Professional cyclist Cole House was born on February 5, 1988, and grew up on the Oneida Indian Reservation in Wisconsin. House is a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Wolf Clan. His mother is a full-blooded Oneida and his father is of Oneida, Ojibwa, and Belgian descent.
Since his birth, Cole House’s Native American name has been Tekastoslunti. When his mother was interviewed in 2011 by the daily digital news platform Indian Country Today (now called ICT News) as part of an article about him, she elaborated on why that particular Native American name was chosen for him. “It’s like a floating feather,” she said. “How I saw it, before he was born, a feather was falling from the sky.”
When that Indian Country Today article was published in 2011, Cole House’s Native American name seemed to fit him well due to his well-established buoyancy as a professional cyclist by that time. “It’s a pretty safe bet that Cole House is the fastest American Indian on two wheels,” noted this article. “As far as Cole knows, he’s the only Native currently racing bicycles on the pro circuit.” House remarked during his own interview for the article, “I know of a few who race for fun but not at a professional level.”
House developed a strong interest in cycling early on in life. When he was only nine, his father began taking him to BMX (bicycle motorcross) races. (These races are a type of off-road bicycle racing competitions.) House eventually took up cross-country mountain biking, another sport that involves riding bicycles off-road. At the age of 12, he won his first mountain bike race.
By the time he was 17, however, House started to pursue road bicycle racing instead. “Road racing is a more prestigious sport and it’s been very expensive,” his mother stated. “Cole has been very fortunate in that he’s been good enough that I don’t think he’s paid for his own bike for many years.”
House won the Wisconsin Road Racing Championship in 2005 through 2007. Another major milestone took place in 2009, when he was a member of the American cycling team competing in that year’s 80.8-mile (130-kilometer) Grand Prix (GP) Waregem in the northern region of Belgium. This one-day cycling event was a version of Dwars door Vlaanderen (Across Flanders), a semi-classic road bicycle race in that part of Belgium. During its existence from 1980 to 2011, the GP Waregem was specifically open to cyclists under the age of 23.
House became the first American to win the GP Waregem. He recounted to Indian Country Today a couple of years later, “One kilometer [0.6 mile] from the finish I thought, ‘Shoot, I can actually win this.’ With about 300 meters [984.3 feet] to go I thought I was going to get caught but when I looked back between my legs, I had won by three or four bike lengths!”
While he takes great pride in his role as a trailblazing professional cyclist, House has also expressed gratitude and respect for other Native Americans who have started competing in that sport in recent years. These individuals include Neilson Powless, who made history in 2020 as the first Native American from the United States to compete in the Tour de France; and his sister Shayna Powless, who is likewise an accomplished racing cyclist.
The Powless siblings are also members of the Oneida Nation. While they grew up in California rather than Wisconsin, House has highlighted his shared family ties with them. “Once I got to know them, we discovered that we’re actually relatives,” he noted in an interview with Peloton magazine. “Their grandfather is related to my grandparents — how weird is that?!”
Photo Credit: Jejcam (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
For more information on Cole House, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cole_House_(cyclist)
Additional information on the Grand Prix Waregem is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_de_Waregem
Transportation History 
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