By Bill Bryant
Randonneurs USA has received the list of riders who earned the Randonneur-5000 medal in 2004 from the Audax Club Parisien. Among the 106 riders from nine nations are 42 American randonneurs and randonneuses. Congratulations to them all!
The Randonneur-5000 is a difficult randonneuring honor to earn. One must ride a Super Randonneur series of brevets and a 1000-kilometer brevet, a 24-hour flèche team ride at Easter, and a Paris-Brest-Paris Randonneur event. In addition, about another 900 kilometers of brevets are needed to bring the total up to 5000 kilometers. (These usually are found in the brevets leading up to PBP.) One has a four-year period in which to accumulate all the events, yet some riders do their counting sequence in only a single season or two.
Begun in 1961, only 1,102 medals have been earned so far, and the list of riders is shorter still since some randonneurs have earned it more than once. If you are interested in learning more, or seeing the complete list of American recipients, go to the Awards section of the RUSA web site: www.rusa.org
Among our 42 RUSA members, we have eight "repeat offenders" earning their second R-5000. It's also great to see some of our hard-working Regional Brevet Administrator on the list of recipients—they are obviously hard-riders too. Please give a special salute to Bob Burns (Kansas City, MO), Dan Driscoll (Dallas), Kay Ogden (Houston), Mark Thomas (Seattle), and Bob Waddell (OH).
Also on the list is former RBA Peter Noris (Miami), as well as our good friend Jean-Gaulbert Faburel of the ACP. Jean-Gaulbert is the busy fellow in Paris who homologates all our American BRM events, and he earned the one-thousandth R-5000 medal.
Bravo to each and every one of these audacious randonneurs and randonneuses!