By John Foren
Legal News
Derek Witte’s not kidding when he says it’s more natural for him to ride a bike than to walk.
A chiropractor noticed the same thing – he told Witte he had an unorthodox gait, an apparent byproduct of thousands of miles and decades on the road, hunched over what is now an $10,000 Italian-made bike.
“It’s more who I am than anything I do,” says Witte. “To me, it’s like breathing.”
Witte’s idea of a breather is to take a jaunt of at least 30-50 miles after a day of classes as an assistant professor at Cooley Law School’s Grand Rapids campus.
This is obviously no idle hobby. Witte, 35, has had a storied cycling career, earning national collegiate championships, racing in Europe, at times competing against Lance Armstrong, and narrowly missing out on his dream of making the Olympics.
He still races for a team out of Grand Rapids and still racks up titles.
And he admits he’s still transitioning to life as a law school professor instead of someone always hustling to shave a second or two from his time.
“I’m trying to figure out what it’s like not to have that intensity,” he says.
So far, so good. The serious, unassuming Witte comes across as more Clark Kent than Superman and has the demeanor of someone more at home amidst stacks of legal briefs and law books than the locker room.
And that’s partly right. As Nelson Miller, dean of the Grand Rapids campus, says, “At the same time he’s an athlete he’s an intellectual.”
Witte – who teaches contractual law – came to Cooley in 2008 after litigating for Jenner & Block, a major Chicago firm, and for Miller Johnson in Grand Rapids.
His office at Cooley sports a photo of him with one of his most famous clients, James Andrews, who was imprisoned for 24 years before Witte helped gain his release on allegations he was tortured by Chicago police into a murder-robbery confession.
In another case, Witte was part of a legal team that worked pro bono to get a $1.1-million jury award for a Chicago-area bus driver who was the victim of a racial attack.
Witte graduated summa cum laude from John Marshall Law School in Chicago. His father’s cousin, John, is a noted professor at the Emory University Law School in Atlanta and head of the institution’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion.
What he’s brought from cycling to the law is discipline and goal-setting and always “looking for an edge,” says Miller, whether it’s presenting a classroom lesson in a better way or livening up a Power Point presentation.
What he brings from the law to racing is his brainpower, organization and precision. Friends and fellow cyclists all point to his tactical smarts, helping team leaders decide when to break away from the pack and when to stay back and let others do the tough work before making your move.
“He wins races with great skill and power ... but he uses his mind,” said Dean Peterson, who got to know him when Witte was a cycling champ at Marian University in Indiana.
Witte summarizes the connection between his racing and legal prowess: “I had races that I would pick to do and I would work back with a plan. Being able to think that way, knowing what to do to get there, that’s just like preparing for trial.”
“The competitiveness is something innate to me,” he says. “When I was a trial attorney that sure helped because it was a competition.”
Witte, a divorced father of two girls, grew up in the Grand Rapids area (his father works for the family travel agency in Grand Rapids, his mother owns an interior design company).
At age 12, he started taking long bike rides around town – pedaling his Schwin 20 miles east to Ada on busy Fulton Street.
“I started riding my bike around town like any 12-year-old. They don’t have a car, they want freedom,” he says.
After participating in an area ride, he was noticed by a Calvin College coach who invited him to ride along with a local bike club. Witte thought his fellow riders were slow, a sign of how good he had unknowingly become, and it was off to the races, so to speak.
He entered his first race the following year, went to the national championships for his age group a couple years later, and got on a national team based in St. Louis when he was still in high school. He would drive to St. Louis every six weeks and spend a week training with the team.
“I did not give a damn about high school,” he says. “All I wanted to do was race my bike. I didn’t think about being a productive adult. I was going to be in the Tour de France.”
After high school, he briefly raced in Europe. His cycling prowess earned him a scholarship to Marian and he won national college championships in 1994 and 1995, specializing in 30-40 km outdoor track events that rely on both endurance and speed (“It’s like a 45-minute sprint.”).
He dropped out of school to head to California to train for an Olympic bid and he did well by conventional standards in both road and track races.
He was racing top-drawer competition and a couple times found himself pitted against Armstrong (“We all kind of worshipped him”).
But in the stratospheric level of sports, where training is non-stop and a single second can make or break careers, Witte realized he would come up short of his Olympic dream. His track times weren’t quite fast enough. His coaches told him he was unlikely to make it.
“I look back and I think I was mentally putting so much pressure on myself. Every time I did a track race everything was riding on it. I wanted it so bad,” he says.
Marian officials who he kept in touch with convinced him to return to school. With the pressure off, he kept racing (and thrived, winning another national championship in 1999 and competing in Belgium and the Netherlands) and did well in school, graduating with honors.
Witte still has the restlessness and edge of an athlete not fully alive unless he’s competing – “There’s nothing like winning a race,” he says.
He rides 8-12 hours a week in good weather and spends another 4-5 hours helping with logistics of his Bissell Men’s Masters Elite Team. Witte occasionally trains at the Velodrome in Bloomer Park in Rochester Hills. Cycling – once the focus of so much pressure and anxiety – has become his relaxation, he says.
“I don’t care how I do as much,” Witte says. “Back in California, every race was set up so my career was riding on it.”
With his analytical mind and intellect, he’s had time to reflect and dissect what cycling means to him.
“It’s always been my Prozac and I didn’t realize it,” Witte says. “There are worse things.”
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