A barely visible Juan Jose Oroz | Paris-Roubaix | Photo ©: CycleTo.com

You’ll be excused if you’ve never heard the name of Euskaltel-Euskadi pro Juan Jose Oroz Ugalde. That’s him at the tip of the arrow above, firmly ensconced in this year’s Paris-Roubaix peloton. And since Juan Jose Oroz flies so far under the radar, this is the only photographic evidence I’ve ever found of him suiting up for Euskaltel-Euskadi other than his team mug shot. My research into Mr. Oroz began at the finish of Paris-Roubaix where I routinely look to see which brave Euskaltel-Euskadi souls soldier on to the velodrome in Roubaix. I’m sure most Basque mountain goats would prefer to donate a kidney than suit up at Paris-Roubaix. But ProTour obligations are ProTour obligations and I’d heavily wager that the Basque men in orange venturing to the Paris-Roubaix start line were intimately familiar with the location of the first feed zone…and their respite from Hell. In this year’s edition of Paris-Roubaix, Oroz was one of two Euskaltel riders to complete the distance–no mean feat. Euskaltel rode their stock Orbeas–the only concessions to Roubaix’s punishing parcours being the traditional box-section wheels equipped with Vittoria Pave tubulars plus the decidedly Low Budget Superstar application of electrical tape on the bottle cages to provide some extra grip.

Just for curiosity’s sake, I checked the results of the previous week’s Tour of Flanders. And sure enough, Juan Jose Oroz survived that challenge, too. Huh. So I checked some more…and checked some more…and discovered an interesting fact: in the six month span from late October, 2007 through late April, 2008 Juan Jose Oroz has survived all five Monuments of Cycling. A feat that no other cyclist in the pro peloton has done in that same time span. Not only that, but during that time Oroz was completing his first year on a ProTour squad so each Monument was his first attempt. And not simply content to duke it out in the Monuments, Oroz managed to complete the sweep of Flanders week at Gent-Wevelgem and complete the trifecta of Ardennes week events by surviving Amstel Gold and Fleche-Wallonne to boot.

Juan Jose Oroz turned pro in 2006 for the Spanish Kaiku squad at the relatively late age of 25. 2007 seemed a bit weird–he rode for Orbea Oreka SAD from January, 2007 through May 11, 2007 and then from May 12, 2007 to the present he has been employed by Euskaltel-Euskadi. The Orbea team didn’t fold in 2007, the only obvious answer to me explaining a mid-season team change, and my cursory efforts to explain this unusual jump to a new squad have gone unanswered. Perhaps it was a feeder team and Oroz sufficiently impressed Euskaltel-Euskadi to warrant an invitation to The Show.

Only three men have won all five of cycling’s Monuments: Rik van Looy, Roger De Vlaeminck, and (no surprises here) Eddy Merckx. I’ve embarked on a task to determine just how unusual it is for a pro to merely finish all five, something I suspect is becoming increasingly unusual in this contemporary era of specialization. I started simply looking at all American attempts at the Monuments and only two have made it to the finish line in each: Greg LeMond and Bob Roll, each competing back in the 1980s. For most Americans with multiple Monuments under their belts the Tour of Lombardy is the missing piece, perhaps not too surprising due to its October slot on the calendar. Most American pros are already back in the States re-charging their batteries in October, unless your name is Chris Horner and you’re trying to impress potential Euro employers.

Perhaps among Euro riders finishing the Monuments throughout the expanse of a career isn’t such an unusual feat, but maybe I’ll find out otherwise. In Oroz’s case I don’t know if this is simply a bet he’s placed with his Euskaltel teammates (100 euro says you can’t finish them all, Oroz!), if this is some sort of Euskaltel rookie hazing (Uh, Juan Jose…uh, before you get to rock all those stage races in Spain and Portugal you’re heading North. For all the Classics.), if Euskaltel pays by the kilometer raced, or if Oroz is simply a glutton for punishment with enough pride never to quit anything he starts. Regardless, Juan Jose Oroz deserves a wee bit of applause for knocking them all out in his first attempt at each, all within a six month period. Maybe a bit of Oscar Freire and Juan Antonio Flecha has rubbed off on him (although I’m almost positive that even this pair of Spanish, Classics rock stars has yet to see the finish line of every Monument).

Juan Jose Oroz’s six months of suffering:

Joe Strummer | Vigorelli Velodrome | Photo ©: Janette Beckman

From 1935 to 1967 eight PRO cyclists set the world hour record at Milan’s Vigorelli Velodrome on ten separate occasions, making it the most heralded venue in the lore and legend of the almighty Hour. No other velodrome has seen as many successful attempts to further the distance a human being can power a bicycle over 60 immensely painful minutes:

• 1935 October 31…Giuseppe Olmo (ITA)…45.090 kph
• 1936 October 14…Maurice Richard (FRA)…45.325 kph
• 1937 September 29…Frans Slaats (NED)…45.558 kph
• 1937 November 3…Maurice Archambaud (FRA)…45.747 kph
• 1942 November 7…Fausto Coppi (ITA)…45.871 kph
• 1956 June 29…Jacques Anquetil (FRA)…46.159 kph
• 1956 September 19…Ercole Baldini (ITA)…46.394 kph
• 1957 September 18…Roger Riviere (FRA)…46.923 kph
• 1958 September 23…Roger Riviere (FRA)…47.346 kph
• 1967 September 27…Jacques Anquetil (FRA)…47.493 kph

And then The Clash rolled into the Vigorelli Velodrome in May, 1981.

This past month or so has been a time of intense reading…all 8 fantastic issues of Rapha’s Rouleur in rapid succession, plus plenty of books. And what held my attention the most were a couple of biographies about The Clash: Johnny Green’s A Riot of Our Own and Pat Gilbert’s Passion is a Fashion. And while the only hour record Joe Strummer and company may have been setting in the nether regions of the Vigorelli Velodrome was how may pounds of weed four human beings can smoke, Strummer and bass play Paul Simonon were hardly strangers to cycling. According to Pat Gilbert, while recording Combat Rock,

Paul and Joe turned up to Freston Road [at the Ear Studios recording studio] each day on their bicycles: very unassuming, very English. Joe used to borrow Gabriella’s [Gabriella Salter] bike, actually, that was his favorite mode of transport. Paul, he always cruised around West London on a bicycle with cow-horn handlebars. He used to ride everywhere with his hands in his pockets, hair greased back in a quiff.

Who knows…maybe Joe and Paul bumped into the Masi family prior to hitting the stage.

And for something that has nothing to do with cycling, but everything to do with today’s date, I leave you with one of the greatest, if not the greatest, April Fools jokes of all time: the mysterious tale of Sidd Finch.

In PRO cycling there exists a Holy Trinity…of mustaches.

1. Eric Van Lancker,
2. Danny Clark,
and the Führer of Fuzz— 3. Urs Freuler

Fast forward a couple of decades to the ever enigmatic Dave Zabriskie, channeling the ghosts of ’stache past. And with Zabriskie being Zabriskie, he seeks inspiration from a disparate blend of icons: part Frank Zappa…part Ned Flanders.

I had a serious case of Frank Zappa on the brain and am nearly done with the Zappa: A Biography by Barry Miles. I knew nearly nothing about his life, other than what I had gleened from listening to “Joe’s Garage” in my teen years and seeing Zappa go head to head with Tipper Gore in the PMRC wars on Capitol Hill. Now my brain is overflowing with too much trivia. Who knew that Zappa’s father worked in the defense industry conducting research on mustard gas, that Zappa lived pretty much on canned chili and hot dogs, that Zappa played a bicycle on national television, that he was such a prolific composer of classical music pieces…And I now can make sense of “ Smoke on the Water” lyrics. But back to cycling…

Zabriskie’s path to his current grooming state reminded me of a story from years ago at a 7-Eleven training camp in the Santa Rosa area of California (what is it with that part of the world that inspires pros to experiment with facial hair?). It seems that most everyone on the squad grew some bushy beards over the winter, culminating with the union of said undernourished Grizzly Adamses in numerous epic pre-season rides (we’re talking 8-9 hours a day, Roger de Vlaeminck style) through some of the same roads utilized in the current Amgen ToC. At the camp’s conclusion the hirsute pros were scheduled to board a plane and meet the corporate bigwigs of 7-Eleven and the squad’s management was horrified that a band of unkempt Wookies was about to descend on a boardroom of straight-laced, midwestern MBA grads. So the orders went out to lose the beards. But what exactly constitutes “losing a beard”? Well…they lost the beards. Technically. However, everyone turned up with some serious Neil Young-esque chops instead. Sweet.

Besides being entertained by the Slipstream dynamic duo of Zabriskie and Cozza during the recently concluded Amgen ToC, three other happenings caught my eye.
First…an amusing tale of neutral support improvisation by Bobby Julich at the base of the Sierra Road climb. And Bobby’s so amped up he even chimes in with “This had to be the slowest wheel change ever”. Too funny. And like someone commented way down in the thread…that wheel will be kicking around the CSC service truck for years to come until somebody eventually turns it into a wind chime or some other form or cycling inspired art.
Second…So what happens when you’re hauling along in the ToC, you get the munchies, and you discover that what you thought was an energy bar is really your cell phone? Well, what do you think? You start taking pictures. Check out Ted King’s (Bissell Pro Cycling) birds-eye view of Tom Boonen’s ass, the Sierra Grade laughing group, and a self portrait. He definitely should have called in a pizza to arrive at the finish.

“Yeah…Dominos? Can you deliver a pizza to the finish line of the Tour of California in downtown San Jose? My name is Ted King…Look for a guy in a red & white Bissell Pro Cycling kit with #147 on his back and bike…I’m the really hungry one. I’ll be there in about 30 minutes. Later.” Click.

And since I’m probably one of about 5 people in the country who doesn’t have a camera in his cell phone, can someone explain how those photos came out reversed?

Years ago I was in the pro/am Tour de Moore road race on an exceptionally gloomy morning. It never rained, but there was a permanent sense of twilight even though it was approaching mid-day. About 75 miles into the race I started to catch some flashes out of the corner of my eye and all I could think is “What the hell is that?”. We’re really close to Ft. Bragg and the only explanation my oxygen-starved brain could concoct was some wayward Special Forces team got off base and was conducting live fire exercises on an unsuspecting public. With silencers, because there wasn’t any noise. Well…it turns out that a certain unpredictable character by the name of Andy Crater, who may or may not have been tripping on acid, brought along a disposable camera and decided to take some commemorative action photos of the peloton in the heat of battle. Perhaps they still exist out there somewhere. I can still remember him pop up like a prairie dog, stick his arm up in the air holding the camera, and snap away.

Third…I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, but Radio Freddy has a wonderful collection of photos from the ToC. Of course, you already knew that.

I’m not quite sure I’d consider a trip to Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games a worthwhile endeavor. In fact, if I was about to win my country’s Olympic Trials road race, I’d be tempted to do a track stand about 5 feet in front of the finish line and wait for some other unsuspecting suckers to roll across in front of me. Sure…there’s the honor of representing one’s country on the world stage, the theoretical ideal of athletic purity and integrity, the brotherhood of man, the opportunity to meet a hot handball player and toss your current wife and kids to the scrap heap, the collective abstract elements of the Olympics. Then there’s the concrete reality of Beijing itself where it seems that

1) You can’t breathe the air…
2) You can’t eat the food…
3) You can’t talk smack about the host nation’s stellar record of innumerable human rights violations…
4) The “the internets” will likely be filtered if not out and out blocked to stifle non-sanctioned, non-goverment constructed Pravda-esque puff pieces of journalism from escaping the borders.

There’s a very good possibility that those ascending the podium of the Olympic road race, having sucked down the best that Beijing’s smokestacks can belch forth during 245.2 gruelling kilometers of competition, will all leave Beijing with a Superund site for lungs or even worse…transform into Toxic Avengers live on NBC or be seen fending off C.H.U.D.s emerging from the netherworld to assault the unsuspecting peloton out on the open road. I don’t think anything some old-school Belgian or Spanish soigneurs can concoct from amphetamines, heroin, cocaine, HGH, EPO, and bovine hemoglobin tossed into a blender and dosed out via syringe can compete with good ol’ fashioned, epically scaled industrial pollution for damage to the human body. Seriously…years will be removed from the lives of all endurance athletes who dare compete this summer from the benign (and rather necessary) act of breathing air.

The last time the Summer Games rolled into a sprawling mass of pollution, urban blight, and rampant human rights violations was forty years ago in Mexico City. Athough I think the Beijing Olympiad will be hard pressed to outdo the freak-out factor endured by the 1968 American TTT squad (consisting of John Howard, John Allis, Butch Martin, and Jim Van Boven)…

Any hopes for an impressive ride, however, were shattered in a bizarre incident only minutes before the team was to start their ride. They were standing together, making final checks of their tire pressure and equipment, when a Mexican man committed suicide with a pistol within five feet of the team. Howard and Martin were splattered with blood.

‘About 20 soldiers rushed over to the body, which was lying in a pool of blood’, Martin said. ‘An officer took charge and put sheets of newspaper over the body. The soldiers kept the crowd away. I had to get a towel and wipe the blood and brains off my arms and bike. Later, we learned the guy had committed suicide because he couldn’t find a job to support his wife and kids.’

Howard said, ‘Had the gory suicide not occurred, the U.S. press would not have not have reported the race at all. In fact, the coverage ommitted the results, and no other cycling events were even mentioned.’

John Howard and Peter Nye. Pushing the Limits (Waco: WRS Publishing, 1993), 29. 

…one can never underestimate communist China for lowering the bar to unanticipated lows in the manner of the Mexican authorities in 1968…

The vast sums the Mexican government had spent on building facilities for the Olympics prompted some 300,000 Mexican university students around the country to protest. The students felt a country with so much poverty was misguided in spending money on the Olympic Games. With the Olympics drawing international media attention, the students decided to use the Olympic Games as the forum for their protests. On the night of October 2, 10 days before the Olympic Games were to open, a crowd of 10,000 students held a protest in the Square of the Three Cultures in Mexico City.

‘Mexican police flew over in helicopters, dropped flares, and fired heavy machine guns down on the students,’ recalled Butch Martin. ‘We saw the flares and heard the shooting from the Olympic Village, about two miles away.’

The deaths that resulted were largely overlooked in the U.S. press, but John Rodda, an English journalist covering the Olympics for the Guardian, reported that more than 260 were killed and 1,200 injured from the shooting.

John Howard and Peter Nye. Pushing the Limits (Waco: WRS Publishing, 1993), 27.

On a lighter note, the article in the New York Times about how all of the food consumed by American athletes will be flown into China and guarded as closely as a Senator in the Green Zone jarred loose a lost weekend from my teenage years. Except my story had the opposite scenario–I needed to transport crappy food into an oasis of purity. My tale of dietary woe is a long, July 4th weekend spent racing criteriums in Connecticut chaperoned by a couple of militantly vegan hippie cyclists about 10-15 years my senior. A weekend spent sleeping in tents, athletic endeavors fuelled by lord knows what kind of bulk food bin roughage cornucopia, campfire conversations about their perpetually never finished Ph.ds in theoretical mathematics, and talk of cycling esoterica such as purging the grease from hub bearings and replacing it with kerosene for the absolute minimal rolling resistance in time trials.

Realizing the company I would be keeping for 3 nights and four days, my dad filled a cooler chock full of food and beverages more to the liking of the teenager that I was…copious deli-meat sandwiches, cookies, candy-bars, bags of corn chips, generic label soft drinks…not a fruit or vegetable in sight. It was to be my non-vegan bubble of dietary normalcy, left lovingly out on our side porch for me to bring to CT for the weekend. To this day, when reminded of this particular weekend, my dad still shakes his head in wonderment about just how I managed to leave our house and get in the hippie-mobile without noticing the rather portly cooler in my path. It was positioned at the top of a pretty narrow set of porch stairs, and I’d either have to exercise some yogi guru flexibility in my gait to step over it and not fall down the stairs, or I had to exercise some concerted upper body strength to slide it out of my path. Either way the result was the same…I left for CT without my food. And I, all of 16 or 17, had to live like a vegan for maybe 80+ consecutive hours.

Probably the only item of nutrition in common between my palate and theirs was water. That’s it. Of course, they brought shitloads of their grub along and made every effort to gently convert me to their healthy ways. But my teenage palate just could not stomach what they offered me. Even their pasta (the pasta and sauce both made from scratch) was nasty. I would take a portion size insufficiently nutritious for a flyweight supermodel downed by about a gallon of water per bite.

My only respite was the time I spent warming up for each of my three crits that weekend. I made sure I was suited up and on the bike wellllllll in advance of my events.

“Yeah, I’m a freak like that. Really…I need about 2+ hours on the bike before I roll up to a start line. I’ve got a diesel engine like you couldn’t believe. And my ritual must, MUST, be performed alone.”

I nonchalantly slipped a wad of cash into my jersey pocket each day and would ride off in search of a grocery store during my extended “warm-up”. I left my bike inside by the cash registers and waddled around on treacherously waxed floors in my Dettos scooping up Pop Tarts and Coke which I dutifully consumed on site. I didn’t dare bring my booty back to the car for fear that I be brandished a junk-food heretic, have a scarlet “J” burned into my flesh, and be cast off and left to ride my bike home from CT.

Needless to say, this wasn’t exactly the formula for athletic excellence. Never mind vanquishing foes in competition, all I could think about each race were the smells of hamburgers grilling outdoors in backyards near the race venues. Perhaps sensing the culinary calamity I endured that weekend, my elder, wiser cycling chaperones stopped for pizza during our drive back to upstate NY and offered to by me a personal sized pizza topped with anything my heart desired. Those guys really were alright and would be my partners in cycling crime for many, many weekends to come through my teenage years. And it’s probably their doing that the lightbulb ultimately clicked in my head about the efficacy of natural, non-chemical nutrition.

I’ve been somewhat fascinated by several pro cyclists through the ages whose appearance does nothing to instill fear into their peloton rivals. In fact, quite the opposite. Just take a quick glance at them—Jean Robic, Mariano Martinez, Jan Raas, Gerrie Knetemann, Martin Earley— a cast of characters more likely to sit across a desk from you granting approval to mortgage loans than ripping people’s legs off in the Euro pro ranks. Add to these ranks Australian phenom Russell Mockridge (pictured to the left), seen here rolling to the start line of a stage in the 1955 Tour de France.

Mockridge’s story is rather extraordinary, and it’s one that’s likely not too well known outside of his native Australia. I’ve very recently read his autobiography, My World on Wheels: The Posthumous Autobiography of Russell Mockridge, and it’s an exceedingly well-done piece of cycling-related writing. Tragically, Mockridge was struck by a bus and killed during a road race in Melbourne, Australia on September 13, 1958 at the age of 30. He was primed to return to Europe for the 1959 road season and perhaps make his mark in the Tour de France, but one will never know if he could have done what only Patrick Sercu did later in the 1974 Tour de France: make the complete transformation from Olympic gold medalist as a track sprinter to Tour de France stage winner and green jersey winner.

There are several resources online which summarize Mockridge’s career: an Australian newspaper article about a cyclist who crashed in the same accident that killed Mockridge, an earlier piece on cyclingnews.com, and the very recent Les Woodland penned cyclingnews.com article***. Here’s a brief timeline:

1948: Competed in the Olympic Summer Games held in London without success
1950: Two gold medals (match sprint, kilometer TT), one silver medal (4000 pursuit) at the Empire Games
1952: Paris Grand Prix match sprint…only person to win the amateur event and then beat all the pros in the open event
1952: Two gold medals (match sprint, tandem sprint) at the Olympic Summer Games in Helsinki
1953: Turned pro in August, moved to Europe to pursue career as a pro track cyclist
1954: February—DNF at 6 Days of Gent
1954: Rest of season—turned to the road competing (with some success) in Belgian kermesse events
1955: Track—Victory at 6 Days of Paris (teamed with Sydney Patterson and Reginald Arnold), steady number of regional madison and omnium events throughout France
1955: Road—Mockridge’s sole full-on Euro season highlighted by Paris-Roubaix (41st place), Tour du Vaucluse (1st place in a 160 mile event which included an ascent and descent of Mont Ventoux), Tour of the Midi Libri, Dauphine-Libere, Tour de France, World Championships (Frascati, Italy…DNF), Paris-Tours.
1956-1958: Track and road racing in Australia

Russell Mockridge anecdotes:
1. Why was his autobiography so well-written? Mockridge apprenticed as a journalist and nearly left cycling to pursue a journalism career after his 1948 Olympic participation. And while it’s not too unusual for cyclists to transform into journalists, Mockridge is likely the only world-class talent to give up cycling to pursue a career as an Anglican minister. Following his performance at the 1950 Empire Games, Mockridge enrolled in the University of Melbourne to become a minister and did not pedal a bike for 14 months. He then abandoned his aims at the ministry and returned to cycling for the rest of his life.

2. Mockridge had a well publicized showdown with the Australian Olympic Federation when he refused to sign their fidelity bond. This contract made it illegal for an Australian Olympic athlete to turn professional until 2 year after the Olympics. Mockridge was ready to give up his Olympic team slot in protest, but a last minute deal was brokered in which Mockridge would only have to remain an amateur for one year instead. Mockridge won 2 gold medals at the Games, remained an amateur for exactly one year per his contract, and immediately turned pro the following day.

3. Here’s an amusing anecdote which occurred January 1, 1954 while Mockridge was living miserably in Gent trying to earn money exclusively as a pro track cyclist:

[Oscar] Daemers [manager at the indoor track at Gent] lived in a flat in the velodrome building, and I went over to see him on New Year’s Day to discuss contracts. It was bitterly cold with some snow flying around. I strolled into his office, wearing shorts, which to me was perfectly usual. Daemers was horrified. ‘Your legs—they will freeze’, he gasped. Several other cyclists in his office at the time shared his view. They made it plain that I was either crazy or the original dead-end kid. It had always been my habit to wear shorts no matter what the weather conditions. I looked at it from the point of view that if you have to race in bitterly cold weather wearing shorts why not train in them, too? Surely one would toughen you for the other. But this is not the custom of cyclist in Europe who believe in keeping their legs thickly wrapped up no matter the conditions. I complied with this idea when I was in Europe but since I have returned to Australia I have reverted to wearing shorts in the winter-time…I have never found it detrimental to my muscles or condition.” My World on Wheels. pgs. 89-90

4. Mockridge devoted a chapter of his book to doping and here are some select comments:

Dope is the ‘bomb’ that will send a rider romping home miles ahead of everyone else in the race and have such a bad after-effect that he will never ride well again. Stimulants, according to Louison Bobet, are the milder types of drugs in more common use, which, if used wisely have definite advantages without being harmful.” My World on Wheels. pg. 130

I believe that I have, unwittingly, taken stimulants or drugs sometimes—particularly during the Ghent and Paris six-day races. During the course of these races bottles of various liquids are constantly being handed to you by your soigneurs and there is just not the time to insist on a written analysis of their contents. I had sufficient confidence in my soigneurs in these races to take what they gave me as I did not believe that they would knowingly give me something that would be harmful.” My World on Wheels. pg. 132

Mockridge’s description of racing his first 6-day event (the 6 Days of Gent) was undoubtedly the most vivid chronicle of pain and suffering I’ve ever encountered involving track racing. Mockridge almost finished the event in 2nd place with his much more experienced teammate, but just two hours from the finish Mockridge blacked out on his bike from complete and utter exhaustion, crashing heavily. He could not recover and DNF’d.

5. Russell Mockridge rode the 1955 Tour de France for a composite Luxembourg national team in the national team era of the Tour (1930-1961). Since Luxembourg did not have enough riders to complete a full squad (only four) several riders of other nationalities, such as Mockridge, were recruited to compete. There were Germans and Austrians as well on the 1955 Luxembourg squad. And what of the “Vampire” on Mockridge’s jersey? Russell Mockridge rode for the French trade team Vampire-D’Allesandro in 1955 and Tour riders were allowed to wear a trade team panel on their national team jerseys. I believe Vampire was the bicycle sponsor for his squad. Mockridge’s most notable teammate in the Tour was Charly Gaul who ultimately finished 3rd overall. Mockridge defied the odds and the critics to become the first track sprinter to ever finish the Tour (plus the first Australian post WWII) and he wrote of his premier naysayer, French journalist Andre Leducq:

After the stage [Stage 8: Thonon les Bains-Briancon], Andre Leducq, winner of the Tour in 1930 and 1932 and now a journalist, was quoted in the Press as saying, ‘I did not have much time for sprinters until this Tour, but if Mockridge finishes I will shake his hand as warmly as I shake that of the winner.’ He added that if I did finish I would have accomplished the impossible, meaning that pure sprinters, as I had previously been classified, just do not finish the Tour de France.” My World on Wheels. pg. 162

And at the Tour’s conclusion…

Sitting on the grass verge waiting my turn for a bouquet-laden lap of honor—each finisher is applauded as if he had won the race—I noticed [Louison] Bobet speaking with M. Mercier (they were probably discussing bonuses) the cycle manufacturer whose machine he rides, and journalist and twice winner of the Tour, Andre Leducq. Leducq was the man who had stated that if I finished the Tour he would shake my hand as warmly as the winner’s hand. He was a man of his word, and was lavish in his praise of what seemed to be a lowly position in the overall race.” My World on Wheels. pg. 174

6. Mockridge finished the 1955 Tour in 64th place. Only 69 of the original 150 riders finished. Mockridge was overshadowed by British rider Brian Robinson who finished 29th overall (one of only two British national team riders to finish, the other being Tony Hoar in DFL) and stole the spotlight as highest-finishing English speaking oddity. While Mockridge finished the Tour de France that year, he was so physically destroyed from the effort that he never fully recovered his strength for the remainder of the 1955 Euro road season. He did, however, finish Paris-Tours (his last Euro race) with the lead pack which turned out to be the fastest road race over 200km in history…an average speed of 27.5mph for 153 miles. However, that record would stand for only 1 year…

7. The longest race in Australia is the Warrnambool to Melbourne at 163 miles. In Mockridge’s day it was run as a handicap and in 1956 Mockridge set out with 11 other riders as the scratch group. Mockridge beat his fellow scratch companions in a sprint, and set a new fastest road race for events over 200km. Those 12 riders covered 163 miles at over 28mph average speed. Even more extraordinary was 1957’s event in which Mockridge and one other competitor were the only two scratch riders. Primarily powered by Mockridge, those two riders did a two-man TTT for 163 miles (with Mockridge winning the sprint) and averaged a scorching 27.5mph. Wow.

8. While in Australia from 1956-1958, Mockridge was the reigning national road champion as well as match sprint champion on the track. While building his strength on the road year after year, he still had the jet engine turn of speed in his legs to win 5 mile velodrome scratch races in about 9 minutes. European track stars would head to Australia for competition and get their clocks cleaned by Mockridge and others. He was nearly wooed back to Europe for the 1958 Giro d’Italia, but the invitation came too late for his liking. Mockridge didn’t feel he had a big enough window to arrive in Europe well in advance of the Grand Tour, rid himself of all travel related adjustments, and lay down a massive final block of training in the mountains. It seemed he had every intention to return to Europe in 1959 to take part in the Tour de France. Since his humbling experience in 1955, Mockridge set out to truly become an exceptionally powerful endurance cyclist and he felt he had the strength and the experience to return in 1959 and actually compete and not merely survive. Unfortunately his life was cut short in September, 1958.

***If you really have plenty of time to kill, this is what initially popped into my head upon reading the latest Les Woodland feature, John Turturro’s signature line from the forgettable film Secret Window. I mean, what are the odds of two Russell Mockridge stories coming out in such rapid succession?…Just kidding, of course, Mr. Woodland!

Nigel Tufnel: “It’s like, how much more black could it be? And the answer is none. None more black.”

That was my overriding philosophy governing attire back in the early 90s. None more black. And when you try to cross international borders looking like a homeless Johnny Cash, The Man tends to get a wee bit uppity. Even when that border is the benign line separating upstate New York from Canada. But I didn’t know that then. Why? Because I was brash, 23, and oblivious.

So it’s October 1991 and I had the grand plan to witness in person the sole UCI World Cup held in North America: the GP des Ameriques on the legendary Montreal Mont Royal circuit. It was all so simple: drive to my friend’s house in Cornwall, Ontario on Saturday, watch the race on Sunday, drive back to New York on Monday. Simple, that is, until I hit the US/Canadian border. Everybody I’d ever talked to about travelling to Canada says it was a piece of cake, you just get waved through.

Me? I was asked to park my car and answer some questions inside their Canadian border bunker.

“Come with us, sir”

Perhaps it was my black hole of a wardrobe: black Doc Martens boots, black jeans, black t-shirt under a black sweater, black beret (don’t ask…I found it on the side of the road while doing a training ride in Telluride, CO that summer and should have taken a cue from the previous owner and just left it there to rot). Perhaps it was my grooming habits straight out of Barfly: I had about a 2 week growth of stubble; stringy, greasy hair; ramblings about a need for fuel and drinks for all my friends. Perhaps it was my passport. My Canadian friend, Denis, said to show the border patrol a passport since they tend to grant it more weight than a mere drivers license for ID purposes. That was object #1 of interest to my Inquisitors, particularly the lengthy trip to Ireland with a sidetrip to London taken 2 years prior. They took my passport, typed who knows what for lord knows how long into a computer, and proceeded to grill me.

Canadian Border Patrol: “Do you have any felony convictions?”
Me: “Uhh…that would definitely be no.”
CBP: [typing some more] “Are you sure?”
Me: [thinking to myself, “What the fuck is on that screen?”]

I had to explain my foreign exchange student visit to Ireland. I had to explain that, no, I didn’t steal my father’s car. And, yes, he knew that I was using his car for a weekend trip to Canada. I had to explain that the teenage cycling friend of mine, Dave, who was accompanying me had his parents’ permission. And then the kicker was when they asked for my friend Denis’ phone number so they could verify “my story”.

CBP: “Hello, is this Denis?”
Denis: “Yep.”
CBP: “I’m agent so-and-so with the Canadian Border Services Agency. Are you expecting an American friend this weekend?”
Denis: “Peter, is that you? You’re too fuckin’ funny.” Click.
Denis thought I was punking him and he hung up on the border agent. I asked for the phone and called Denis back. This time he stayed on the line, I handed the phone to the agent, and they set things straight.

Finally, about 1 hour later, I entered Canada. Their suspected IRA mule was clean.

The World Cup event the following day is largely a blur. I remember seeing Sean Kelly tooling around before the start. I got a good glimpse of Greg LeMond on the start line. Watching the Director Sportifs inflict innumerable dents to their rental team vehicles in a real-life game of bumper cars while jockeying for position on the narrow Mont Royal ascent each lap was a hoot. Top-to-bottom, it was probably the most star-studded single day race field I’d ever witnessed. Denis, Dave (my American partner in crime), and myself watched a good deal of the race on the ascent of Mont Royal as well as a section of road near the base of the climb where the peloton made their way back into the park having climbed and descended the Mont. It was along this stretch of road that my other international incident occurred.

We were trying to worm our way up against the snow fence to see the peloton approaching approximately mid-race but were finding the tifosi to be rather firmly afixed to their prime vantage points. So…I noticed behind me a set of stairs leading up a steep bank to an exquisitely manicured lawn about 6 feet higher than the sidewalk along the parcours. Set further back from the lawn stood an equally exquisite domicile. What’s the harm in just standing on their walkway for a couple of minutes?

While standing innocently and benignly on the walkway, just as the helicopters and motorcycles signalled the peloton’s imminent arrival, a squawking voice—heavily accented—blurted out of some heretofore unseen loudspeakers,

“Get…off…the…lawn!”

WTF??? What did I do now? So I quickly glanced around behind me and happened to read a sign letting me know that this building was the Iranian embassy. I was trespassing on the sovereign territory of Iran and someone was none too pleased. And that voice could be the same guy flaunting his microphone technique in the Strait of Hormuz—”I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes.”

I fled the premises lickety split.

Belgian strongman Eric Van Lancker (Panasonic) crossed the line first, outsprinting Dutchman Steven Rooks (Buckler) and Irishman Martin Earley (PDM) in a small group finish. To me, the hero of the day was Martin Earley who remained off the front for nearly the entire race. He went with the early move and survived all day in a fluid break which saw all of his original companions dropped and replaced by fresh legs as the race progressed. If I recall, also, Eric Van Lancker credited his STI shifters with assisting with the winning sprint. Rooks and Earley had to shift mid-sprint on their downtube shifters while Lancker could simply flick the rear shifter while in the drops sprinting full-out.

A smattering of photos from my day in Montreal: October 6, 1991…

	The snaking peloton nears the end of a lap approximately 1/3 of the way through their 155 mile journey. The aforementioned Iranian embassy is about 300 meters to the right of this photo awaiting my imminent transgression.
	Martin Earley (left) and Dag-Otto Lauritzen (right), off the front, make their final ascent of Mont Royal
	Moments later, the peloton rockets up the climb.

Post-race we scored the best bagels of my life at a tiny shop near Mont Royal. The following day I crossed back to New York without incident via an interaction with American border patrol guards lasting maybe 15 seconds. Good thing…because I had a shitload more than my legal allotment of beer in the trunk.

Roger De Vlaeminck

F1 legend Jackie Stewart

Roger De Vlaeminck and Jackie Stewart, bedecked in 1970s sartorial splendor. And those bastards are just tough as nails.

I’ve been thinking about Roger De Vlaeminck ever since a recent issue of Procycling planted the seed. Just as Edmond Hood’s favorite curmudgeon opined, when I think 1970s Euro cycling I think of De Vlaeminck. The man oozed style out of each and every pore on his body–the Team Brooklyn kit, the sideburns, the mullet-ette (fellow ’70s style maven David Bowie rocked the same lid in April 1973, perhaps the same April day De Vlaeminck roared over northern France cobbles…if only De Vlaeminck dared to sport only a Team Brooklyn colored jock, that would have been a sight to behold), those glorious blue Gios rigs, the cheek of rolling through Flanders in a Ferrari. Stage victories in all three Grand Tours (including 22 Giro stage wins–the Italians who signed his paychecks valued the Giro over the Tour). 400km winter training rides (in Flanders, of course) in preparation for the Spring Classics. Victory in the 6 Days of Gent (partnered with Patrick Sercu). Six straight Tirreno-Adriatico titles. A ‘cross world championship thrown in.

And then there’s the matter of winning all five Monuments of Cycling. Only three men have accomplished that feat, all Belgian hardmen: Rik Van Looy, Eddy Merckx, and Roger De Vlaeminck. De Vlaeminck won his first monument (Liege-Bastogne-Liege) in 1970 and rounded out all five with a Ronde victory in 1977. And that 1977 Ronde was weird…De Vlaeminck sucked Freddy Maertens’ wheel for the final 100km and unceremoniously roared past him with about 200 meters to go. Never mind that a Flandrien had won…De Vlaeminck was peppered with boos mounting the podium. The Ronde saw no official 2nd and 3rd place finishers that year. Second place Maertens and 3rd place Walter Plankaert were both DQ’d–Maertens for the combo of doping and an illegal bike change, Planckaert for doping, too.

No one has duplicated the Five Monuments feat since De Vlaeminck and if Sean Kelly couldn’t do it, than likely nobody will in the foreseeable future. Kelly came oh so close to joining the club, but three 2nd place finishes in the Ronde were as tantalizingly close as he would come to bagging his fifth, elusive Monument. There are two sprints I’d wager Kelly would like to repeat: the 1989 world title loss to LeMond…and being nipped at the line by Adri van der Poel in the 1986 Ronde.

As I’ve noted before, ex-pro cyclist Paul Kimmage currently pays the bills as a sportswriter for the London Sunday Times where he primarily interviews an eclectic mix of sporting figures in what’s known as “The Big Interview”. A recent conversation with F1 legend Jackie Stewart is exemplary, in particular Stewart’s discussions about the horrific proliferation of driver deaths in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1963 to 1973, 57 F1 drivers lost their lives while racing. Stewart himself had a mind-blowingly harrowing accident at Spa, Belgium–an incident which very easily could have killed him and spurned his activism as an F1 safety advocate. As described in Kimmage’s interview:

On the opening lap he narrowly avoids a multiple collision and is lying third behind Jochen Rindt and John Surtees when he reaches the Masta straight. The visibility is appalling [due to heavy rain]. He is travelling at 170mph. He heads towards the Masta Kink–a right-left-right swerve–and the car begins to aquaplane. It flies off the tarmac and flattens a woodcutter’s hut, then careers over an eight-foot drop on to the patio of a farmhouse.

A few moments later Graham Hill spins off the track on the same plaque of water, but catches a luckier break with the slide. As Hill prepares to rejoin the race, he spots the wreckage of his teammate’s car and leaps bravely to his assistance. ‘Jackie? Are you down there? Jackie?’ Stewart groans, but is barely conscious. The American racer Bob Bondurant joins Hill at the scene. There is no rescue crew. There are no marshals with yellow flags.

Stewart is trapped. The fuel tanks have ruptured and flooded the cockpit; one spark from the electrics, and the drivers are toast.

After a frantic search for a spanner, they manage to unscrew the steering wheel and lift Stewart to safety. ‘Graham, get my clothes off,’ he pleads. His overalls are soaked in high-octane fuel. He doesn’t want to burn.

Stewart continues the saga in another interview:

I lay trapped in the car for twenty-five minutes, unable to be moved. Graham and Bob Bondurant got me out using the spanners from a spectator’s toolkit. There were no doctors and there was nowhere to put me. They in fact put me in the back of a van. Eventually an ambulance took me to a first aid spot near the control tower and I was left on a stretcher, on the floor, surrounded by cigarette ends. I was put into an ambulance with a police escort and the police escort lost the ambulance, and the ambulance didn’t know how to get to Liege. At the time they thought I had a spinal injury. As it turned out, I wasn’t seriously injured, but they didn’t know that.”

“I realized that if this was the best we had there was something sadly wrong: things wrong with the race track, the cars, the medical side, the fire-fighting, and the emergency crews. There were also grass banks that were launch pads, things you went straight into, trees that were unprotected and so on. Young people today just wouldn’t understand it. It was ridiculous.”

Stewart soon advocated for mandatory safety measures (measures likely taken for granted today–full-body harness seatbelts, full-face helmets, removable steering wheels, fire-proof clothing, fire and ambulance crews on-site, track safety barriers, etc.) initially making him a pariah among many drivers, promoters, track owners, F1 fans, and the press. He dared question “tradition”, despite the alarming mortality rate of his fellow drivers.

I’d speculate Stewart really didn’t know who was interviewing him, other than that Kimmage was a journalist for the Sunday Times. It would have been curious if Stewart turned the tables on Kimmage and spurned a conversation about safety issues in professional cycling—the proliferation of “road furniture”, dicey stage finishes in Grand Tours, or particularly the lightning rod issue of mandatory helmets. The hue and cry bubbling up from within many members of the pro peloton resulting from the UCI’s 2003 ruling requiring hardshell helmets (as well as the backlash stateside in 1986 when the USCF outlawed leather hairnets in favor of Snell/ANSI approved lids) echoed many of the sentiments from within the inner circle of F1 racing when Stewart pushed for change. Paul Kimmage had long since vacated the Euro peloton before hardshell helmets were mandated and I haven’t been able to divine his opinion on such matters. However, if Kimmage ran the UCI I’d wager there’d be rider discretion regarding helmets in keeping with the philosophy of his era, insurance companies be damned.

It’s getting to be the time of year when various cycling publications, web-based entities, and opinionated pundits are holed up in undiscolosed locations plotting to dole out multitudes of awards to PRO cyclists whose stellar achievements on the bike warrant recognition. Sure, the Paolo Bettinis, the Fabian Cancellaras, the Alberto Contadors will undoubtedly get their due, but there’s always room for one more award. Added to the pantheon of VeloNews’ “EuroPRO of the Year Who Didn’t Lie About His pre-Tour Whereabouts”, Cycle Sport’s “If It Isn’t Scottish It’s Crap All-David-Millar-All-the-Time Lovefest”, High Times “Downhiller of the Year”, Wired’s “Most GBs of Memory Filled-Up With SRM Data”, venerable non-cycling honors like the Oscar, the MTV Moon Man, the Clio, the Emmy, is the new kid in town: my first annual Big FucKing Hennepin, hereby bequeathed in 2007 to Adam Craig.

Firstly, let’s hear it for employees of beer-selling establishments equipped with Sharpies and a sense of humor. It only makes sense that uber-sized beer goblets deserve equally proportioned beer vessels. Hence the recent appearance of a Big FucKing Hennepin gracing the shelves of Sam’s Blue Light.

So…why Adam Craig?
1. This photo, along with some prose by esteemed scribe Mike Ferrentino:

You have to love a man, who is arguably the fastest XC racer in the U.S., showing up at a drunken singlespeed race in the north of Scotland, a week before the World Championships, wearing a mullet and a mustache that he grew just for the event to go along with the specially chosen Daisy Duke shorts, denim vest and pantyhose that he was racing in. That’s admirable.

Even more admirable is the way that he rode the race—hollering out rebel yells and maniacal laughs, passing politely, stopping to chat, taking beer hand-ups, wrecking hard on fire roads after taking said hand-ups, and still winning with a crushing margin. Topping it off, he took a tattoo to soft part of his ass that is bigger than most man-hands, less than 48 hours before he was scheduled to race the team relay at the “real” world championships.

2. Nat Ross chimes in regarding the 2007 ‘Cross Vegas:

…10. Who is the baddest motherfucker on the planet?
-Right now I would have to say Adam Craig. He won 43 dollars in one hour while wearing a skinsuit. Not bad for the single speed champion of the world. But can he count? I don’t know if I see 43 dollars in the pic. Where was the rest stuffed? That’s what I thought, sock or not Adam is still the man. He even has a silly tattoo to prove it.

3. He hasn’t mastered the art of clipping in to the pedals at the start of ‘cross races, and he thinks it’s funny:

I did my trademark pedal slip at the start. I told the guy behind me he was screwed, and he was. This is how I like to start the Gran Prix season off: a terrible start, riding through, entertaining people, and getting the most aggressive rider for the day so I can buy my mechanic dinner.

4. Adam Craig don’t need no Foo-Foo pit bikes and Dugast tubulars. Check out the accumulation of ice acquired while scorching the NC locals at a wintry ‘cross race in 2003 while preparing for a trip to Monopoli, Italy for the world championships. Also note the bloody ankle, where Craig ate it pretty hard while trying to bunny-hop a series of barriers. I lined up against Adam that January, and I don’t think I’ve ever been lapped so quickly in my life. In fact, I think he got me twice. The man has a motor.

There’s a single paragraph in Allan Peiper’s excellent autobiography, A Peiper’s Tale, which stopped me in my tracks. It’s 1978 and Allan Peiper is in the United States for the Junior World Championships (track events at T-Town then a week later the TTT and road race in Washington, DC). Having finished the road race, Peiper finds himself stranded all alone in DC with another 10 days before he can fly back to Belgium. Here’s the paragraph at the bottom of page 34:

It was time for another angel. Luckily there was one in Washington, a guy called Mac who had raced in Belgium the year before. He arranged with his parents to take me back to his place in North Carolina. I didn’t ride well in the [road] race-my emotions were all over the place-but afterwards we drove home with Mac’s mother, and Mac got me a job for a week sweeping the floors in the factory where he worked. It ended up being the most fun week I ever had. I made some money, and even rode a race at the weekend where Mac arranged for someone who was going to back to New York to drop me at JFK.

Now, for those who live in North Carolina, the words Mac, North Carolina, and raced in Belgium can only mean one person: Mac Canon. Being very intrigued by this passage in Peiper’s book, I called up Mac recently and he graciously spent approximately 45 minutes talking about Allan Peiper, among other things. Thirty years ago in 1977, Mac Canon befriended Allan Peiper at an ultra low-budget rental house in Ghent, Belgium. I had a litany of questions lined up for Mac, but as it turns out I only had to interject very sporadically to guide the conversation. There’s probably several books worth of stories still locked in Mac’s head, but what follows is certainly fascinating reading. It’s a lengthy piece, but I believe one can never overdose on first-hand, insider Lore and Legend. Enjoy.

How did you end up coming to Allan Peiper’s rescue in 1978?

That’s a long time ago! [laughs] We go way back before that. When I went to Europe the first time, (because we didn’t have Colorado Springs and all that good stuff like we do now, and if you wanted to race you had to go to Europe to race) I searched around and kept calling and writing. A lady in Ghent, Belgium was putting some people up or getting them put up with a guy who ran a little place renting rooms. It was kind of run down so badly I don’t think even the locals could live there, it was only foreigners. It was me, Roger Young, Tom Schuler, and a whole bunch of Aussies. Allan was part of that Aussie group as a Junior. He was 17 or 18, and we rode all the races together. We just huffed around and raced. I think Alexi Grewal was there for a while, not at that particular place, but in the area.

The guy [landlord] was like the Fred Sanford of Ghent. He would sleep underneath newspapers and he was crazy. He’d burn you out of your room because he’d stuff the furnace with all kinds of junk. But he was a real nice guy and I think we lived there for less than $50 a month.

So Allan was part of that group. He and a couple of [Aussie] guys lived in the back. He went with a group of Belgians to Austria [1977 Junior World Championships]. He was doing well in the races. He came back with a bronze medal in the Road Race [actually, according to Peiper’s book it was a bronze in the Points Race]. So we just got to be friends hanging out there [in Ghent]. We’d head out to the cafes, head out to the pubs…just having a good time.

The next year [1978] was just more bike racing and I was keeping up with him through some letters and things like that. He says ‘I’m coming to the Junior Worlds road race’ [held in Washington, DC]. I went with a friend of mine…we headed up to watch. We hung out, I can’t remember how he did in the race [Not well…but Peiper won a silver medal in the Junior Worlds points race on a borrowed bike a week before at T-Town.], but he had a week or 10 days before he was going to go back [to Belgium]. I said ‘Why don’t you come back [to North Carolina] with me and stay with me.’ I’m working at this door factory and I talked to the guy [the owner], he was a young fellow, and I told Allan ‘I’ll get you in, no worries’. This was back before all this stuff you deal with now. We paid Allan under the table and put him to work.

It was a hot summer and we trained a lot. That’s the first time that I ever saw veins on someone’s belly. My dad had this little BMW 2002 that he bought right out of the showcase in 1976. We used to motor pace behind that thing [after work]. Allan was tearing up the bumper with his tire. But getting back to the work thing…this is funny. Remember the small Cokes that had where they were made on the bottom, like Washington, DC or Water Valley, MS, or Spokane, WA or wherever? The workers had this big board with a bunch of pushpins out there. So I said,’ What are you doing?’ They said, ‘Oh, that’s Travel. When we break we drink Coke and everyone chips in a quarter and we travel’. ‘So what do you mean, travel?’ ‘Whoever’s Coke is from furthest away wins all the money.’ So we used to play ‘Travel’. And it used to get close, you had to break out the yardstick and measure. So Allan loved that, he loved to ‘Travel’.

It was just hot summer nights…skinny-dipping. Just hanging out. My sister was his age and she’s a good-looking girl and Allan liked her a lot. Mom fixed a sit down meal, old school, we ate at the table together. All the food you needed and wanted. He just loved it. I think Allan grew up in a broken family. His dad was an alcoholic and they used to not even tell him where they lived because his dad would show up drunk and raise hell. So they’d hide from him and just that whole deal dealing with that. Allan thought is was the best thing in the world being in Albemarle [NC], training and racing.

Then we drove up [to the Northeast]…did a road trip. The next week was Fitchburg–back before it was a stage race it was just that big crit downtown in Fitchburg. So we did Hartford, Fitchburg, and Walpole…three big crits they had 4th of July weekend. So we drove this guy’s big ol’ station wagon with a buddy of mine. Just seeing everything, hanging out in the New England experience, going up through the mid-Atlantic states, going to New York, and going to New England and racing. Allan had some good races. Just seeing 4th of July…he never experienced anything like that. When he left he was going back to Europe to stay with Eddy Planckaert. We got real close. We were both upset, it was a tearful moment so to speak, it was hard to say goodbye to him. It was just bike racing and being buds. He’s just a super guy.

I went back over there, I guess it was 1989, when I was racing some on the track just for a little fun doing some 6-days. He was there and he gave me a whole bunch of clothes. I was down on money and he loaned me money. The guy is just a million bucks. He had a tough time. He’s lucky to even come back to racing…I guess he had an amoeba or something in him. And the thing about it was that even back then the doping thing was pretty bad. He was real adamant about being clean, doing it straight up. He didn’t bend over for any soigneur in town, he wasn’t that kind of guy. His racing results weren’t as great as some of the other guys, but you have a lot of respect that you don’t normally get.

We had some good times there [Ghent, 1977]. We lived in the student area where the University of Ghent was located. I’ve got some pictures of these girls throwing water out the window. There was just a lot of friskiness back then. We used to go out all night and race, go out all night again and race. We used to eat beans on toast with rice, anything we could find we would fix it, cook it, eat it, and thought it was great.

Were you in the house in Ghent for just one year? Did you go back other years?

I was only going to go a month. It was a big deal, I was only 19 and going for a month. Actually, I had some pretty good races. You always remember the first race where you crack the top-20. It felt like you won a stage of the Tour de France. The racing was just bone knuckling hard. I had bruises on my forearms from banging the handlebars from being down in the drops. The bars are more anatomical now so you can’t do that, but the old days with those old bars with the funky bend…It was just hard. You’re going so hard in a 12…I remember a couple of times you’re closing your eyes because you’re trying to go as hard as you can go. Crazy. It’s just absolutely insane.

But then after a while you figure it out and start placing. Then you get asked to race. We did a 5-day stage race down in France. I went with this other Australian, Ian Chandler, who ended up winning. So it was Ian Chandler, John Eustice was on our team–back when he raced, Rory O’Reilly–the guy from California who was a good kilo rider, a couple of other Southern California kids, me…just a composite team of English-speaking riders. There was a team from Cuba there…they had everything. And of course you have all these French teams. But we ended up winning. I always felt good because Ian had a flat once and I went back and gave him my wheel. Support hadn’t gotten there. Jackie, our team guy, couldn’t get to him in time and I gave him my wheel and sent him on. Ian ended up winning the race by 15 seconds and I always felt proud that I had something to do with that 15 seconds. You just never know how things will pan out down the stretch so I always felt good about that.

Then, I did Circuit Franco-Belge and the Tour of Liege. Both of those now are pro races. Those were amateur races, then. Well, they were called amateur races but they were so hard. So I did the Belgian races first, had 2 or 3 days rest, then the French race, then I got god-awful sick eating something down there. Waking up with the shakes and sweats. I was supposed to do the Tour of Luxembourg but I said ‘No, I’m done…I’m going home’. I did this criterium, I won a prime, and then I just puked after winning the prime. I think I pulled out of the race. I was just 145 lbs…crazy light…just a skinny ass kid. Good fun.

Then I went in 1980 for 9 months and I lived with a family. That’s when I took John Patterson over there. Then I went back there in 1989 for the track thing. They tried to get me to stay, but I just went back to Florida. I just said ‘I’m out of here’.

Were you still based in Ghent for your 1980 and 1989 trips?

I stayed three months that year with Allan [1977]. I was only going to stay a month but stayed three. I came back with $500 in my pocket. Back then that was good money…usually you come back broke. To come back with $500 in your pocket, you did damn good. That was nice. In 1980 I stayed with a family. I went back to Ghent and then John [Patterson] and I split up. I went with a family looking for a rider and went to live near Ninove[?] where Allan actually lived. I worked in a bike shop in Ninove, but the guy kept terrible books. He had creditors up his ass, he was too nice and just gave everybody everything. He had two complete Campy took kits just sitting on his bench. He was a great guy but unorganized as hell. That’s when I learned to speak the language [Flemish] real well because I was changing tires and generator lights for these old ladies that came in while shopping. Practically everybody there, you know, they all ride bikes. They busted a tube or needed a generator light and you’d fix it. There was an old potbelly stove cooking back there and you’d just learn to speak, learn the language.

I stayed there for nine months and did the road and the first part of the track season. After the road season ended they asked me, ‘Do you want to do track or cyclocross?’. You know cyclocross is big now, but I did the first couple of cyclocross races and said ‘Noooooooo’. I couldn’t do it. I said, ‘Look…I’ve been cleaning my damn bike all summer. I’m out of here.’ It rained everyday in June that summer, so I decided to ride track. I rode that little Ghent track…50-degree banking, baby! 165-meter track with real high banking. Then, Noel Dejonckheere’s brother Richard came up. I’ve known him, he set up a lot of races for us, and he said ‘I can get you on a team’. It was Fangio, which became ADR, which was LeMond’s team when he won the [1989] Tour. But I said ‘I’ve had enough…I’m going home. I don’t want to be bending over for some soigneur who I don’t know. I’m going to turn that contract down.’ Plus, I wanted to go back to school at State. I thought it could be me, but at that point I knew that I’d always be a kermesse pro and I just didn’t want to do it. So I politely turned him down. So that was probably the end of bigger and better things for me as cycling goes, but not as life goes.

What was the North Carolina and southeastern racing scene like back in the 1970s?

Well…it was a lot of key races and small stuff. It wasn’t as organized as it is now. I don’t know…I’ll give you a case in point. When we were Juniors, with guys like me, Ronnie Hinson, Randy Parker and some of these other guys, back then results were in the newspapers and we looked at other Junior state championships numbers. And you know how Juniors are ‘What’s their average speed? What’s their time?’ Hell, we had the fastest average speeds of any races in the whole country in North Carolina, back when there were 50 man junior fields. We were running some damn hot races. It was good. The Senior racing was good. Some of the big boys would come in, like John Howard. These guys would come in and spank us. We thought it was great. You’d just try to hang on…you never could. You had the Tour of Tallahassee in Florida; some other races in Miami; a couple of stud things in Georgia; the Tour de Moore and the Carolina Cup; a couple of key races in Charlotte—Dilworth; the DC area and Maryland was always a hotbed of cycling; Virginia Beach; the Tidewater area. You had plenty of racing. Back then to fill it up even more we’d race both track and road. We’d drive up and do 4th of July races [in the Northeast], go across New York and catch a couple of races in Buffalo, maybe race in Canada, then come into Superweek and do Superweek. And not just Superweek…we’d race Tuesday nights on the track in Kenosha. That’s back when the guys promoting the races were all 6-day riders. Then we’d race Thursday nights at Northbrook in Chicago. They had some tough Madisons…90 minutes at 50km/hr. They would just light it up, just HARD. Roger Young, Danny van Haute, [Tom] Schuler, a few of those other guys, some Belgians would show up. You’d come out of there just wide-eyed. You couldn’t get to sleep until 3 or 4 in the morning. And Belgian spectators would come up and say ‘You guys did great’, shake your hand, give you $20/$30/$40 wadded up in your hand. Just give it to you. Did you ever hear of that these days? Hell no! The supporters were just different…more European. And then you’d come back down here [North Carolina] and you’re tired but you’re so much fitter than everybody else so you’d kick ass.

Of course things got going in Colorado Springs. You hear stories about that 1980 group, well I was in that group out there: LeMond, Phinney, Kiefel, Mark Gorski, Andy Hampsten, Carmichael. Carmichael was my roommate, for god sakes! We’re old buddies from way back. I knew him when he was skinny. We called him ‘The Kid’. Eddie B. came in and changed the way we trained. Some East German ideas and that kind of thing. Things were never the same after that. You still went to Europe and raced, but with the development in Colorado Springs it started branching out a little bit more. Things were getting better at home for training.

How did you get into cycling?

I came along in the 1970s amidst the bike boom. At that point it was kind of a counterculture sport. But you were getting guys who were track runners who had damaged their knees, or somebody who wanted to do something different, someone who wasn’t your typical jock football player. Well, maybe up north where there were tracks it wasn’t as true, but road racing was a mainly a skinny hippie sport. Dale [Brown] put on the first race I ever went to. We got up there, and I shit you not, he had a race where I think first place was a six-pack of beer and a watermelon. Maybe it was for each of the first three places. Just a little thing Dale threw together at the last minute on the weekend, some road race out in the country. Back then you didn’t tell the police anything. It was very strange. That’s what started it there for me. You started racing in gym shorts, then got some shoes with cleats.

Where did you get your equipment?

I got smart and got a tax license and opened my own pocket bike shop, Mac Cycles or something like that. I never made any money, but I had it and I used to order stuff wholesale from up North: tubular tires, wool shorts and jerseys. Clean Machine had a big team and I rode for them so we had some shorts and jerseys to race in, but we had to have stuff to train in. It was kind of an underground thing. Most of the real choice bikes were up in the Philly and New York City area. Guys were getting bikes from some of the old shops up there. Dale [Brown] had some stuff. There was some other stuff down here: Skip Flythe in Raleigh and Higgins in Greensboro. I had a local guy who was a Schwinn dealer, one of the last ones that was an appliance dealer and Schwinn dealer. I used to work for him in Albemarle and do anything, fix everything when I was a kid. I got him to order me a Paramount. I raced on it and it was really nice. Those never broke in Belgium. There’s always bikes breaking over there, but none of those boys ever broke one over in Belgium. Later I went to an Italian bike…I can’t think of the name. I rode a few of those. Fiorelli or something like that. It’s kind of hard to remember. It was a typical Italian bike: a little cleaner in the lugs and a tad lighter for that day in time. Yeah, equipment was kind of hard to come by. Now, of course, with the internet it’s off the hook. Back then it was word of mouth…acquire here and sell there…wheeling and dealing…buying stuff out of someone’s car trunk at races. That’s kind of the way it went.

So I dropped the bomb that I’ll be in Ghent, Belgium during Thanksgiving week—which means I’ll be there for the 6-Days of Ghent as well as the World Cup cyclocross at Koksijde…Here’s what Mac had to say about that:

[The Ghent velodrome is] Rock ‘n’ roll central. Get inside the center of the track and drink some beer. You’ll get to see that track…it’s so steep and it’s so beautiful. What you need to look at is the blue line down at the bottom. It’s got a curve down at the bottom so if you ever got a flat you could glide it down and fall into that little dish at the bottom. I was training one time in there with Johan Lammerts. You know, he helped LeMond win that Tour that one year. We were doing exchanges behind a derny at like 30-something mph. Insane…and it was a blast. He wasn’t in good shape at the time, but we hung out and talked a lot. He had a shoe sponsorship with Time. And the next thing you know, I trained with him a few times and one day he said, ‘I got these, can you wear them?’ He gave me a pair of Time shoes and Equipe pedals. They were nice…I said I’d wear the hell out of these things. You just can’t put a price on stuff like that.

I never rode the 6 in Ghent, I rode the little 3-day. I tried but never could get a partner…couldn’t get in. I rode the 6-day at Bremen, I rode Paris with a Belgian. Then he went back home that winter and I did a whole bunch of track racing in Belgium that winter. I rode and worked in a bakery. A buddy of mine’s dad owned a bakery so I hung out with them. So I rode Bremen, a bunch of stuff in Ghent. Bremen is like Oktoberfest …that’s where Beck’s beer is made…that’s insane, that race. This is back when Danny Clark was kicking it pretty hard. I was hanging out with him a little bit, riding with him some. Then I think there were two sixes going on at once: some German city and then there was Bordeaux which was a new track at the time. It was like 200 or 250 meters and it felt huge. It was great. I rode with a British guy and we’d ride with the Stars & Stripes one night and a Union Jack the next night. This was all going on when the [Berlin] Wall came down. The East Germans were just going nuts, drinking vodka every night and just killing us. All the amateurs did is race one hour just flat out….an 88” gear with a 30mph average. I think we hung in there and got 5th or 6th. Anyway…that’s the extent of the 6-day thing.

Did you get acquainted with all the roads in Flanders, like the roads used in the Tour of Flanders?

After the 6-days are over at the beginning of the year guys start training for the Classics. So you go out on these big group rides. So I rode with a couple of different teams. I rode for the KVC-Diamant team, and I was trying out some other teams and I’d go out on their big team rides. Everyone rides just a two-up paceline with a follow car. It might be raining, it doesn’t matter what the weather is, you’re going to make this ride. You may go out and ride the Het Volk loop or something like that. So you’re out there dying going over these big hills and the team director is counting who did what, who’s getting dropped. So you’re out there in a paceline in the damn 12, not really even a paceline, just two-up and pulling off. They were just loving it. They were saying, ‘You’ve got to stay, we’re going to have a good season.’ They were just all into it. That’s another one where I thought I should have stayed, to be honest. And just when you felt like cracking out comes the tea and coffee and these Belgian pastries out the window of the team car. Crazy. It was always right at the point where you were ready to quit and crawl in a ditch they’d bring out the goodies. They’d just train like crazy, but they had a good time. Belgium is a country that takes it’s cycling serious. When you ride, there’s a guy down in the ground digging a ditch and he’s checking you out. And he’s digging a ditch decked out in an expensive team jacket, the equivalent of a Team Discovery jacket today.

Thanks again, Mac, for spending a Saturday afternoon speaking with me. I owe you a beer or two. Or three.

Very early in the DVD The Six-Day Bicycle Races, it’s revealed that one of the earliest 6-day champions, a certain William “Senator” Morgan, hailed from North Carolina. Further inquiries on my part cast a shadow on the claim that Morgan hailed from North Carolina, but his life trajectory proves to be rather fascinating. Morgan won the 1886 Minneapolis 6-Day event in an era when the races were solo affairs and truly an exercise in sleep deprivation. As far as I can tell, this is his only significant victory. He appeared in other events in 1887 and then seems to have simply disappeared from the world of competitive cycling.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw quite a confluence of interests between the cycling and the internal combustion engine realms. Of course, a pair of bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio incorporated mechanical expertise gleened from cycling into their maiden flight at Kill Devil Hills, NC. Albert Champion, 1899 Paris-Roubaix victor, moved to the United States and started the Albert Champion Company (later known as the AC Spark Plug Company) to further his own motorcycle racing career having abandoned his cycling endeavors. Soon, Champion’s company’s spark plugs graced the engines on high-performance race cars and airplanes before ultimately being absorbed into the General Motors conglomeration. Similarly, William “Senator” Morgan re-emerged in the early 1900s as an avid car-racing advocate while employed as a writer for the highly influential magazine The Automobile. Morgan can be credited with promoting the Speed Carnivals, annual wintertime auto time trials held on Daytona Beach starting in 1903. Over the next 10-odd years the fastest cars from Europe and the U.S., piloted by members of the European and American aristocracy, convened in Florida each winter. Amazingly (at least to me, I know next to nothing about performance autos) a Mercedes roared through the 1 mile speed trap on the beach at 141.732mph in 1911, a world land speed record for any ground transportation medium.

While William Morgan may have long-since abandoned cycling as a competitor, he still appeared to be involved with cycling’s governing body in an editorial capacity. A humorous story appeared in the New York Times in September, 1911…a story told by Morgan talking about the insanity of the rulebook governing competitive cycling. It seems that our sport has had “Stupid” as its middle name for more than 100 years:

“The other day we were talking about reminiscences, which pertained to those pioneers in the automobile industry, who graduated from the bicycle field. All were entertaining, but the one they liked best was told us about a prize given by a Connecticut club at a bicycle tournament, which was won by C.S. Henshaw, now manager of the Metropolitan Thomas Motor Branch. It seems that Mr. Henshaw, who was a member of the Riverside, Kings County, and Greenwich Wheelmen, won a pair of rabbits as a prize. According to the League of American Wheelmen rules, if he disposed of those rabbits he would professionalize himself. So the rabbits grew and multiplied as only rabbits can, and Mr. Henshaw, getting alarmed, sought our advice. He asked if in our opinion he could sell, dispose of, or get rid of these rabbits without inviting George D. Gideon, who was the best advertisement the Quaker City ever had, to jump on him. We quote from an article in the American Wheelman, of which I was editor, published at the time of this controversy:

‘We waded through the L.A.W. racing rules and can find nothing that meets this rabbit case. Gold and silver medals do not breed, otherwise there would have been something in the rules forbidding the disposition of their offspring, neither was there anything which said that livestock won as prizes could not be boiled or roasted. We know that Welsh rabbit is good, if well cooked, with a bottle of Bass on the side. Rabbits are often used as peacemakers, for we have had them many a time without their consent with old dog “Bogle” who has been sleeping under a plum tree on the old farm for twenty-three years. The Racing Board must let our Riverside Wheelmen friend out of this awful predicament, or else we shall have a regular Australian rabbit plague on Manhattan Island.

‘Chairman Gideon has been written to for his opinion inasmuch as he lives in the country and is, no doubt, well up in rabbitology. One gentleman from Chicago offered his advice: “The rule involved reads as follows: Anyone selling, trading, realizing money on prizes won. Now, what is the matter with selling the offsprings as fast as they come to pay for the feed of the old lady and gentleman? This would not be selling the original prizes or realizing cash on same”.

‘Another gentleman from Indianapolis said: “L.A.W rules are like a basket of speckled peaches, luscious and sound to look upon but rotten to the core.[emphasis mine, too funny…] Perhaps on those productive trees, the minds of the Racing Board, sound fruit is ripening. One man was not expelled for accepting a check as a prize because it was not money until cashed, so Mr. Henshaw is exempt from the charge of racing for a divisible prize until their families commenced to arrive. Amateurs are not allowed to realize on their prizes, so the prizes should not be allowed to realize on amateurs. We can appreciate the owner’s feeling because rabbits have long ears, you know, and you also know what that means”.

It was not known whether Mr. Henshaw was considering the advisability of taking the poor debtor’s oath, which was sure to have been forced upon him, if he had not been allowed to dispose of the ill-advised prize. George Gideon finally owned up that he was not up in rabbitology, but he pleaded guilty to knowing a rule when he saw it, so he wrote: “The owner can dispose of the product of his original prize in any way or manner he pleases, but he must at all times be prepared to show me those two old rabbits.” That settled and closed the case. Mr. Henshaw was allowed to enjoy and employ his rabbits of the second and other generations with safety. It was not long thereafter that he discontinued cycle racing and embarked in the automobile trade and whether this complexing rabbit case hastened his decision to make the change is not known. Mr. Henshaw won the Greater New York bicycle championship during the nineties and the world’s motor pacing tandem championship at the Pan-American Exposition in 1902. He was the first to use motor pacing machines on the Metropolitan tracks, including Madison Square Garden.”

A relative of mine on my mother’s side of the family was a professional cyclist in Newark, NJ at about this time, and I recall reading that his progression from amateur to professional was due to an infraction of the amateur code…no doubt something akin to this rabbit silliness.