He is buried in section F3 of the Cimetiere Est off rue Constant Darras between Lens and Sallaumines; there is no formal memorial. The a.s.sistant gravedigger there, Maurice Vernalde, told Woodland that Garin admitted cheating in the 1904 Tour: "He used to laugh and say "Well I was young . . ." Maybe at the time he said he didn"t but when he got older and it didn"t matter so much."
GEARS Although experimentation with multiple gears began in the days of the velocipede, the first bicycles used single fixed gears, in which the transmission is directly linked to the driving wheel, with no possibility of freewheeling. On long descents riding a high-wheeler, the rider simply took his feet off the pedals, put them on pegs sticking out of the frame, and hoped for the best. Uphill, he or she would walk.
The first hub gears-which use different sized cogs within the hub to create different ratios-appeared in 1891. Freewheels were invented around 1897, with a clutch bearing enabling the rear wheel to run free of the gear sprocket. There were many attempts at different kinds of gears-epicyclic, bichain, multiple chainwheels, multicog, bottom bracket gears, to name just a few-but while English cyclists stuck to the hub gears patented by Sturmey Archer in 1902 and made by RALEIGH, the French went for the derailleur.
The bodies that ran cycle racing restricted technical development-led by the conservative HENRI DESGRANGE-and so the impetus for the derailleur gear came from cycle-tourists, led by the French journalist Paul de Vivies (who wrote in his magazine Le Cycliste under the pen name VeLOCIO) and his close circle of friends around the central France town of St-etienne.
Velocio experimented with almost every kind of gear as soon as it entered the market and wrote up the experiments in his magazine. The first mention of a derailleur mechanism was in 1908 or 1909, and about this time rear gear mechanisms began to be produced that had some of the elements that still feature today: a mechanism to push the chain from one sprocket to another and a long chain running through a tension spring and pulley to take up the slack as the sprocket size changes.
In 1912, Velocio"s friend Joanny Panel, maker of the Chemineau bike, rode the TOUR DE FRANCE using a six-speed derailleur gear system that resembled designs that would stay in use for half a century: a cylinder with a short sliding shaft-the "plunger"-pushed inward by a spring, and pulled outward by a short chain on the end of a control cable. The Chemineau gear was still being produced in 1946.
The first popular derailleur was the Le Cyclo two-speed gear, made by another of Velocio"s friends, Albert Raimond, which appeared in 1924. In 1931 the Simplex company brought out a four-speed model that looked similar, and, critically, their owner Lucien Juy won over the remaining cynics among the racing fraternity, pushing sales over 50,000 annually. Also in the 1930s, the first front derailleurs appeared; they would not become popular until after the Second World War, however.
In 1936, Henri Desgrange stepped down as Tour de France organizer, and the way was open for the use of geared bikes in the race from 1937; until then, the riders had used wheels with two sprockets on either side; to change gear they would stop, take their rear wheel out, and turn it around. "You had to do it at the right moment," the 1937 winner Roger Lapebie said. "You could lose a race if you didn"t change gear at the right moment. If a good rider stopped to change gear, everyone might attack together."
Most of the yellow bikes issued to the Tourmen were fitted with Super Champion gears made by the Swiss track racer Oscar Egg, in which the chain was "derailed" by a pushing mechanism that hung from the chainstay, with the tension pulley and spring hanging from the bottom bracket. They appeared primitive compared to the Simplex, but offered a wide range of gears. The Italians used a similar looking gear called the Vittoria.
Post-war, it was TULLIO CAMPAGNOLO who made the next breakthrough when he produced the first parallelogram derailleur, the Gran Sport, in 1950. Two other companies had produced parallelogram models, and he had bought the patent rights for one, made by Italian company Ghigghini, but his was the design that would become the industry standard. Campag" would dominate the high-end racing market for the next 35 years, as derailleur gears became lighter and slicker, mostly based on the original Gran Sport.
The next developments came in 1975 from j.a.pan"s SHIMANO, who began producing indexed gears-where the derailleur cable jumped into preset positions so that shifting was predictable. In 1978 Shimano made their first freehub, which replaced a single freewheel block with individual sprockets on a splined body giving total freedom of sprocket choice.
Gear Size =.
The system of measuring a gear dates back to the days of the high-wheeler and should be thought of in terms of a notional front wheel powered directly by the legs: a 60-inch gear (for a two-foot six-inch inside leg) would have been large for an old ordinary, but is now a climbing gear for most fit cyclists.
The imperial gear size is calculated by taking the diameter of the rear wheel in inches, multiplying it by the number of teeth on the chainwheel, and dividing it by the number of teeth on the rear cog. The lower the figure (i.e., the smaller the notional front wheel), the lower the gear. For example, on a 27-inch wheel, 48 19 = 68 inches, a medium-size gear.
Team mechanics and racers tend to think simply in terms of the teeth on the front chain ring and rear sprocket, without worrying about notional front wheels: e.g., 52 13 is a sprinting gear-108 inches for that notional imperial front wheel-while at the other end of the spectrum 39 23 is a climbing gear.
Gear size matters for various reasons. In TRACK RACING in particular, gears need to be adjusted by tiny increments to take into account air temperature, form, and the speed of the track surface. Most track racers carry a variety of fixed sprockets and chainwheels with them. In GREAT BRITAIN, young riders are limited to gears up to a certain size to avoid putting strain on developing tendons and muscles.
The arrival of indexed gearing in high-end road groups from 1985 meant that changing development then focused on the levers, change quality, and the number of sprockets rather than the derailleurs. 1989 saw Shimano"s first prototype STI brake-lever gear changers used by the 7-Eleven team; they entered the market the following year and Campagnolo didn"t catch up with their Ergopower levers until 1992, giving the j.a.panese company a head start that enabled it to establish a dominant position in the market. Off-road, indexed top-of-the-bar thumbshifters gave way to dual levers below the bar (Rapidfire from Shimano, X-Press from SunTour) with newcomers Sram bringing out the Gripshift, based on the cylindrical handgrip at the end of the bar, from 1988.
Other developments have included tweaks in sprocket and chain ring design to make changing more rapid and reliable with thinner chains as sprocket numbers have increased from 6-the standard in the early 1980s-to 11. While Mavic was the first to experiment with electronic shifting with the 1999 Mektronic, Shimano appears to have achieved the first reliable models with 2008"s DuraAce. The smaller derailleur makers such as SunTour, Huret, and Sachs were killed off by Shimano"s move to integrated transmission, where all the components are interdependent and cannot be used with those of other companies; Campagnolo followed suit.
In essence, the gear market in the early 2000s has been dominated by Shimano, thanks mainly to the STI breakthrough, with Campagnolo offering minor opposition, and Sram-who had acquired component makers such as Gripshift, Sachs, Huret, and Sedis-introducing their own brake-gear levers, Double-Tap, in 2007, thus providing proper compet.i.tion for the big two.
GHOST BIKES In some 40 countries worldwide, memorials made of white-painted bicycles can be seen on roadsides at places where cyclists have been killed by motor vehicles. The movement is strongest in the United States, where the first ghost bikes were created purely for artistic reasons by San Francisco artist Jo Slota, who in 2002 began painting the abandoned bikes and parts that littered the city white and posting photos of them on a website.
Now, however, "they serve as reminders of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, as quiet statements of cyclists" right to safe travel," according to a website that lists the memorials. Sometimes they are put up overnight so as to create a dramatic effect the following morning, as if they have appeared out of nowhere.
The bikes used are junked machines, with parts such as cables, brakes, and pedals removed so that they are less attractive to thieves and easier to paint. Sometimes they are mangled or damaged, as they would be in an accident. The Ghost Bikes website gives advice on painting the bike, creating placards, and locking it in situ, and even recommends that the bikes be carried to the site rather than wheeled to avoid wearing the paint from the tires and perhaps reducing the effect.
(SEE ALSO MEMORIALS).
GIANT Taiwanese company that is the biggest bike maker in the world, shifting over five million bikes in 2007, making bikes under its own name and under contract to other producers. It is a relative newcomer. Founded in 1972 by a j.a.panese engineer named King Liu who needed a new venture when his eel-farming business was wiped out by a typhoon, Giant began by making bikes for other companies, primarily USA"s leading ma.s.s-market bike-makers SCHWINN; eventually the American company shifted more and more of its production to Taiwan until Giant was effectively on equal terms.
Giant"s first own-brand machines didn"t come out until 1986 but found a ready market in the US, and the company rode the mountain-bike boom with the rest. The key change came in the mid-1990s when Giant was the first company to bring out a compact-framed machine, the TCR (see MIKE BURROWS to read about the British designer who came up with the idea), which rapidly earned a strong reputation.
In Europe deals to sponsor the Spanish ONCE team and later T-Mobile and Rabobank helped to raise Giant"s profile, and earned the company credibility in the rapidly growing market for bikes to use in CYCLOSPORTIVES. Giant played a large part in popularizing off-the-rack frames, a major change in the industry that led to casualties among smaller custom frame makers (see FRAMES-MAKERS).
GIRO D"ITALIA Like its elder brother, the TOUR DE FRANCE, the Italian equivalent was born of a circulation battle between rival newspapers. Unlike the Tour, after over a century in existence the Giro is still sponsored by its original backer, the daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, with a pink leader"s jersey to match the pink pages of the paper.
"Absolutely essential for the paper you announce immediately the cycling Tour of Italy," read the telegram sent to the paper"s cycling editor Armando Cougnet in August 1908; his boss had heard rumors that the rival Corriere dello Sport was about to run a Tour of Italy, and a preemptive strike was required in spite of the fact that Gazzetta was strapped for cash.
The first Giro began on May 13, 1909, in Italy"s financial capital, Milan, and finished there 17 days later after eight stages taking in Bologna, Chieti, Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Turin. The winner was a stonemason, Luigi Ganna.
The 1920s were dominated by ALFREDO BINDA, while the 1930s began with the introduction of the pink jersey (1931) and ended with the emergence of GINO BARTALI. The year 1940, on the other hand, offered a foretaste of one of cycling"s greatest RIVALRIES, when FAUSTO COPPI defeated Bartali to become the youngest winner ever, aged just 20.
After the close of the Second World War, the Giro was seen as a symbol of Italy getting back on its feet, with the first postwar edition christened the Giro di Rinascita: the Giro of Rebirth. The symbolism of sending cyclists from one end of the country to the other over roads ravaged by the war-in some cases they had to walk across temporary bridges-was impossible to ignore. The race proved that the country was on the move again.
The Giro has visited all Italy, including offsh.o.r.e islands such as Elba, and even running a time trial alongside Venice"s ca.n.a.ls to finish in Piazza San Marco (1978). From its earliest years, the race was hailed by La Gazzetta dello Sport as a way of uniting a country that had been a political whole for less than half a century.
The Giro has achieved that with a unique blend of heroism and skulduggery. The race is always run in late spring, when the climbs in the DOLOMITES are always vulnerable to foul weather; some of the greatest episodes (see 164) have taken place in snowstorms. The pa.s.sion of the tifosi-Italy"s crazily enthusiastic fans-means that foreign leaders have always found it hard to win; on occasions the fans have been seen to push their heroes up the great mountain pa.s.ses, completely falsifying the results. At least one Giro, 1984, was decided largely because the organizer Vincenzo Torriani preferred a home winner, FRANCESCO MOSER, to the Frenchman LAURENT FIGNON.
Particularly mountainous routes were devised in 1998 and 1999 to a.s.sist the climber MARCO PANTANI but the plan backfired in 1999 when Pantani was dominant until he was thrown off the race for failing a blood test, one of the biggest drugs scandals ever to hit cycling (see DRUGS for other major scandals in the sport and the Giro).
Even though one Italian star after another has fallen to the drugs testers, the Giro has retained its magic against the odds, helped by the pa.s.sion of the tifosi and the arrival of foreign stars such as MARK CAVENDISH, who won a total of five stages in the race in 20089. The decision of LANCE ARMSTRONG to race the 2009 event simply added to the sense that the Giro was back to its old self after several difficult years.
10 Legendary Giri =.
1927- Alfredo Binda wins 9 of the first 10 stages and 12 of the total of 15, en route to his second overall t.i.tle.
1949- Fausto Coppi dominates the ma.s.sive mountain stage from Cuneo to Pinerolo to clinch part one of the first-ever GiroTour de France double.
1953- Coppi inaugurates the Stelvio climb in the Dolomites with a late lone break to take the win from Hugo Koblet.
1956- Charly Gaul, the "Angel of the Mountains," wins in a blizzard at Monte Bondone and has to be taken into a nearby barn to recover from the cold.
1968- EDDY MERCKX"s dominance of world cycling begins at Tre Cime di Lavaredo, where he leaves the home champion Felice Gimondi nine minutes behind in a snowstorm.
1980- BERNARD HINAULT breaks away over the Stelvio to crush the home riders and take one of his finest stage race wins.
1987- STEPHEN ROCHE defeats his teammate Roberto Visentini to score Ireland"s only win amid fearsome scenes, with angry tifosi waving slabs of raw meat at him.
1988- Andy Hampsten scores the UNITED STATES"s first Giro win, in a race hit by heavy snow in the Dolomites leading to dire suffering on the dirt-tracked Gavia mountain.
1994- Evgeny Berzin of Russia-trained by MICHELE FERRARI-becomes the first man to make MIGUEL INDURAIN suffer in a major stage race, and takes the first East-bloc win.
1998- Marco Pantani wins a race-long battle with the Russian Pavel Tonkov for the first half of a GiroTour double.
GIRO DI LOMBARDIA The "race of the falling leaves" closes the professional cycle-racing year. Mellow mists and chilly rain often feature, and sometimes the first winter snow can be spotted on the ALPS. Afterward, farewells are said before the close season, and retirements quietly celebrated. Amusingly, the "falling leaves" themselves sometimes play a role: in 1992 the world champion Gianni Bugno was the big favorite, and the route had been arranged to finish in his home town, Monza, but he lost the race because he was too scared of crashing on the descents, which had been turned into skating rinks by the leaves and heavy rain.
Like the other MONUMENTS, Lombardy is a key link with cycle racing"s origins. This was the first major race in Italy, although it is not the oldest (that honour goes to MilanTurin, first run in 1876). It was founded in 1905, when Giovanni Gerbi was the winner, and run over tracks so bad that the field had to push their bikes for hundreds of meters at a time. Part of the route ran along a streetcar line.
Since then, the course has changed time and again. It has run through some of the highest pa.s.ses in the Alpine foothills, and finished variously in Milan, Como, Monza, and Bergamo.
It retains two constants: the mountains that border the lakes north of Milan, Lecco and Como, and the climb to the chapel at Madonna del Ghisallo (see CHAPELS for the significance of this landmark).
That ascent kick-started the career of cycling great ALFREDO BINDA, who turned professional in 1924 spurred on by the thought of a 500-lire prize awarded outside the chapel: he won it and never looked back. Lombardy was also where the Cla.s.sic-winning career of SEAN KELLY took off in 1983; the Irishman also scored one of his greatest wins here in 1991.
The record winner is FAUSTO COPPI, who took four successive victories between 1946 and 1949, added another in 1954 and came agonizingly close in 1956, overtaken just two meters from the line in a defeat that summed up his painful decline. The DOUBLE of world championship victory and Lombardy in the same year is a rare feat. The only riders who have managed it are Binda (1931), TOM SIMPSON (1965), EDDY MERCKX (1971), and the Swiss Oscar Camenzind (1998).
GRa.s.s TRACK RACING Dates back to cycling"s 19th-century origins; racing on short oval circuits traced out on sports fields. The races are similar to those in conventional track racing, but usually shorter. Most popular now in Scotland, where a small group of semiprofessionals make a living in summer on a circuit of events run at the Highland Games alongside caber-tossing and throwing the stone. There is also a British gra.s.s track league with a handful of weekend meetings. Tracks tend to be between 300400 meters and are usually marked out with a painted white line and colored pegs and string. There are usually no bankings, although the Yorkshire town of Richmond boasts a very fine banked gra.s.s velodrome, 362 meters around, at the cricket club. Racing has been going on here since 1892 when penny farthings were used, and the town"s population would quadruple as spectators flocked to watch track meetings.
Bikes for gra.s.s track racing are similar to those used on paved or wooden tracks-single fixed gear, no brakes-but the gearing is lower, because gra.s.s is far harder to pedal through, no matter how short it is cut. The cranks may be slightly shorter as well, to lessen the risk of a pedal touching the ground on the curves, while wheels will be heavy-duty, with fatter tires than usual to ease out the b.u.mps. The tires may be "tied" to the rim as well as glued, so that they will not slip off the rim when cornering. Specialists will take several sets of wheels and tires with them, then decide which to use depending on the conditions.
GOULLET, Alf (b. Australia, 1891, d. 1995) An Australian-born, US-NATURALIZED track racer, the record-breaking "King" of the SIX-DAY RACES held at Madison Square Gardens who earned more than Babe Ruth in his heyday. Goullet began racing in Australia, where he created his own track to train on by rolling a gra.s.s circuit using a log dragged behind a horse. He arrived in New York at the age of 19 and set a hat-trick of world records at Salt Lake City in 1912: two-thirds of a mile, three-quarters of a mile, and one mile. In 1914 he and his Australian partner, Alfred Grenda, set a record distance of 2,759.2 miles en route to victory in the Madison Square Gardens six-day, riding the final hour solo as Grenda had appendicitis. In 1916 he took American nationality; by the 1920s he was being paid $1,000 a day to race at a time when a single NFL franchise could be bought for a mere $100. He was hailed the "King of the Sixes" by the writer Damon Runyon. In 1921 firemen had to be called to the Garden to prevent gatecrashers from joining the 15,000-strong crowd; on the final night, he and the Tour de France star Maurice Brocco picked up $50,000 in prize money. By 1925 he had won the New York six-day eight times and won a total of about 400 races. He retired in 1934 and subsequently ran a skating rink. He was inducted into halls of fame in both the USA and Australia.
(SEE MARSHALL WALTER TAYLOR AND A. A. ZIMMERMAN TO READ ABOUT OTHER PIONEERING US STARS OF THE EARLY DAYS; SEE HEROIC ERA FOR MORE ON THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF CYCLE RACING.).
GREAT BRITAIN At the end of the naughts the nation that invented the safety bike and won the first ever road races looked set to become a world cycling superpower. The British were everywhere, thanks to MARK CAVENDISH, BRADLEY WIGGINS, Nicole Cooke, Emma Pooley, and others linked to the all-conquering Olympic team.
Cycling became popular early in Great Britain. The first recorded informal bike race took place in 1868 and Britain was at the forefront of boneshaker manufacturing. Abroad, JAMES MOORE won the first recorded road race in Paris and the first place-to-place event, ParisRouen. After that, it was downhill most of the way; the trouble began in the 1890s, even as cycling became ma.s.sively popular. Tens of thousands were riding bikes, but racing on the road was made unlawful after a notorious incident in which a horse and cart collided with a race on the North Road (now the A1) during which cyclists were being paced by tricycles.
TIME TRIALLING thus came into being, as a way cyclists could compete on British roads without attracting the attention of the police. The governing body, the NCU, became paranoid about road racing, initially refusing to recognize time trialling, and turned to supervising the track events that remained popular into the 1950s. As a result, cycle racing in Britain was in a backwater for almost a century.
There were track champions such as Leon Meredith, who won the world motorpaced t.i.tle seven times between 1904 and 1913, but this was not uncommon. In 1922, the world championships were organized by the NCU, but were run as a time trial. In the 1930s, there was no road racing as such, but "ma.s.sed start" races were run on circuits closed to traffic, such as the Brooklands motor racing track. In 1937, Britons Bill Burl and Charles Holland started the Tour de France; although Holland was physically up to the task, he was defeated by the lack of support for riders outside the major teams.
In 1942 Percy Stallard began organizing road races on European streets, taking advantage of the lack of traffic due to fuel rationing. Stallard was banned, opening the schism between the NCU and those who wanted racing continental style, grouped under the banner of the BLRC, British League of Racing Cyclists, who brought British cycling into the mainstream; road racing mushroomed at the gra.s.sroots level, various Tours of Britain came and went, and, suddenly, British cyclists began competing at the European level.
British Cycle Racing at a Glance =.
Biggest race: Tour of Britain Legendary racing hill: Holme Moss Biggest stars: Mark Cavendish, Chris Hoy First Tour stage win: Brian Robinson, Brest, 1957 Tour overall wins to 2010: none Britain has given cycling: the SAFETY BICYCLE, time-trialling, aggregation of marginal gains, a briefly rejuvenated HOUR RECORD, the best bunch sprinter in the world Further reading/viewing: This Island Race, Les Woodland, Mousehold Press, 2005; Roule Britannia, A History of Britons in the Tour de France, William Fotheringham, Yellow Jersey, 2005 reiss 2010; DVD: The Brit Pack From 1960, TOM SIMPSON acted as a role model by winning Cla.s.sics and the world t.i.tle in 1965. The presence of British teams in the Tour de France in 1960 and 1961 gave top British cyclists a point of entry to the largest race in the world. At home, the conflict between the NCU and BLRC ended in 1959 when the bodies merged to form the British Cycling Federation; in that year, the newly founded MILK RACE created a focus for the entire domestic calendar. Simultaneously, however, the rising popularity of cars resulted in all of cycling becoming increasingly marginalized. Running the world championships in the Midlands in 1970 and the Tour"s first stage on British soil, at Plymouth in 1974, did nothing to stem the decline.
The 1982 world championships, run at Goodwood, made little impact on the media, but change was under way. A series of city-center races sponsored by Kellogg"s in 1983 proved popular and was followed by a Tour of Britain in 1987. Critically, nightly television coverage of the Tour de France began in 1986 with commentary by PHIL LIGGETT. There was plenty to report on, with ROBERT MILLAR"s ability to challenge for honors in the Tour and Vuelta, and the rise of English-speaking stars like SEAN KELLY, STEPHEN ROCHE, GREG LEMOND, and PHIL ANDERSON.
Although cycling remained marginalized at the highest level in Britain, events such as London to BRIGHTON made it clear that people wanted to ride bikes. An important turning point came when CHRIS BOARDMAN made headlines by winning the Olympic pursuit in Barcelona on a futuristic bike designed by legendary carmaker Lotus, and the Tour enjoyed two sunny days on the British south coast, in front of ma.s.sive crowds, in 1994. Finally, at the end of 1996, the foundation of a British national lottery resulted in an influx of cash into Olympic sports. Boardman"s trainer Peter Keen drew up one of the first plans for how to use lottery funding, based on Boardman"s Olympic and world t.i.tle results, and the World Cla.s.s Performance Plan began in 1997, with the aim of making Britain the world cycling champions.
By happy coincidence, a world-cla.s.s facility was waiting for their use: the velodrome in Manchester had been constructed in the early 1990s and was the only tangible element of Manchester"s Olympic bid, but it too was nearly bankrupt until the revamped GB team began paying to train there. Results were almost immediate with three medals, including one gold, in the 2000 Olympic Games, and the momentum didn"t cease under Keen"s successor as performance director, Dave Brailsford, who took over in 2003. By 2007 the team was firmly established as the number one in the world for track racing. The track racers" success led to the revival of the Tour of Britain, while in the Manchester velodrome, the long-running Revolution events bred a track culture of their own. Meanwhile, the huge increase in cyclists riding CYCLOSPORTIVES, which were inspired by the Tour de France"s spectacular Grand Depart in the capital in 2007, gave the cycle trade new buoyancy. Dominance in the 2008 world track championship and Beijing Olympics drew backing from the satellite company Sky, whose sponsorship included the running of Skyrides, group events for leisure cyclists on closed roads in major cities and a ProTour team run by Brailsford.
GREWAL, Alexi (b. Aspen, Colorado, 1960) A talented climber from Colorado who became Olympic road race champion in the 1984 Summer Games at Los Angeles, but whose professional career never really got off the ground. Born into an Indian American family with two brothers who also raced, as did his father, a bike shop owner, Grewal dropped out of high school to train. Grewal was close to being deprived of a start in the 1984 Olympics after testing positive for the stimulant phenylethylamine. He protested the ban and was reinstated six days before the race. He has since spoken out against drug-taking in cycling. He described his 1984 L.A. win as his "smartest" victory, adding in an interview with PezCyclingNews, "I got the others working against each other and profited from that." On the 190 km course, Grewal was in the lead until he was caught by Steve Bauer with only 10 km remaining, but Grewal outsprinted the Canadian. The bicycle he rode to victory is now in the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute"s National Museum of American History. Grewal raced successive years in Europe for Panasonic, 7-Eleven, and RMO, all teams who were interested in his obvious climbing talents, but he had trouble coming to terms with European cycling; he was dropped by 7-Eleven after spitting at a television cameraman during the Tour de France, and he had effectively quit by mid-1987. He raced in the US until retirement in 1993, later working in construction making hand-built wooden homes; he also worked with the homeless in his hometown of Loveland. "For the last decade I"ve been one step away from the street," he said in a 2010 interview after announcing his comeback to racing. Grewal"s brother Rishi raced successfully as a MOUNTAIN BIKING pro.
H.
HAIR Leg-shaving is a rite of pa.s.sage for most male cyclists, but beyond aesthetics and psychology the benefits are debatable. The most common claim is that hairless legs are more aerodynamic, but studies have shown that hair actually helps air flow over the legs. The most probable reason is that it is easier for professional team ma.s.seurs to work on smooth rather than hairy legs. Shaving probably began in the HEROIC ERA; with the amount of muck thrown up off the roads during races, the easier legs were to wash, the better, and with crashes so common, shaven legs meant bandages were simpler to put on and remove. There are exceptions: the Russian Dimitri Konyshev had a reputation for turning up to races with unshaven legs and still winning.
Moving upward, premature balding seems to be relatively common among professional cyclists, perhaps due to naturally high testosterone levels (in some cases, the male hormone may have been artificially enhanced), others maintain this is due to the heat build-up under sh.e.l.l helmets. Facial hair is a no-no for racing cyclists, but this is because of the amount of sweat, snot and sticky race food involved rather than aerodynamics.
Moustaches were relatively common in the Heroic Era-Eugene Christophe was nicknamed "the Gaul" and then "the Old Gaul" because of his drooping Asterix-style "taches. Now, however, long hair, beards, and moustaches tend to be the mark of nonconformists, such as American wild man Bob Roll, who partnered his big beard with h.e.l.ls Angel jackets and skull-design rings.
The same is true of the ponytails tied with elastic bands worn by LAURENT FIGNON, ROBERT MILLAR, and PHIL ANDERSON in the 1980s. Fignon said his fellow cyclists yelled at him that he looked like a girl. Millar would get a nasty crewcut every winter, he said, so that he would not want to go to nightclubs. The goatee grown by MARCO PANTANI became a key part of his carefully nurtured "bad-boy" image as the "Pirate." The most fearsome beard cycling has ever seen was fictional, however: the terrifying facial hearthrug sported by the Russian star in the FILM American Flyers.
HARRIS, Reg Born:Bury, England, March 1, 1920 Died: Macclesfield, England, June 22, 1992 Major wins: World professional sprint champion 1949, 1950, 1951, 1954; amateur world sprint champion 1947; seven British national t.i.tles; Olympic silver medallist sprint and tandem sprint, London 1948 Catchphrase: "Reg rides a Raleigh"
Further viewing: DVD: Maestro, 1985 In the 1950s and 1960s any cyclist seen pedaling at speed in a British town might draw the sarcastic comment: Who do you think you are, Reg Harris? That reflected the public profile of the man who was the country"s best-known cyclist in the postwar years. Harris achieved national fame for taking four world professional sprint t.i.tles between 1949 and 1954 after managing a brace of silver medals at the London Olympics in 1948 in spite of a series of injuries in the buildup.
He was voted British sportsman of the year in 1950 and was involved in one of cycling"s most curious comebacks in his 50s. His notoriety at home surpa.s.sed even world road champion TOM SIMPSON, who was actually more famous in FRANCE and Belgium than in the UK. There is even a story that the sprinter himself was once stopped for running a red light and asked by police whether he thought he was Reg Harris: his reply is not recorded.
Harris began his working life at 14 as a motor mechanic in his native Lancashire and raced as an amateur in the prewar years, working in a paper mill in winter, supporting himself from prize money over the summer. In 1939 he traveled to the world track championship in Milan, only to be recalled on the outbreak of war. A tank driver in North Africa for the 10th Hussars, he was wounded in a German attack that wiped out all the rest of his tank crew and was deemed unfit to fight in 1943 due to his burns. He got back on his bike to rehabilitate after his injuries and a year later won three national championships on the track. He turned professional after the London Games and his battles with the Dutchman Arie Van Vliet on the indoor velodromes of Europe were legendary (see RIVALRIES). The late 1940s and early 1950s were one of track racing"s boom times, with vast crowds flocking to venues such as the VeLODROME D"HIVER in Paris, Fallowfield in Manchester, and Milan"s Velodromo Vigorelli: Van Vliet and Harris were always at the top of the bill. He retired in 1957 but returned to racing in 1971 and took a bronze medal in the British championships. The story goes that Harris went to prepare at the Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh and was asked by a young official "Have you ridden on a track before?" Harris replied that he had, but the blazer would not give up: "Have you ridden on a proper track like this?" Finally, someone asked Harris who he was. He followed up with gold in 1974 when he was 54 years old.
Like many successful cyclists, he was unable to match his sporting prowess in business: a bike-making venture failed, and he ended up as a salesman. He is now remembered with a fine statue in the Manchester velodrome in bronze by the sculptor James Butler.
(SEE ALSO TRACK RACING).
HELMETS Helmets became compulsory in professional racing from May 2003, although initially riders were allowed to remove them at the start of the final climb to a mountain top finish-where the climb was more than five kilometers long-which led to the bizarre sight of the entire field bunging their hats at team helpers as they sped onto mountains like l"Alpe d"Huez. That short-lived exception ended in 2005.
The initial resistance was partly cultural, partly macho. Helmets had been rapidly made mandatory for MOUNTAIN-BIKE racing in the late 1980s because of the risks involved and because they had been part of the sport from the beginning.
European road cyclists had used "skid-lids" made of leather strips since the early days; they were of no use whatsoever in a direct impact but might prevent abrasions. FAUSTO COPPI was ridiculed for wearing one on the orders of his wife after the death from head injuries of his brother Serse in 1951. They were obligatory in Belgium and GREAT BRITAIN; in many other countries such as FRANCE you raced bareheaded.
Polystyrene sh.e.l.l helmets came from America in the 1970s. They acted as an outer "crumple zone" to protect the skull in an impact, with either a stiff outer polycarbonate layer or thin netting to protect the sh.e.l.l. Europeans mistrusted these initial models from companies like Bell, even though they were used by sensible types like GREG LEMOND and PHIL ANDERSON and teams such as 7-Eleven. They were seen as a cultural imposition rather than common sense.
About 1990, helmets began to use a thinner sh.e.l.l due to improvements in the molding process; recent years have seen improvements in straps and fitting and the introduction of carbon fiber. Thickness pads were used early on; today"s helmets have cradles that can be precisely adjusted. They were made compulsory in British racing from 1992.
It seems incredible now, but in 1991 professional cyclists went on strike in protest against a new rule that stipulated they must wear sh.e.l.l helmets in all races. It was early March, the ParisNice race, and temperatures were still cool; they were worried about how it would feel wearing "big heavy things" on their heads come the heat of summer.
There were calls for helmets to be made obligatory four years later, after the events of July 18, 1995. As the TOUR DE FRANCE peloton descended the narrow, twisting road from the Col de Portet d"Aspet in the Pyrenees, the Olympic champion Fabio Casartelli fell and hit his head on one of the concrete blocks by the roadside. He died from his injuries. His MEMORIAL now stands on the mountainside.
The final decision to make helmet use compulsory came after the Kazakh pro Andrei Kivilev had a fatal accident in March 2003. Now no one has a second thought about wearing them, partly because technology means that helmets have become lighter and better ventilated, partly because two fatal accidents in eight years of pro racing was a strong message.
Helmets have to meet national safety standards. To meet the criteria, helmets are tested by being dropped onto an anvil to imitate what would happen if a cyclist fell off and hit his or her head on the curb. The level set by the independent Snell Memorial Foundation is generally a little more strict than national standards.
Debate is ongoing over whether helmets should be made compulsory for all cyclists. A 1996 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that while doing this might save cyclists" lives, there was an equally strong case for making helmets obligatory for motorists and pedestrians and that there was "no justification for compelling cyclists to wear helmets without taking steps to improve the safety of all road users."
Opponents contend that compulsion would discourage cycling by overstating its dangers, and that the overall benefit to health by any reduction in head injuries would be countered by the negative impact on health of people giving up cycling due to the perception that it is dangerous.
Regardless of the law, the arguments for their use are convincing. As British Cycling Federation doctor Chris Jarvis pointed out: while they might not prevent death in the event of a direct collision with a motor vehicle, they are likely to downgrade head damage by one step in most impacts, turning what may have been concussion into a severe headache and what may have been a cracked skull into concussion, and so on.
HEROIC ERA The term used to describe the preSecond World War period of road racing, before improved bikes, road surfaces, and sophisticated team tactics made cycling more subtle, less purely physical, and less subject to the vagaries of fortune and the weather. Racing was strongly influenced by TOUR DE FRANCE organizer HENRI DESGRANGE, who believed the ideal race was one in which no cyclist was able to finish. One reason why the PARIs...o...b..IX cla.s.sic remains fascinating to this day is because it is professional cycling"s last throwback to this time.
To create "the most courageous champions since antiquity," Desgrange banned derailleurs, slowed down technical development, and ran the Tour over inhuman distances culminating in the 5,745 km-long race of 1927. He imposed rules that now seem trivial and that outraged champions such as HENRI PeLISSIER.
The era is only just outside living memory, but it seems remote, because few color photographs and spa.r.s.e television footage remain: the image is one of mud-spattered cyclists carrying spare tires on their shoulders, gravelly roads, ill-fitting shorts, clunky-tubed bikes, stoic faces in goggles, rickety cars, and spectators who always seem to be in their Sunday best. The champion who best epitomizes that time is Eugene Christophe of France, known as the "Old Gaul," who was the first rider to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour (see 180).
As if the demands of the roads of the time were not sufficient, there was no medical backup on the race until 1925, journalists complained about injured riders being left by the roadside after crashes, and officials were implacable. Christophe was not the only victim. The Pelissier brothers" disputes with Desgrange were typical of the frustrations felt by leading cyclists, captured in the celebrated article by Albert Londres in 1924 that led to the Tourmen being nicknamed "Convicts of the Road."
Mechanical troubles were a universal problem: in the 1919 Tour, one rider, Jean Alavoine, was estimated to have punctured 46 times. He completed his first Tour, in 1910, by carrying his broken bike six miles to the finish line, while the 1928 overall win by Nicolas Frantz of Luxembourg included 55 miles spent on a borrowed lady"s bike after his own broke between Metz and Charleville. Saddle boils were common due to woolen clothing and muddy roads; raw steaks might be applied to ease the pain while as late as the 1920s the Tour"s ration bags included a dose of neat spirits.
Heroes of the Heroic Era =.
Honore Barthelemy (France, b. 1890, d. 1964) The Man with the Gla.s.s Eye. In the 1920 Tour de France he lost an eye after it was struck by a flint in a crash, but still finished the race eighth, half-blind and with a broken shoulder and dislocated wrist. He later rode with a gla.s.s eye, which he would take out when the roads were too dusty, filling the socket with cotton wool. On one occasion the eye fell out at the finish, and he had to go on his knees to find it.
Ottavio Bottecchia (Italy, b. 1894, d. 1927) In 1924 Bottecchia was the first Italian to win the Tour de France and the first rider to lead the race from beginning to end. Bottecchia died in mysterious circ.u.mstances, being found dead on the roadside with head injuries: no one knew whether he fell off due to sunstroke, was murdered by the fascists, or killed by a farmer who was annoyed that he was stealing grapes. A brand of bikes bearing his name is still made today.
Eugene Christophe (France, b. 1885, d. 1970) The "Old Gaul" won the 1910 MilanSan Remo in horrendous snow, but the incident that made him legendary happened in the 1913 Tour. Christophe was leading the race and set for victory when he was knocked off his bike and broke his forks while descending the Col du Tourmalet. Outside a.s.sistance was forbidden, so he made his way on foot to a local blacksmith"s-eight miles away-and began repairing the fork himself, beginning with plain tubing. At one point, he asked a local boy to use the bellows, because his hands were occupied with the hammer. When he got back on his bike and completed the stage four hours behind the winner, he was docked a further two minutes for accepting help against the rules. A plaque now commemorates the episode. Christophe had a similar problem in the 1919 Tour when he had a 28 minute lead and appeared to be guaranteed overall victory: repairing the fork, again in a roadside forge, cost him two and a half hours.
Francois Faber (Luxembourg, b. 1887, d. 1915) "The Giant," born in France but taking the nationality of his Luxembourgois father, had an imposing physique and won several CLa.s.sICS in the years leading up to the First World War; he also took the 1909 Tour. It was a notoriously tough race: 50 of the field went home in the first week due to the appalling weather: gale-force winds and chilling rain that created deep ruts in the poorly made roads. He won five stages in a row, all the way from Roubaix on the Belgian border to Nice on the Mediterranean, and became ma.s.sively popular, receiving poems and marriage offers in the mail afterward. He was killed on the Western Front early in the war.