South Philly Review

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Cassandra King loves to challenge herself and to encourage others. On Sunday, the consummate competitor will nourish her passions by joining a colleague for the 18th edition of the Liberty Classic. Regardless of their result, the 57.6-mile race will increase the impressive amount of self-confidence King has built since her youth in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The resident of the 2400 block of South Camac Street will mount her Wilier Cento Uno bicycle for the 140-minute test feeling honored to compete and support her friend Laura Van Gilder. King earned her opportunity by being a Category 1 racer, a title 22 years of success have granted her. Van Gilder, with one second-place finish and two third-place results in the Classic, sought out the 45-year-old to join her Mellow Mushroom unit. King gladly accepted the offer from her former teammate on the Navigators Insurance Cycling Team.

“Cycling embraces everyone and empowers women especially,” King said.

The disposition will come in handy when her limbs make their way from Logan Circle on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to Manayunk and the latter’s notoriously tough incline known as “The Wall.” Four laps will comprise the course and will mingle more than 100 participants with the men who will be contesting the Philadelphia International Championship on the same stretch. Racing among males does not trouble King, who often races against and defeats them.

“Women need to do men’s races to gauge the intensity of national and international competitions,” she said.

When King engages in customary races against holders of the XX chromosome pattern, the action always stimulates her.

“Fields are hard and that’s great,” she said of encountering ferocious females. “They’re attacking and giving their all.”

She has offered her utmost for more than 17 years to the Tri-State Velo/Amoroso’s Baking/Victory Brewing team, competing as one of its elite female riders. Her involvement has enhanced her view of cycling as a team sport.

“If you’re in cycling for the money, you’re in the wrong sport,” she said. “I am far more interested in team competitions, in being able to help people to pick up points.”

When she has chased individual glory, great results have followed, most notably in 2009, when, among other commendable feats, she became the Senior Elite Women’s PA BAR Champion and captured gold medals at both the Pennsylvania State Criterium and the Pennsylvania State Road Race championships.

“I came into that season grateful and relaxed,” she said of what she termed a “transformative year.”

The span nearly included the loss of her mother, Norma Ramirez, who had suffered a stroke shortly before the breakout campaign.

“I used my mother’s situation as inspiration,” King said. “I made myself even more committed to stretching myself. Whenever I have had challenges, the bike has always been there.”

King began relying on a steering axis to give her world direction while a student at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

“Cycling opened a gateway for me,” she said. “I said, ‘This is what has been missing from my life.’”

She majored in communications and public relations at the Ivy League institution and obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in graphic design from Binghamton University in Vestal, N.Y. Work as a production artist at a Wilkes-Barre, Pa., paper kick-started her professional life.

Though New York and Pennsylvania have factored heavily into her life, King can credit Delaware for providing the love of her life and her current occupation.

“Kenny is my tether,” she said of her husband, whom she met at a race in Granogue, Del.