American Pioneers Hit Europe
Tales from February:
Étoile de Bessèges, France, February 1985
It was approaching midnight in the tiled and timbered, geometrically contoured bar of the four-star hotel at Le Rouret, an immense sports and leisure complex that sprawls across a rocky, arid hillside in the Ardèche region of southern France. Sitting comfortably at a low, thick coffee table was a young man whose leg muscles showed prominently through his cherry-red warm-up suit. Recently washed, his straight fair hair was brushed across his tanned temples. Over-large, fashionable spectacles accentuated his friendly eyes.
“I can’t sleep,” said the American, whose well-developed thighs and the discreet 7-Eleven logo on his back confirmed that this was indeed Davis Phinney, who, a few hours earlier, had contested a pack sprint for the first time as a professional cyclist. He did not win the first stage of the Étoile de Bessèges at Lunel, a small wine-producing town close to the Mediterranean coast, and he was not credited with the seventh place in which he had crossed the line, but he was as happy as if he had just won a world championship—or any one of the hundreds of victories that punctuated his amateur career.
Moments after the stage finish, Phinney exclaimed, “A pack sprint finish charges me up. To me, that’s what bike racing is all about.” His eyes were still sparkling from the genuine thrill of sprinting against riders such as Belgians Eric Vanderaerden and Eddy Planckaert, two of the fastest finishers in pro racing and leaders of the mighty Panasonic team. His words confirmed the impression.
“I’m really excited about it,” Phinney continued. “I’ve been building up for 10 years for this trip. I’m just glad to be over here. I love pro racing. For 80 to 90 kilometers you get warmed up, and then it just speeds up until the last sprint.
“But it was impossible today, competing against the Panasonics. There are 14 of them and only eight of us. Ron Hayman was great. I just got in behind him with a lap to go, but I was left on my own in the last two kilometers. I had a Panasonic rider on both sides, just boffing me. They were saying, ‘It’s going to be a pack finish, and Phinney’s a sprinter. We have to watch him.’ My gear was slipping on the 12 sprocket, so I had to sprint on the 13. But it probably made no difference. Vanderaerden was second at the last turn, and another Panasonic rider about four places back eased off and left a huge gap. And that was it,” concluded the American.
“It’s everyone’s dream to race as a pro in Europe.
–Davis Phinney
And here we are doing it on an American team.
That’s something special. It’s not been done before.”
Another factor Phinney didn’t mention until that evening was his injured right hand which had bandages on the two smaller fingers. “I broke them both two weeks ago training in Sacramento,” he said. “I fell…it was stupid to crash out training.”
Phinney was to continue his first pro stage race with placings of fifth and fourth, to be the leading 7-Eleven rider on overall time. He learns quickly, and this is what has made the Boulder, Colorado, resident such a successful sprint finisher, and took him to a bronze medal in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. But how did he and the 7-Eleven team come to be racing at the start of the European season as full-fledged professionals?
“We had planned to turn pro right after the Olympics,” said Phinney, who looked relaxed in an environment that is more familiar to such seasoned competitors as Laurent Fignon and Phil Anderson, who were also staying at Le Rouret and were probably already in bed, asleep. “But the Olympics were such a big deal, and such a big ordeal, that we decided to delay things,” Phinney explained. “There were receptions for Olympic medalists all over the country. Traveling so much made it difficult to concentrate on training.
“Then the threat by the USCF [U.S. Cycling Federation] to stop open racing [which allowed amateurs and pros to compete together] caused a delay. We eventually filled out applications on the morning of the late-January meeting of the USCF board of directors. And now there’s a very full season of racing for us in America.”
Bike racing is a subject close to Phinney’s heart—next to his Olympic champion wife, Connie Carpenter—and the 7- Eleven rider talked about it with enthusiasm: “It’s everyone’s dream to race as a pro in Europe. And here we are doing it on an American team. That’s something special. It’s not been done before.”
Earlier, over a cup of strong coffee in the hotel’s pastel pink dining area, Jim Ochowicz, general manager of the various 7-Eleven cycling teams—pro, women, and juniors—provided further background on this pioneering trip: “The Southland Corporation [owner of the 7-Eleven brand] is dedicated to cycling. It is developing the sport on all levels, including the top end. This is our fifth year as a team, and it is an inevitable stage in our development to have a fully professional team.”
“We have waited until we could do it right,” Ochowicz stressed, “and we are doing it right. It depends on how we do on this trip as to when we come back next to Europe. But we will definitely be coming back for an extended stay for the world championships. We may even fit in another trip mid-season.” Pressed about his long-term plans, Ochowicz said, “As for the Tour de France, we won’t ride it until we can be fully competitive. That will more likely be in 1987 than 1986.”
The present limitations in the team’s organization and composition were evident in this initial European campaign. To compete in continental classics and stage races, it is necessary to have at least eight riders; to realize this, Ochowicz had to co-opt two G.S. Mengoni team riders, Matt Eaton and Richard Scibird, who took part in last year’s Tour de l’Avenir. For team backup, the squad’s Belgian directeur sportif, Richard Dejonckheere, had signed up two Flemish soigneurs and a mechanic. And at the last moment he contacted a second mechanic, Englishman Steve Snowling, who had been left without a job when the winter’s last six-day race was canceled.
Snowling, a former pro cyclocross rider, spoke about his first day with the 7-Eleven team. “Luckily, we had only one wheel to change,” he noted. “When I was running toward the rider, I could see him shaking and I thought, ‘There could be some problems here,’ even though it was a front wheel. He was so anxious that he put his forks through the spokes as I started to put the wheel in. I had to pull his bike up quickly.”
“It’s everyone’s dream to race as a pro in Europe.
–Davis Phinney
And here we are doing it on an American team.
That’s something special. It’s not been done before.”
On another day, Snowling was amazed by the laid-back attitude of Jeff Bradley, after the tall blond rider from Ohio had crashed on the descent of a long, winding pass in the Cévennes mountains. The front forks of his bike were bent 20 degrees out of line by the impact, but Bradley was unhurt.
“He was more concerned with the rider who knocked him off,” said Snowling. “Bradley was asking if the other guy was all right. He didn’t seem concerned about himself. A European would have just grabbed the spare bike and chased the peloton. But Bradley was more worried about the height of his saddle being right than getting back to the bunch.”
Adjusting to the pace of European pro racing is bound to be difficult for an American team. Shipping a support vehicle, bikes and the equipment needed for a nine-man team is no simple matter. (Eric Heiden would join the eight others midway through this first trip.)
The red Murray bicycles the team had brought from America were well-finished, sturdy machines, but there had not been time to check all of them before traveling. Canadian Ron Hayman’s bike was slightly too big; and Snowling described how he had had to file away part of the stem, using calipers and a vernier scale to keep it true, to allow the handlebars to be placed low enough. “Also, the wheel clearances were a little too tight,” added the experienced British mechanic. “I had to drop the front wheels on two of the bikes.”
For an extended stay in Europe, a team needs a lot of equipment. Most of the teams competing at Bessèges had two bikes for each rider, up to four team cars, long-wheelbase vans, and perhaps a bus large enough to carry the whole team and their bikes. In contrast, this first 7-Eleven Euro’ team had one bike per rider (plus a few spares), a small equipment van, one car borrowed from the race organizers, and another car driven from Belgium. But judging by the professional attitude of the riders and the team personnel, increased backing should be available for their next trip.
The continental teams are furnished with vehicles by Mercedes-Benz (Panasonic), Saab (Fagor), Citroën (Skil), Renault and Peugeot. As Ochowicz commented after the first stage of the Étoile de Bessèges, “There’s a bike race going on in the front, and a high-speed motor rally at the back.”
When he learns to adapt his enthusiasm and skill to the continental style of racing, he will be a force in any hilly race.
Wherever they went during the five-day French stage race, the 7-Eleven team received close attention from the public and media alike. A television film crew from the Catalonia region of Spain taped a special report on the team, filming at the hotel and conducting interviews with the Spanish-speaking riders. With such publicity, it shouldn’t be difficult to procure the extra sponsorship needed to integrate the team with the European circuit. But the initial aim, as Ochowicz said repeatedly, is to be fully competitive.
They were not without an advantage. Several weeks of training in the California sunshine, sometimes with Greg LeMond, gave the eight Bessèges pioneers a distinct edge on the Europeans, many of whom had ridden less than 1,000 kilometers before the race. The Americans’ tans and sun-bleached hair made them stand out in the peloton. Their early-season campaign was due to end with the 294-kilometer Milan–San Remo classic in mid-March. “That’s not a race we expect to win, but we will be building up the miles before it,” said Ochowicz. “The riders will be training before and after the races, and in the week before Milan–San Remo comes the Tirreno–Adriatico stage race. We will be ready.”
Most of the riders have had extensive experience racing in European amateur stage races on the U.S. national amateur squad. The two oldest 7-Eleven team members—Ron Hayman, 30, and Tom Schuler, 28—have competed in Belgium, where Hayman once rode for a small pro team.
Besides Phinney, the most impressive 7-Eleven performance in the Étoile de Bessèges came from Ron Kiefel, the 6-foot Colorado native. He was prominent in the race’s two hilliest stages, including a number of solo attacks on the steepest climbs. When he learns to adapt his enthusiasm and skill to the continental style of racing, he will be a force in any hilly race. [Indeed, 10 days after the Bessèges stage race, Kiefel became 7-Eleven’s first winner of a European event, taking Italy’s Trofeo Laigueglia.]
With frequent visits to Europe, together with an American season based on the Tour of Texas, Coors Classic, and other events in the 7-Eleven Cup Series, these riders are getting the best of both worlds. It has often been the aim of English-speaking riders to form a pro team of their own in Europe. But until this move by 7-Eleven, the only non-continental pro squad to race in Europe was sponsored by a British bicycle manufacturer, Hercules, which took part in the 1955 Tour de France.
Thirty years later, the economics and the focus of pro bike racing have changed drastically. Having a team commute across the Atlantic to compete would once have seemed only a dream. Today, it is a real adventure, one that Phinney and his friends are pleased to be a part of.
Before returning to his room at Le Rouret, Phinney informed us of some of the other advantages of being an American on an American pro team. His wife was to join him at Palermo during the Tour of Sicily, and she planned to remain with the team through Milan–San Remo. “That’s part of the deal of being a pro with 7-Eleven,” said Phinney “not like the national amateur team trips, when I’d be away for six weeks and not see Connie.”
He could have added that wives are frowned upon in the presence of European pro teams. Last year, Phil Anderson had to get permission from his directeur sportif before he could dine with his wife on the rest day of the Tour de France. The 7-Eleven team is changing these traditional codes of practice, both on and off the bike.
It was past midnight before Davis Phinney was tired enough for sleep. Outside, a pale, almost-full moon had risen above the jagged silhouette of the Ardèche hills. Tomorrow, there would be another pack sprint in another town. Another opportunity, perhaps, for Phinney to beat the Panasonics.
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