Mr. Chiu bid on that sponsorship opportunity and now becomes part of our 2006 'cross campaign. It's touching to me that his involvement is less an act of actual marketing and one that is rooted in a desire to honor his father and family lineage.

Rather than add a corporate logo or the like, Mr. Chiu has supplied his father's name in Chinese symbols and this beautiful graphic will be added to the racing kit this season.

I have asked that Mr.Chiu articulate his involvement with us and have his permission to paste his email text below. Please read:

The three Chinese characters from left to right mean the following: "Hill", "Family", "Victory".

It is my father's name. Chiu Chia-Sheng.

I chose my father's name to pay tribute to his support for me and others around him. My father came from a very poor family in a small farming village in Taiwan. He was eldest in a family of 6 children, and he worked hard to become a physician while putting himself through school and supported all of his siblings through their years of school. He realized his dream and received excellent medicine training in the United States. However, he never forgot his roots and returned to Taiwan to be with his parents and sibling, and he settled to serve people in a small city in Central Taiwan (Feng Yuen, about 10 miles from where Richard Sachs lug sets are cast). While my father had a successful career in Taiwan, he wanted his children to have opportunity to the best of the world, so he sacrifice himself and settled my mother with three children in the US while he stayed in Taiwan. It is with his unrelenting support and sacrifice that I was able to have the opportunity to pursue my interests in my professional career as well as hobbies in sports and cycling.

The three characters in my father's name fittingly described the uphill battle he has endured through his life, the devotion he has toward his family and home, and the success he has achieved as a person and as a father.

As for myself and cycling, I first fell in love with cycling when I had my Bridgestone MB-3 and rode through the woods of Rhode Island as a college student at Brown University. After Brown Medical School and Internal Medicine residency training at The New York Hospital-Cornell, I became faculty at Stanford and discovered great cycling in the Bay Area. While I was a dedicated mountain biker, I started to look to road training to improve conditioning and riding skills. I first got interested in Richard Sachs Cycles when my trusted bike mechanic Jon Mara at Palo Alto Bicycles described how he loved his Richard Sachs road bicycle that he got during his days at the legendary Wheelsmith. After extensive research and test riding of many bikes, I was drawn even closer to Richard Sachs bicycles. I had the chance to meet Richard while attending the North American Handmade Bike Show in San Jose and felt a great connection with his approach to bicycles and cycling. When the opportunity to sponsor the team arose, I was glad to be a part of it. I look forward to help Richard Sachs Cyclocross family overcome obstacles and hills to achieve victory.

Thanks for reading,

Rex Chiu
 

Richard Sachs is a craftsman framebuilder who has been refining his skills for over a quarter-century.  For more information, please contact: