Bicycle racing has been part of New York City's sports landscape since the 1890s, when cyclists first zipped around the velodrome inside Madison Square Garden. It was one of the nation's most popular sports, and the Garden, back when it was actually on Madison Square, was its favored home. But in the decades that followed, as basketball became the Garden's favorite sport, cycling evolved into a local activity for weekend warriors and intrepid messengers.

In fact, New York had never produced a professional cycling team until...