2010 USI Banquet
At the 2010 USI Banquet the club is honoring our sponsors and our club in the overall points category, for road racing and multisport racing. Our points champion is also our club historian. Maria Settani led tons of rides and represented the club week in and week out leading rides and introducing USI to new people.
Congratulations and thank you Maria!
On the road the USI is honored to have Nancy Ford as our racing champion. Nancy was out racing in bkue with great results all season long!
Congratulations and thank you Nancy!
At sea as well as on land Darcy Ramsey continued her dominance in multisport and we’re proud to have her with USI.
Congratulations and thank you Darcy!
Our champions make USI look good on and off the bike!
A copy of the banquet booklet is reproduced here for all of our members that cannot attend the banquet this year.
Enjoy!
Welcome to the 102nd year of the Unione Sportiva Italiana road show!
We would like to acknowledge and thank our sponsors for all their generosity and loyal support in the years past, and for the coming 2010 season.
Without our sponsors we might just be posers in pretty blue jerseys, but with their help and support our USI community is whole. We are proud to represent our sponsors at races and rides all over the world!
Thank you to everyone for coming out to celebrate a past year of great riding and new one just beginning. I hope you all enjoy the fine food, great company and swinging tunes of member Brian Carter and the Brian Carter Quartet.
Happy 2010!
Tim Compton
President
USI Cycling Club
2010 USI Sponsors
Bicycling Magazine Macklowe Gallery
brio nyc restaurant Pelham Bicycle Center
Juice Plus+ Westchester Homemade Wine Center
2010 USI Points Championship
USI had 21 members submit points in the tourney this year. The totals are dominated by the women of USI. Past multiple champion Dale Malkames finished third this year with Nancy Ford racing to fine second place with great results all season. Nancy was outpaced in a close finish by the USI club historian, Maria Settani who led a regular series of rides and is recognized for her particular service to the club. Congratulations Maria!
On the multi-sport side the club was extremely well represented by Darcy Ramsey
who finished fourth overall in the championship.
The USI points championship is demonstrates our members commitment to promoting the USI, its sponsors, and cycling as a healthy community lifestyle choice. A total of 704 points were awarded throughout the season via volunteering, racing and leadership efforts. Thank you to everyone who went out to represent the club in 2009 whether you chose to submit your points or not. Best of luck to everyone in 2010!
Welcome to the 102nd year of the Unione Sportiva Italiana road show!
We would like to acknowledge and thank our sponsors for all their generosity and loyal support in the years past, and for the coming 2010 season.
Without our sponsors we might just be posers in pretty blue jerseys, but with their help and support our USI community is whole. We are proud to represent our sponsors at races and rides all over the world!
Thank you to everyone for coming out to celebrate a past year of great riding and new one just beginning. I hope you all enjoy the fine food, great company and swinging tunes of member Brian Carter and the Brian Carter Quartet.
Happy 2010!
Tim Compton
President
USI Cycling Club
2010 USI Sponsors
Bicycling Magazine Macklowe Gallery
brio nyc restaurant Pelham Bicycle Center
Juice Plus+ Westchester Homemade Wine Center
2010 USI Points Championship
USI had 21 members submit points in the tourney this year. The totals are dominated by the women of USI. Past multiple champion Dale Malkames finished third this year with Nancy Ford racing to fine second place with great results all season. Nancy was outpaced in a close finish by the USI club historian, Maria Settani who led a regular series of rides and is recognized for her particular service to the club. Congratulations Maria!
The USI points championship is demonstrates our members commitment to promoting the USI, its sponsors, and cycling as a healthy community lifestyle choice. A total of 704 points were awarded throughout the season via volunteering, racing and leadership efforts. Thank you to everyone who went out to represent the club in 2009 whether you chose to submit your points or not. Best of luck to everyone in 2010!
A brief history of USI Sponsorship
The USI is honoring its sponsors that have been supporting the Unione for five years or more at our annual banquet on January 31st, 2010. These sponsors are Bicycling Magazine, Juice Plus, Macklowe Gallery, Pelham Bicycle Center and The Bagel Zone. This brief history of sponsorship of the USI is intended to provide some background on how the club sponsorship has evolved. I will take the story from general beginnings to the club’s current sponsorship situation. Part 2 will highlight the sponsors that will be honored at our banquet.
When we cyclists think of sponsors we usually have an image of a pro team in their billboard-like jerseys representing companies that most of us in America have never heard of, but there are other types of sponsors that should come to mind for those of us in the USI. The USI has always had sponsors. Each and every member is a sponsor, and the club has always tried its best to serve its sponsors well. In the nonprofit world the care and feeding of sponsors is called stewardship. On the for-profit side it is called customer relations. I mention this difference because the Unione Sportiva Italiana Cycling Club is a 501c3 nonprofit organization.
During the first 50 years and more of the club’s history the USI enjoyed sponsors support, many of whom were themselves members. An important source of support was La Sportiva Italian Benevolent Society, known familiarly as The Mutual. The USI club headquarters which were on 45th Street in Manhattan from the early twenties through the late thirties housed the USI offices as well as a gymnasium, restaurant and banquet hall.
The banquet space saw events honoring great sportsmen like the champions who came from all over the world for the Six Day Bicycle Races at Madison Square Garden. Through The Mutual and the in-house restaurant, USI sponsored Italian immigrants entering America. It provided them with the work which had become required for entry into the United States.
During these times and up through the sixties sponsors helped defray the cost of events by purchasing advertising in the annual banquet booklets just the like yearbook and playbill advertisements that many of us have sold, purchased and are familiar with. Companies like the famous jewelry and design store Michael C. Fina founded in 1935 by Michael and his wife Rose, bought advertising to say thank you to the USI for the club’s patronage for awards and trophy creation. Other sponsor-patrons included individuals like Tino DeAngelis who
supported cycling in New York and was a great character. Tino caused a quite a storm in the early 1960’s in the financial market with the Salad Oil Scandal. As Norman Miller noted in his 1964 Saturday Evening Post story, Tino’s, “avocation is donating bicycles and sponsoring races for boys’ bike clubs.” For the USI Tino provided junior sized racing bikes for young club racers as well as trophies and awards. (To read more about Tino visit Wikipedia’s citation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tino_De_Angelis and the story by Norman C. Miller in the Saturday Evening Post, from April 24, 1964 : http://www.mafianj.com/saladoil/tino1.shtml)
Donations of merchandise today are referred to as gifts in kind to differentiate them from the commercial monetary sponsorship that professional cycling and automobile racing began to see during the 1960’s. Jumping ahead to more recent days we find sponsorship part of the club discussions in 1993 when the USI had begun to attract a new generation of riders and faced financial challenges. The minutes from the January 28,1993 USI meeting included the officer election results and the note that, “Clothing orders will be dealt with later in the season as sponsors are organized.” In 1993 The USI’s sponsoring bike shop, Metro Cycle Sport, based in white Plains, offered discounts to members and special incentives to those racing for the club. The intention was to generate exposure for the shop while making the club attractive to racers in the area. The USI had a very limited budget, but a good portion of its funds were dedicated to helping members pay for their racing activities on behalf of the USI. In addition to Metro the club had other sponsors who were generous in their support, but the club was in need of some operating adjustments to keep moving forward, if not survive.
By the close of the following season in 1994, the USI was at a crossroads in its evolution. Metro Cycle Sport had closed in 1993. Metro’s owner, Dave Marinelli, who had done a great deal of work to revitalize the USI as a racing club had joined the staff at another local shop, Bicycle Express, and brought the club there with him. When Dave Marinelli left Bicycle Express the following season, the owners were not so certain that their shop should, or could, continue as the club sponsor in the future. The USI had already formed a committee to seek additional sponsorship for the 1995 season and soon a change of shop homes and new outside sponsors would help stabilize the base of the club.
The banner headline for the February 1995 USI Newsletter read, “THREE LOCAL SPONSORS ALIGN WITH U.S.I.” The bolded capital letters pretty much tell the tale. Club Secretary and newsletter editor, Karen Bauer, started her article with a statement demonstrating just how much the changes meant to the USI:
Food, a roof over your head, and bicycles. Is there anything more to life? Not for a cyclist. Therefore it seems fitting that the new U.S.I. sponsors include: Nick Wolff, Century 21-Wolff with offices in White Plains and Thornwood; Nick Livanos of city Limits Diner, White Plains and Ed Cangialosi and Harlan Matusow of High Caliper Bicycle Company, White Plains.
The new sponsorship enabled the USI to develop steadily in the ensuing years and permitted the old club to adjust to the new environment of USACycling. Although the USI had been a backbone club in the development of amateur cycling in America right up through the 1960’s legislative changes on a national level created the amateur cycling organizational structure that we have today, and clubs like the USI were left with the choice adapting or ending their existence.
Since 1995 the USI has had several sponsors and most have stayed with the club for more than one season. Many have been active members and many have been local businesses that share the USI members passion for cycling. A fairly complete list of our sponsors in the last 15 years includes Stationview Deli, Akido of the River Towns, Wilson & Son Jewelers, Between the Lines Bistro, Moda Spiga, Adjust Your Life Chiropractic, RepartoCorse.com, WD-NY, Merril Lynch, Invest Corp Real Estate, MyBodyMechanics.com, Century 21-Wolf Real Estate, White Plains Glass, City Limits Diner, Push Hard Multi-Sport, Bistro 235, Shanti Bith Bonsai, and David Kliger DDS. Our sponsors for 2010 are Bicycling Magazine, brio_nyc, Juice Plus, Macklowe Gallery, Westchester Homemade Wine Center, and Zaro’s Bakery. We are proud to represent our sponsors and thank all of our members for their sponsorship and especially their good friendship!
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