i just ducked and head for head for ireland oh man yeah you missed this we were one year behind you you know what i've never told this story and [ __ ] i hope andy frey our old director is not listening well i [ __ ] i cracked so much in 2013. i was just i was meant to go out to like cascade classic uh yeah i was getting ready in toronto my girlfriend was living in toronto so i was basing myself there and like getting the bus or [ __ ] up and down it was pretty grim real rock and roll stuff on the public transport yeah but i was getting a bus down from cascade classic got cancelled like two days notice they changed up my roster and they're like oh you got to come to chicago for some [ __ ] crit i'm like a 70 kilogram reuter and i'm not get having much fun in these crits so i was like [ __ ] this [ __ ] like crit in chicago with all these 90 kg sprinters yeah so [ __ ] i can't even believe i'm telling this story because i have never told this to anyone uh so i was on the bus from toronto on the way down and i just literally got off the bus and i was just like [ __ ] this i got off in the middle of nowhere i called my the bus driver was like you can't even get off here it's not a stop [ __ ] let me off give me my bike i pulled the [ __ ] out oh [ __ ] and i sat on the side of the road and i was like what the [ __ ] am i doing with my life and i called my girlfriend i was like come pick me up and she's like but you need to get to your race they're not you're not going to get fined or kicked off the team or something so i told andy and matt cor and other directors like dude they wouldn't let me across the border my password i was like that my passport wasn't accepted because it was like i went to the washing machine or something oh my god ah yeah that was a pretty low moment hey it goes like that sometimes man cycling uh sometimes get really tough and you know we we've all been at that moment where you just can't do it anymore you know i got a text on that same trip down it was like a buddy of mine and he said living the dream i bro a lot of people don't know how like tough this is man like you're you're barely getting any money and you're just like like you said on a bus down from toronto to chicago bro it's like grim well i wrote a blog on it i must try and find it and send it on to it because i can when i read back the blog it takes it transports me back to that moment i had a [ __ ] girl on one side of me and a [ __ ] boy other side of me and the dude sparked open this thing at donuts and he was dripping cream and [ __ ] all over himself and i was sandwiched in between the two of them and it was just so sweaty and horrible oh my god i can't remember what's that bus droid it must be like seven eight hours it's a long bus ride was it like a greyhound or something yeah greyhounds greyhound number 11. oh my god i actually took a greyhound uh from uh was it chicago yeah i took a greyhound from chicago to l.a and it was it was nasty bro i was reading before the podcast i know a lot of your story but i know your story in recent years i didn't know some of the backstory and i didn't know your dad was quite a good bike rider in belize back in the day yeah i mean he was all right we do this we do this big bike race over there it's called cross country uh it's like 144 miles and like it's like one of the biggest events in the country and my dad's been like fourth fifth but he's never won so like it's like his dream for us to go down there and win it and uh justin's won it two times already so nice we already one up them was your dad did he push you guys into cycling no actually he uh he told us that it was a tough sport and if we're gonna quit we can't do it yeah i've seen some quote from him i'm not sure you know the way you see stuff online half it's not true i've seen some quote where he said like this is not a game if i'm going to invest you guys need to be serious this is real money when he was talking yeah talking about bikes yeah actually yeah that's what that's what happened like we weren't even able to like uh get real bikes until we were on the trainer for two months holy [ __ ] yeah he like put his he had a bike and he put seed all the way down he's all right you ride every day for two months and then you can get into it that's pretty good because i don't know i think it's good advice i see so many people coming into the sport and it's almost like you know what i've done this in golf where i thought oh you know i'm going to play golf that looks good fun and then i bought like really expensive golf clubs i'm completely completely [ __ ] and i've never used them since like i use them twice so it's he steered you on some pretty good pot i've actually never been to la and so my opinion of la and that of probably a lot of our listeners that are you know uk or ireland based or even around europe uh it's the la is a particularly car dominant culture and very urban what's that like to get into cycling in a car dominate a culture like a it was it was tough man i lived in the middle of la so like for me to get to a bike path was like 30 minutes and then you get on the bike pad you ride another 30 minutes and then you're in santa monica then you got to ride another like 30 minutes to pch and then you're on pch so like it ended up being like an hour and a half of your ride just being like trashed by lights and cars can you break the lights or is it like on a frown upon nah bro it's like super super main street you will definitely get hit by a car if you like blasted through a light and what's the environment like for grown up is it like i i remember when i started cycling i'm from the city as well but from dublin it's i'm not comparing dublin to l.a here don't worry but it's still a city so i remember when i got started i was so self-conscious about like wearing lycra and cycling because nobody wore it yeah i used to put on like gym shorts over my cycling kit especially with like the local football team or soccer team or in case any of you what are you seeing me what's it like the challenges for you getting into cycling over there you know it's crazy i was like i mean i've been going to races since i was three years old like it never was like weird to me i actually played football i started playing football when i was seven and like we wore tights too but it wasn't like cycling tights but i never was self-conscious about it man like people some people would say some [ __ ] on the side of the road and i just like roll past like yeah whatever how was your brother is a couple of years older than you yeah he's four years older than me so was he gonna trailblaze and then taking a lot of that [ __ ] for you yeah probably probably a lot of [ __ ] that i don't know about yeah he uh he started racing the year before me um what was your sort of intro or turning point where you said you know what i'm going to give cycling uh like timeline wise i'm trying to think did you finish school and jump straight into cycling or where was it at dude i like so i played football i ran track and like those were during the offseason of uh cycling right so like i was like all right well now there's offseason of uh football so i wanted to do something else too so i just got into racing bikes when i was what nine years old um were you academic at scale aren't you bought over skill uh yeah i i finished school was it like uh you know i know for me when i was in school it was a complete after talk for me i played soccer we call it football but like i just never went to school like i'd go to school with my bag but i just have football boots like nets i just get changed in the park and go play football all day because i was just my parents kill me bro my parents will kill me the trick was i started forging my dad's i'm opening up in some serious [ __ ] stories tonight i started i started forging my dad's signature really really early so they just they assumed my writing was his right and i got away with it for years it was awesome yeah no my parents were so where we lived actually was like it was pretty dangerous in l.a and uh we couldn't really we couldn't even go outside on like the weekdays we'd have to wake up wait until the weekends you talking right talk to us about docs we don't have the gang culture over here how's that how's that working oh dude it was it was pretty it was pretty crazy like we we grew up it was like gang members where we lived and like shootings and all kinds of crazy [ __ ] so we really had to stand inside and that's why my parents put us in like a lot of sports and it's not a driver like all the time for you like i know for me i kind of i guess like people always say to me now like oh how come you're pursuing what you're doing with the podcast and because i just go you know what like i'm [ __ ] white i'm a dude like the safety net's pretty high for me if this all goes socially i'm still going to land pretty high i'm not going to be home six months like yeah but is that something where you know we're going to get into some of the race stuff because i know stuff you're super passionate about but yeah does it feel like that safety net is calibrated in a different place for you and me yeah i mean for me like uh now i have enough followers on on instagram where like i can just get paid from that you've got the coolest tell people what your instagram handle is instagram it's nation's number one beast i actually came up with the name when i was like 15 years old after i won a national championship and are you monetizing instagram now oh yeah oh yeah amen that's that's the way you make money now man like everyone's thinking like you just raised bikes but bro you're getting paid for post that's that's where it's at you know i was gonna bounce onto this later because i chatted to i'm not sure if you had a chance to listen back but i chat to simon guerins on the podcasts uh last week um garen's obviously for anyone who's listening i'm sure you know is palmyra's curry but for anyone listening he's one like milan sam ramo even more the yellow jersey in the tour but i was chatting to him about the broken cycling culture and now when i'm putting the sort of business on and i suppose you guys have both hats on and that's why you're unique but yeah i just look at it as a sponsor and go would i sponsor a cycling team like ccc i'm like what am i [ __ ] because the reuters don't care about giving a return on investment to the sponsors yeah that's why we're struggling but you guys are super plugged into giving a return on investment to your sponsors like yeah dude and i've been and i've been like i've been on that that type of thing like i before social media even took off i understood the value of giving something back to the sponsor and that's why we are where we are now like i was riding with a buddy earlier on and he like i could name you know remco evan paul tajer i could name the top 10 young reuters in the world and this dude does not know who they are and i was chatting to him on the podcast and he's like oh i got corey williams on later he's like [ __ ] you got corey williams on the podcast hey isn't that crazy like he's a dude in ireland and he's into bikes but he's not into pro cycling he's just into the love of cycling and following stories i think that's what you guys are you're storytellers yeah i mean that's what we pride ourselves to be like when we when we go into these uh sponsorships people actually understand what they're getting back it's an absolutely awesome job but i want to circle back before i dive too far into it i don't want to talk about sorry was sea lance or silence how did you pronounce that team violence silence uh was that one of your your big break uh so actually before it was silence it was uh in cycle cannondale and now i was on that team and uh that was uh that was the first year like i actually started being good uh i was just reading i didn't even notice that didn't end well for you and your brother justin oh yeah so basically uh i was uh on in cycle cannondale which was silenced before the big sponsor came on and i was their main guy i won every race for two months straight i like beat the best pros in america and uh in a stage race and then like you know i had to beg for my brother to get on silence the next year and they were like oh we don't want it to be the williams show and i was just like dude my brother is one of the fastest guys in america like what what do you mean you should be happy to get them so i ended up getting them on the team uh we had a great year our team finally started like leading it out and we like actually came into our own so like at the end of the year i like crashed a bunch it was like one of those time periods where you know everyone goes through it like you crash a lot in one year and i hit the deck like four times in one month and i was just like do i really want to do this you know like i was actually i had that in 2013 with a stellos like i crashed i've got a funny story i raced there del rey del rey twilight del rey beach yeah i raced that one did you erase that one in 2013 i didn't go but i heard about that one yeah so i erased that one and it was like a night time or getting dark like all that one's slightly getting dark but i hit a corner and a dude crashed in front of me i just you know plowed into him i went straight over the barrier into the crowd there was like these four girls sitting down having dinner and drinks i went into their dinner table i break the dinner table break all their [ __ ] out on the ground like my collarbones broke but i don't know it at this stage yeah so i'm just underground and everyone's like oh my god holy [ __ ] they're like oh can we help can we help and i was like oh can you just get me a drink and she's like are you serious and i was like yeah can you can you get me a whiskey and i stayed there till like 1am drinking whiskey with them but the team didn't even know it crashed so the director had lost their [ __ ] looking for me yeah they thought i got abducted or something in the bunk race you're just on the ground with a broken collar bone drinking but uh so what happened at the end of our silence season yeah so so uh basically uh they were they wanted justin to sign a contract and uh justin was basically waiting for me to get my contract before he signed his and then uh basically what ended up happening he was taking too long they got they kind of got pissed off at him and they were like you know what we're not going to sign corey so i got the boot bro i got the boot in like november and this is like the time when all teams have already signed writers so i i really got put on my ass so that was nearly was that nearly the end of the road for you uh no because like like i said my dad already put this thing in me where like this is a tough sport you're going to have tough moments but you got to keep going right so i i don't give a [ __ ] man i was like i was upset about it but you know i talked to another pro team which was uh elevate and i got on that team luckily because i knew the the guy that ran the team and do you think at the time it was just a straight-up decision for them that they didn't want was it a personality clash or what was going on what's the story with that narrative we don't want the william it's not the williams show i don't know i never understood that honestly like i don't know what it was because like at the end of the day me and justin we work so well together like we are both sprinters but we're different types of sprinters like i'm stronger than he is but he's faster than me so we we always uh complimented each other and looking this soy what's it called soylance what a stupid name what is that even it's a it's a uh they do like uh so this is the problem with cycling too right you have these companies spending a million dollars and people don't even remember what what the company is but they do uh security for like internet or your computer or some [ __ ] well we were saying this year today on the podcast like do you know what ntt is or ccc no i do not i i have not got a clip i watch i don't have a daily podcast on sort of france so i don't every single day i have not got a clue what ntt i don't know man doesn't that show you how broken this [ __ ] is with sponsorships yes it does it is crazy so from sea lance philosophy and timeline wise um what you doing like career highlights between that and getting onto this new lesion so you guys have so so uh that uh that lit another fire in me when i got when i got the boot so i i actually met that team uh i met them the first race they came out to and uh justin was still on the team and he got dropped in front of me with like a half lap to go i chased him down i caught them in the last corner and i beat them and i was just like [ __ ] off that wounded animal is a dangerous thing bro that year i had i had a great year that year too uh i uh won damn what what did i do that year i can't remember because those two years i was on uh i was on elevate so kind of get them both mixed up and then you moved across to my uh all squad of stellas uh how did you get on with the guys there uh actually that was before that was before or in cycle canada actually it was 2014.
Oh 2004 oh you're 2014 2015 on the status no it's 2014. i actually came over uh halfway through the year and that fell apart so fast in the end like because i remember looking did you ride the world time trial championships no no man because i remember looking at them and because i would have been a decent enough to because i know 2013 i think i was only one of two writers that gave a time trial bike to i know people listening to this are probably going like seriously you didn't even get a time trial bike really these are some fake ass teams man like there was only two of us on the team and i had to beg for that time trial bike in my contract i was straight up like i'm not signing unless i get a time travel bike because i was like i'm not buying my own time shop like this is ridiculous yeah so they were basically just like well you can just use your road bike with clip-ons and i had some pretty good time trial results the year before and i was like i'm not like this isn't happening uh so talk me about legion now because i suppose legion is it's where i want to get to and i suppose it's what you're you're best known for now and yeah it seems like this crazy concept to try and build a team yourself android for the team and do the sponsorship for the team yeah and stuff like this podcast awareness stuff it's a lot of work but you know like the year before i we started this team i was on elevate and you know how kanti the kanti uh level is it's just like bare bones like they they expect so much from you exactly and they pay you [ __ ] right so we got tired of that uh justin already wrote by himself and uh he was he was telling me to quit the team like halfway through the year and i'm like nah you know i i want to you know finish the the the contract and and get it done right so after that i was like all right we're going to start our own team and i was i didn't believe it was going to turn into what it turned into oh corey i need to get you guys over to ireland for a race next year oh yeah we have big plans next year so we'll see about that we'll chat off podcast we got a uci 2.2 race over here it's pretty cool but uh i don't know your brother might struggle i think you can climb a bit better than him here yeah so legion's a team dedicated dedicated to this is straight off your site dedicated to increasing diversity and encouraging inclusion talk to me about what that means yeah i mean growing up there wasn't a lot of people that look like me uh racing at the highest level so like how can you know you see yourself doing it if there's no one there right so we kind of like really felt bad like not being able to look up to many people and we just kind of want to be that you know turn into those people that kids look up to we have a something over here that's similar it's a sort of it's around i'm actually back racing uh the last 12 months one of the things i'm doing i'm pilot on the tandem trying to qualify for the olympics at the moment so nice road the world championships in toronto on the track and we're kind of tracking probably a coin toss if we get picked or not but everything's pushed back a year so qualification window doesn't close now until nearly may next year but there's a marketing campaign around here it's more than a marketing campaign sorry that didn't do it just it's sort of a movement it's can't see me can't be me and the idea that if there's no female role models if there's no you know ethnic diversity if there's no visually impaired if there's no handicapped people to look up to someone else coming behind just thinks you know what i can't do this like there's no one that's ever done this before it's just an unpaved road man you know it just seems so impossible um you know what here's a here's a not a funny story which one just sticks in my mind i've almost never experienced racism in ireland like i'm sure people are going to light up my dms and say it's all over the place but yeah it just you know i've and like i don't do a lot i podcast i ride my bike you know there's not a lot of interaction that i'll find that but i remember being out in the us and it was the first time where i it was like it was like we grow up watching a lot of u.s television and we watch a lot of us movies and i remember watching deliverance and deliverance is sitting in i think carolina and we were in carolina for a training camp on beautiful part of the world to try and but we were there we came down off some climb and we stopped in this like hokey pokey like convenience store to refill our bottles so i'm going in and i'm the first dude going in and the store owner says to me can you take off your shoes coming in and i'm just kind of like looking around going like literally the entire floor like was worth like 20 dollars like the store was falling apart like like so i'm looking i'm gonna reel my socks walking on this dude's car it was that bad but so i get to the counter and he says to me like so hey hey hey guy where are you from and i was like oh i'm from ireland so he no interest in me and so he gets to the next guy i think it was like ryan or something or one of the other guys and he's like hey guy where are you from and i think your mind said you know new york or wherever he was from and he's like who's the president up in new york we were all just looking slightly confused yeah and then we're like well it's the same dude as the president down here barack obama and he's like i didn't vote for no negro president yeah and then we were just like we need to get the [ __ ] out of here and that was the first time i was just like this like what's going on like this is yeah these people actually exist and the funny part is right you said you're on this team you're training in in the middle of nowhere and imagine me walking in that store oh too like it would not be funny like it exactly like and that's and that's like the biggest problem like a lot of the times we're on these teams like people don't understand that we can't just be staying in a host house in alabama it's like i we're talking offered start like i started out my sort of full-time cycle and career when i moved to france and i know i felt a massive sense of isolation living in france like i didn't speak the language i had no friends there culturally were very different from the french and i felt completely isolated but i can only imagine then when you take all those things but you put in the fact that you're a different skin color as well it must just that's why cycling is really tough man and that's why we're creating our own lane like we love racing in america like even though america is not great we uh we at least have people that talk our language because it's just that much worse when you know you don't talk the language you're already like a different skin color and like everyone's like looking at you weird i've seen it was a quote from you or your brother saying you need to work 10 times harder when you're black oh yeah you think that's true yeah i believe so especially in this sport have you like directly experienced stuff like you're talking about like the house thousand dollar that's a tough one to try and say fast house host housing actually uh thank thank god no i haven't uh gone into any host housing now that had like racist people but you know i only imagine what uh what people think when i actually go into their house you know you never know it's just it's so crazy for me cory and it's i know it's the it's the first time we've chatted about this and yeah it's just it's tough to get your head around as you would think at this stage we've just moved so far as a society that this stuff is just it's banished that it's completely irrelevant you know like yeah you know i i don't think that like you know i think you know one of my buddies had a tweet up and i think it summed it up nicely for me where he said we can disagree about sport we can disagree about politics we can disagree about religion but if we disagree about racism we're not friends anymore yeah yeah that's how i feel as well and i was like you just can't uh i want to talk a little bit about and if you don't want to talk about this fine let's totally hit me on a i pass quinn simmons oh yeah uh so funny thing is i got to talk to him uh he we actually had a run in uh one of his uh coaches there was a thing where i was i was saying that uh i never got a chance to ride for the national team even though i was top five at [ __ ] nationals every year in top 20 in the rotaries like i never got a chance to race for the the national team and uh he went off uh or the the guy was like the coach said some stupid [ __ ] and was uh and quinn commented on there like if you're not good enough you're not good enough i just give people some context quinn simon says is he the current under 23 world champion yes no uh junior sorry junior sorry yeah so uh and he is riding for a trick and he's actually suspended at the moment we'll get into that in a second yeah uh um was it was there a beef between you and him actually i mean i guess we had his jersey on the wall i threw it in the trash yeah so so basically i didn't i don't know where it came from man because like we actually uh liked that kid we uh he had we had these little lion chains and he actually we gave him one so we were like cool so i had no clue where where this all came from and is it a race thing or is it just you know i have friends of mine you know enough friends of mine i know people who are just dicks it's not a race thing like yeah they're white but they happen to be dicks they could be black they could be chinese they could be spanish they're still dicks is it a personality thing or is it a race thing for me i i think he's just ignorant honestly i don't i don't think it shouldn't be a race thing because i don't feel like there's enough black people in his life to make him be racist like to make him racist or he doesn't deal with black people enough but you never know like at first when he was talking to me it wasn't a race thing he was just being an ignorant [ __ ] but then he put that a whole like donald trump thing with the black hand and i was like uh it's kind of racist like you got you really have to go out of your way to put the black hand you gotta scroll pretty far down to colorado yeah it's the far end of your little emoji spectrum uh yeah i'm not sure if he's just a dumb kid like i i don't know yeah i would hope that as well but then when i don't know we get a lot of us news and media over there and you know i'm not political i don't even think you need to be political to think you know donald trump is a [ __ ] idiot like yeah but a lot of the supporters seem like they fall into that kind of idiot have no brain mold as well and you know that's the cool thing about having a podcast and it's your own podcast on the internet you're not shutting me off yeah if you don't like it if you're a republican just turn off and and then that's the problem too i don't i don't really get the whole like the team it's like kind of a team thing like you're a republican or a democrat why can't you just have common sense and like understand that he's a racist [ __ ] yeah it's absolutely insane what's going on and i think when you just pair that message to quinn simmons to you with the black hand emoji with some of his crazy politics you just kind of nearly jo not jump to the conclusion you connect the dots that this kid has a racist problem about him yeah that's that's what i thought yeah i i don't know i think trek i'd like to see track hold them up as an example and you know they have suspended them i think that's the next thing because like after the whole in incident with me he like apologized and i was like oh yeah maybe because he told me he didn't know that the the guy was talking about me but it was pretty clear that it was about me um so i was like all right cool and then you know i got on with my life i'm not gonna hold on to that and then like this stuff pops up and i'm just like what like are you trying to ruin your career i don't i don't get it and he's good he's a good boy crawler yeah like this is the thing but i don't know i just feel like they need to draw a harder line on this [ __ ] like giovanni moscon should not be a bike rider well yeah i mean people talk a big game but like are you willing to to fire dudes over over that [ __ ] i just think if moscon was a [ __ ] rider he'd be gone oh 100 but you know he's a goodbye he can pedal a bike and that's you know they want that do you follow uh yanni brakovic uh i think i did at one point i'm not sure yeah so yanny's a really interesting deal i had yanny on the podcast uh he's probably slightly i'm a few years older knew uh yani's background's interesting you probably know someone racing one he won like a and he was on radio shock with armstrong and stuff yeah but he's a super interesting story i talked to him on the podcast and at moments i was like holy [ __ ] is he actually saying this he was talking about how he had an eating disorder all through his career and during the dolphin a like he was making himself get sick after stages and then gone and attacking contador in the alps like the next day crazy crazy story but i actually have my phone here i'm going to pull up to tweet yanny is a good man to follow on twitter because he just doesn't care anymore like he's just yeah he's not looking for contracts he's not looking to please people he's just ha he's happy to speak his mind but he was on uh a team 2017 uh and world tour team uh one of his teammates was i've got a butcher in his name maybe you know how to pronounce it better than i do tuscabu grammy uh-huh he's not the african guy yes the african guy yeah if you're listening i don't know how to say his name yeah if you're listening tatsu i massively apologize for that one but he was saying openly the staff would call them the n-word yeah like he said it was just across the whole team and he confronted a writer on his team about it and he said yeah dude you cannot use that word this is not cool it's not playful like you guys aren't homies here or whatever you think this relationship is it's not cool and i was like he asked him straight out he's like are you a racist and your man came back said yes i don't like his sort and it's like this is yeah this is three years ago this is not in 1920 yeah and that's what i'm saying like dude i don't understand where the hate comes from because like me personally i've been robbed by gunpoint i've been shot at like all these things and i don't hate my people i understand there's bad characters there's bad people in every race like when people start understanding that this is an individual thing then you know we won't care what color someone is it's like you're disliking me because donald trump is white yeah that's so stupid it's just like those people are ignorant of [ __ ] although is donald trump white i feel like he's this weird sort of orange bro yeah it's like you know one of those girls in the nightclub that just gets the fake tan badly wrong yeah yeah it's weird uh corey where's your you're an ambitious guy you seem to have a drive that i don't know if you even it's inherent or your dad's instilled in india but you've got go about you where do you see yourself next year i know that's a slightly strange question with the whole covid thing going on but yeah take a right i was uh i was i was i was feeling really good about this year like when i came into it uh the first race was a road race you know i'm not historically good at them but uh i made the breakaway there one with my teammate we went one two i did 300 watts for three and a half hours nice as a sprinter what weight are you i'm 65 uh kgs i like to use kgs because you just know that's i know i know that's what you use that's a pretty good power i've got so impress our uh listeners here what's your sprint's power uh i've done 1640 watts before dude i'm not going to like peak power uh but you know the biggest race in my career i only had to do 1100 watts and that's the thing i think a lot of people listen and don't understand like i've seen files from clients that have won big races like pro races they're putting out a thousand watts they're just putting it out at the right time yeah and i mean it it it's obviously the speed is a massive difference and that's that's another thing people to understand when you're going 40 miles an hour you're not doing 1700 watts it's it's not happening like i took going to the u.s and raised some crits for me to truly understand the difference between power and speed because they are not the same thing exactly power does not when you race speed wins your yeah i know guys that are doing 1900 watts they like to post it up and they don't win anything and i'm like i'm i'm skinny as [ __ ] so when people see my power they're not impressed and i'm like yeah but i'm 65 kgs and you're like 90.
Yeah yeah i know it's it's the difference between fast on swift and fast on strava and actually just fast i don't even want to get to the the whole zorf racing thing it's just some serious cheating going on there bro i know there's this guy i know uh named this guy i'm not gonna name it i'm not gonna know it's this guy i know he used to race with my dad he's like 40 he's probably like 48 about now and he couldn't even be my dad he couldn't even beat me when i was like 16 years old we get on zwift and this man i literally got dropped from the race and he won and i was just like what is going on here now i'm just saying i've jumped on during lockdown because we had like a two kilometer radius during lockdown we weren't allowed outside yeah we actually decided covey was a problem over here so so uh i was on what bike on zwift and doing team time trials and like a local guy just like that like he couldn't stay with me during a coffee shop right yeah and i'm getting dropped in the team time trial like i'm sitting in his wheel like 400 watts i'm [ __ ] ass like my girlfriend's coming into it i'm like get away get away i'm full of us trying to hold this dude's wheel and so what's the big plans for you guys in legion for next season uh so we go we're going conti is this an official announcement yeah we're going kanti uh we will be paying all of our guys um yeah we're we're planning on obviously doing a lot of crits but we're gonna pay a little bit more attention to the the road racing in america awesome have you got a roster nailed down uh yeah we do but i'm not telling you now we got we got some really good uh good guys that we're talking to right now so you don't want like a hundred listeners like dm and either cv after the show oh no we're four man we have we have a ton of people already we're full it's so hard to get into teams for kids that are coming up like when you just it feels like you need to grind for so long to get into the gold teams and they feel so much earlier than people think yeah yeah i i just feel like even growing up with me i tried to get on incappy and it's it just never happened like they a lot of the times they want their friends or or whatever like it's hard to get into a new team yeah 100 uh corey for you personally what's the next five years looking like it's a great question one of my early coaches sat with me and he said if we do a podcast me and you come back or i'm over in l.a you're in dublin and we go for a beer five years from now what has to happen in between now and then for you to go do it you won't even believe how cool the last five years were oh it's happening honestly like personal sponsors out the ass honestly and like i just want to be able to take care of myself like a lot of times in cycling especially at the conte level you can't you can't take care of yourself and that and that's where i'm headed like that's all i need the racing i can do crits easy uh i like to to challenge myself with road races so like i think i would be doing the same [ __ ] awesome corey you're a gent if people want to follow your story follow legion what's the best place for them to catch up with you on instagram man on instagram follow me at uh nation's number one beast you gotta smile every time you say it i handle yeah yeah have you ever said it to a girl in a nightclub yeah you should hit me up on instagram no i haven't thought like i get a lot of [ __ ] for that name and i'm like bro i came up with it when i was like 15 years old and then it actually grew into something corey you're a legend i appreciate you taking the time on dude thank you for having me cheers
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who is Cory Williams cyclist Legion of LA?+
Cory Williams is a professional criterium racer and co-founder of Legion of Los Angeles, a domestic US cycling team he built alongside his brother Justin. He grew up in South Central LA and has become one of the more prominent figures in American criterium racing, using Legion as a platform to increase diversity in the sport.
How did the Williams brothers get into cycling?+
Cory Williams explains in this podcast that their father required him and his brother Justin to spend two months riding a stationary trainer before they were allowed anywhere near real bikes. That unconventional entry test was designed to filter out any lack of commitment before serious money was spent on equipment.
How do professional cyclists train in Los Angeles?+
Training in LA presents a significant logistical challenge because the city is built around cars rather than cyclists. Cory Williams describes spending up to ninety minutes navigating traffic lights just to reach Pacific Coast Highway, which is the most practical road for uninterrupted riding.
How much do domestic US criterium racers earn?+
Domestic criterium racing in the US offers very limited financial reward, and Cory Williams discusses the precarity of making a living at that level throughout this episode. Legion of Los Angeles was founded partly in response to that financial reality, aiming to build a sustainable structure for riders who would otherwise struggle to stay in the sport.
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