Nelson Vails

Nelson Beasley Vails ( born October 13, 1960 in New York City ) is an American former racing cyclist.

Nelson Vails was the youngest of ten children of a family in Harlem. At six years old he got his first bike and was - in his own words - " bicycle crazy." Later he worked as a bike courier and earned it the nickname Cheetah because he lithe as a cat is moving through the traffic jungle of New York. In parallel, he drove bike race; his training he ran in Central Park.

1983 started Vails at the Pan American Games in Caracas and won the gold medal in the sprint. The following year he was American Sprint Champion of the amateurs, competed at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles and won the silver medal in the sprint, behind fellow countryman Mark Gorski. He was the first African-American to win an Olympic medal in cycling. In the UCI Track World Championships 1985 in Bassano del Grappa, he was in tandem race runners-up, together with Leslie Barczewski. He was a second time U.S. amateur champion in the sprint in 1989; 1985 and 1986, he was named national champion on the tandem.

Since his retirement from cycling in 1994, Vail has worked as a cycling commentator for television. In 1986, he put in the movie Quicksilver with Kevin Bacon represents a bike messenger

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