Rocket City Is Ready To Welcome Para-Cyclists Back For Another Round Of Racing

In just five years, Rocket City has turned into Cycling City.

It’s a home away from home for American Para-cyclists.

When more than 60 Para-cyclists hit Huntsville, Alabama, this weekend for the U.S. Paralympics Cycling Time Trial, it will mark the fourth time in five years that “Rocket City” has hosted an international or national Para-cycling event.

Next year, Huntsville’s Cummings Research Park will host the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships.

By request of the U.S. athletes, this Saturday’s competition is a preview of the same course on Explorer Boulevard that will be used when Huntsville hosts the world championships.

“We’re happy to give a little edge for our home team,” said Erin Koshut, executive director of Cummings Research Park.

“The great thing about doing the event in Alabama this year is it’s a little bit of a test for us because we’re going to host world championships there next year,” added Ian Lawless, director of U.S. Paralympics Cycling.

Huntsville is known as Rocket City because of its long affiliation with the American aerospace industry. Cummings Research Park has grown to more than 3,000 acres and is the second-largest research park in the United States, trailing only North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park in size. The park is home to more than 300 companies, including Blue Origin’s manufacturing facility for rocket engines.

The connection with Para-cycling began in 2021, when Huntsville hosted the U.S. Paralympics Cycling Open, a competition that determined the U.S. world cup roster in the lead up to that summer’s Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Huntsville hosted the same competition in 2022.

In 2023, Cummings Research Park hosted the World Cup Final, an international event featuring hundreds of cyclists from nations around the globe.

The events, always held on weekends in Huntsville, feature free admission for spectators and a small army of volunteers that responds quickly.

“Since ’21, when we started doing these races, we’ve really built this core group that values and understands and appreciates and is engaged in our Para-cycling efforts,” Koshut said. “We’ve built up our volunteer corps. For the ’23 world cup event, we had over 250 volunteers participate.”

For this year’s event, Koshut said, 75 volunteer slots were filled in the first week after the word went out.

“We’re blessed to be in a place that has been incredibly supportive,” she said. “We also feel like we now have experience in doing these versus when we did the very first one. I do think our experience and working with the team at USOPC and working with the team at Medalist Sports for those previous races really did help us be able to execute this time trial next weekend on a much more expeditious manner and very efficiently.”

This year’s event will draw a who’s-who of U.S. Para-cycling stars, including Paris gold medalist Samantha Bosco, silver medalist Dennis Connors, and bronze medalists Clara Brown and Elouan Gardon.

The entrants also include eight-time Paralympian Allison Jones, who competes in both cycling and skiing; three-time Paralympians Jamie Whitmore and Shawn Morelli; and Jennifer Schuble, a five-time Paralympic medalist from Homewood, Alabama, who got her start in Para-cycling at the Lakeshore Foundation in nearby Birmingham.

“I always look forward to going to Huntsville,” said Cody Wills, a handcyclist who made his Paralympic debut last summer in Paris and won his first world cup medals at Huntsville in 2023. “I like that course.”

Looking for somebody different? Grace Norman, a three-time Paralympian and four-time medalist in paratriathlon and track and field, is also entered to race.

The time trial begins a road season that will include two world cup stops in Europe and the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships in Ronse, Belgium, in late August. The time trial will determine the U.S. team for the world cups, which will be held in Ostend and Bruges, Belgium, May 1-4, and in Maniago, Italy, May 15-18.

After all of that, the countdown toward Huntsville 2026 clearly begins for Rocket City. It will be the first world championship in road Para-cycling to be held in the United States in 11 years.

“I think generally, as a whole, Huntsville is a very welcoming community,” Koshut said. “I think we’re much more open to people from all walks of life coming in and experiencing our city.”

Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic and Paralympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to USParaCycling.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.