The Old Guys Who Made it Happen

Memories in the legs once awakened, bring back lost stories of days long ago and far away when hanging tough in stiff cross winds on cold rainy days, stage after stage  earned us the respect of our hardnosed peers, many of whom are gone now while others of us are still out there remembering the old times while sitting towards the back of some younger guy’s group ride.

I’m 77 now and on occasion find myself up before the sun on cold Sunday mornings to massage liniment deep into my calves and start putting on the layers for a local group ride, in which virtually no one will really know what it was like back in the day when we wore wool, had toe clips and used down tube shifters.

It was an “Anger” driven sport back then, presenting a rare opportunity for negative energy to be a good thing for those of us determined to get to the front in a hard and unrecognized sport in this country.

It was difficult to find entry into bike racing in the early 1970’s and new riders were not always welcomed with open arms. Finding training partners or clubs with coaching was difficult and even under the best conditions it was a lonesome endeavor. The turnover was high kids got discouraged and quit.

Because I started racing at age 28, I knew what I was giving up getting up at 5am on a Sunday, driving 2 or 3 hours for a race start in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain. Being good at this cycling sport was important to my self-esteem, because my friends were surfing or playing co-ed keg softball somewhere and wondering what was wrong with me?  

This was my driving force, my anger, I had chosen a sport that was the number 2 spectator sport in the world, but it was an unknown subculture in this country. As fate would have it, I ended up in a club system surrounded by riders who had several Olympic Teams and national championships between them.  It had taken them years to acquire all the nuances of training, racing, strategy, nutrition, and equipment and they were very stingy with their hard- earned pearls of wisdom making me prove to them that I was worthy of such knowledge. They did not coach me so much as they let me learn from them.

Not everyone could make it as a full- time racer, as a generation we were under social pressure to finish college, get a career, get married and have kids, so a high percentage the fields were comprised of guys who had jobs and lives outside of cycling.

 On the other end of the spectrum are the master’s racers of today, who make up the largest category of licensed racers in this country. These guys have been racing for anywhere from 10 to 25 years, hold full time jobs or are now retired and have the time and money to acquire the best coaching and equipment available. The sport has been ready made for them and they have found easy entry into it thru web pages, racing magazines, coaching blogs and social media. They have acquired all the latest equipment and technology that has attracted them to cycling and they are always on the lookout for the latest trend that can make them lighter and faster.

The Raleigh Boys were part of a movement of riders from around the country, that over a 25-year period from the early 70’s to the early 90’s, made a conscious (or in many cases an unconscious) decision to put their heads down and overcome all the trends and social pressure that prevented cycling from being successful here. Slowly discovering by trial and era the established traditions of the European racing culture and devoting themselves to the dream, regardless of the consequences, this group broke down the barriers and took US cycling to respectability on the international scene.

We decided to put our “Futures” on hold with no thoughts for “What are you going to do when you grow up?” College, marriage, careers, kids were not for us, we had miles to put- in, sponsors to find and races to get to.

 It was a small world here, but we knew how big it was elsewhere, we had experienced “elsewhere” and we wanted more.

Suffering through stages when we had to wear two pair of wool shorts because our butts were so sore from racing day after day on rough roads in the rain, while washing out our own shorts and jerseys in hotel sinks, knowing they would still be damp when we put them on the next morning, was all part of the life we had chosen. Finishing too far down on certain stages meant getting to the hotel too late for there to be any hot water left for a shower, before cramming four of us into a 2- person room for the night.

This was just part of the job, the payoff for making it to any kind of stage race in Europe, Canada, or South America. We had arrived, we were where the real action was, where the euro kids were fighting tooth and nail for every wheel every day and no American was going to take their spot. We clawed our way up thru the bunch, got our butt’s kicked and came back for more, we took some wheels and some wins in the process.

When we came home there was another teammate to pick us up at the airport no cycling blogs or mainstream press there to interview us. The sooner we adjusted to the real world, the sooner we could get an off-season job, to begin saving money for the next season.

My Mom used to complain to anyone who would listen. “My son is racing on the USA cycling team in Europe and I cannot read about it anywhere in the news or hear about it on the radio or TV?”

By the 1990’s, Greg Lemond had won the Tour de France three times, was voted Sports Illustrated Athlete of the Year, Lance Armstrong had won a World Championship was coming back from cancer and was about to win the Tour de France seven times in a row.*

Now cycling was cool.
Now everyone was jumping on the (bandwagon) bicycle.

So who were these guys from the 70’s & 80’s that took it upon themselves to take bike racing out of the dark ages and into the modern era? Where are they now and what price might they have paid so others could ride the wave of social acceptance, media coverage, sponsorship, and lucrative salaries?

The carnival has kept moving all these years, and at some point, most of us had to get off.

What happened? We were having so much fun chasing the dream, bringing the sport up by its suspenders, out of pure passion and emotion, doing whatever it took to keep it moving forward. The sheer force of this movement that took the torch from those before us and kept passing it among ourselves as we rolled back and forth across this country with forays into Mexico and Canada.

The nature of the sport is to just keep moving, never staying in one place, but always travelling to the next race. Then it is the off season, and moving into a new season, with a new team and a new schedule. The years and seasons fly by and then it is over. We somehow picked up the pieces and found a more normal life, settled down, got jobs, and had families, and as the years went by, we began to wonder if what we did was real.

 Did we really do that? Is the sport so big now that we can hardly believe it was our life? Most of our neighbors, friends and co-workers nowadays have no idea of our previous life. and we are losing sight of it ourselves.

That is why this gathering, like other old timer events around the country, is so important for us. It is why the guys pictured, once again pack up their bikes get on airplanes, or do a rare 4 or 5 hour road trip, just to feel that spark, ride our bikes, and tell stories to remind ourselves of the part we played so many years ago.

I cannot speak for all the riders of that period that helped launch the sport to where it is today but I do stay in contact with many of them and our camaraderie and respect for one another and cycling is still there. I can tell you that they still care, many are still actively involved, those that can, still ride, they all remain vigilant, and cycling is still in their blood.