By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WINONA LAKE — The Fat & Skinny Tire Fest wrapped up its 21st season of cycling events on Sunday with some impressive numbers.
They had more than 650 people kick off the festival on Friday with a massive ride from Winona Lake to Warsaw, hosted a new series of road races, and relied on 340 volunteers helping oversee 20 different events.
On top of that, the festival has a relatively new home team of sorts with the emergence of Winona Racing.
Founders John Reidy and Tory Leonard run the team, and all of the 11 members are either from Kosciusko County or have close ties to the community.
While there have been previous local racing teams, including Team Apex, Winona Racing established itself with a focus on recruiting local talent.
Standing outside of the team’s headquarters on Administration Boulevard near the Village at Winona, where a full day of racing was underway Sunday, Leonard and Reidy said they want to build upon the cycling tradition established by the bike festival.
Winona Racing has support from KCV, the local cycling club responsible for Fat & Skinny.
“Obviously, with KCV, there’s a lot of really strong cyclists in the community, but not all of them had an opportunity to get into racing,” Leonard said.
The racing season unofficially kicked off this weekend with the bike fest and will include other events in the Midwest.
Having a bike festival in your hometown has plenty of positives for the team.
In fact, Reidy, said there’s really no downside.
“I don’t know any downsides. It’s pretty fun, man,” Reidy said. “It’s fun racing around, and everyone knows your name and everyone knows who you are.”
Fellow team member, 26-year-old Chase Madsen, grew up in the area and enjoyed mountain biking before he headed to Indiana University and competed in the Little 500 bike race.
He said he could have joined other groups, but chose Winona Racing because of its approach.
“There’s something really special about doing something more than the racing. And so this team is really grassroots. It’s local. We are sponsored by local organizations, and so with that, we’re incentivized to try and get local people into racing,” Madsen said.
To learn more about Winona Racing, check out their Instagram page.
News Now Warsaw photos by Dan Spalding from Sunday’s action:
