Cyclopedia. Part 18

Leblanc also followed the example of his predecessor Jacques G.o.ddet in his attempts to keep the race "of its time" by including modernistic engineering works such as the Channel Tunnel, the Pont de Normandie, and Norman Foster's colossal viaduct at Millau. Leblanc also recognized political events such as the anniversary of the Normandy landings, and, more controversially, the European Union in 1992, when the Tour missed the Pyrenees in order to visit every EU country that had a land border with France-Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and Italy-and included stages finis.h.i.+ng in both EU capitals, Strasbourg and Brussels.

The 10 Greatest Postwar Tours =.

1989- Greg LeMond overcomes a 50 second deficit on the final time trial stage to win by 8 seconds from Laurent Fignon after the pair swap the lead five times.

1964- a tense battle between Jacques Anquetil and RAYMOND POULIDOR reaches a climax on the Puy- de-Dome hilltop where Anquetil hangs on, just.

1969- EDDY MERCKX is never threatened in his first Tour but turns the race into a personal battle, winning stage after stage. The "Cannibal" is born.

1986- three weeks of intrigue and drama as LeMond and Bernard Hinault do battle. They are in the same team, but is "the Badger" out to win for himself?

1949- Fausto Coppi overcomes a 32-minute deficit to win the race by 20 minutes in a style that is compared to the perfection of Dante's Divine Comedy.

1979- the defining Tour of the Hinault years, in which the Badger loses time early on to Joop Zoetemelk and hunts the Dutchman down with consummate ruthlessness.

1998- MARCO PANTANI snipes away at the German Jan Ullrich then wins the race on a rainswept day in the Alps to clinch a great comeback in a race torn apart by scandal.

1971- Merckx and the Spaniard Luis Ocana take each other apart until Ocana over-reaches himself in the Pyrenees and crashes on the Col de Mente.

1987- Stephen Roche and Pedro Delgado attack and defend in the final week, with the outcome in doubt until Roche takes the lead on the penultimate day.

2003- Lance Armstrong is in poor form in the centenary Tour but digs deep in the Pyrenees to overcome Jan Ullrich for the toughest of his seven wins.

The early Tours had another effect: they gave the French a sense of the geography of their own country, according to one study (Boeuf and Leonard, 2003): "By the cartography of France that it helped make known, the Tour acted as a teacher in showing a map printed with the contours of the country-which was rare until the Great War-and very quickly popularised the notion of France as more or less hexagonal." And the Tour has inspired some fine writing, most notably the essays of Antoine Blondin in the 1950s and 1960s and the structuralist Roland Barthes.

The Tour became more tactical after the Second World War. Road surfaces and bike manufacture improved, teams became more sophisticated, and cyclists became fitter. Standards are now so high that the race has become "chess on wheels": a subtle tactical game where for much of the time not a great deal looks to be happening. FAUSTO COPPI was the first Tour winner to truly structure his team so that they raced solely in his interests and the first to plan his race around certain key stages, which is the strategy of every Tour favorite today.

Nowadays, the race usually follows an implacable physical logic: all the riders weaken gradually, but the strongest deteriorate more slowly. Usually the best man in the field at half-distance will win. The greatest Tours are those where this does not apply. The best examples include 1989's three-way battle between LAURENT FIGNON, GREG LEMOND, and Pedro Delgado that culminated in the closest ever finish; STEPHEN ROCHE's narrow win over Delgado in 1987; or BERNARD HINAULT and Joop Zoetemelk's tense fight in 1979.

Since 1998, the Tour has been afflicted by almost annual DOPING scandals but cheating has always played a part in the race. Garin was banned for two years for taking a train in 1904 and there have been episodes when favorites have been pushed up mountains, bikes have been sabotaged, waterbottles spiked. But the drugs issue has proved more intractable. In 2005 there were allegations against the seven-times winner LANCE ARMSTRONG, in 2006 the first man to Paris, Floyd Landis, was disqualified, and in 2007 the likely winner, Denmark's Michael Rasmussen, was thrown out of the race.

While other cycle races struggle to get s.p.a.ce on the roads and fight for television time, the Tour's biggest problem has been growth, on a ma.s.sive scale since the mid-1980s. The Tour has always been as much a commercial as a sports event. It never had an era of "pure" amateurism, although atone point cyclists with no commercial backer (touristes-routiers) were allowed in the field.

Gradually, too, after the war, the Tour changed from an event intended to increase the circulation of the organizing newspaper to one that paid its own way through sponsors.h.i.+p and television rights. The big changes came in the 1980s after French broadcasting was deregulated, leading to a ma.s.sive increase in coverage of the Tour as the nationalized stations fought for market share.

The viewing audience increased from 50 million in 1980 to a billion by 1986. The Tour generated 12 million francs of rights in 1990, 85 million in 1998, over a third of the budget. The race's income shot up: according to French author Pierre Ballester, the Tour now has an annual budget of around 100 million euros, of which 45 million comes from television rights (about half of these in France), 47 million in sponsors.h.i.+p, about 4 million from stage towns, and about 1.5 million in marketing spin-offs.

To bring in a new worldwide audience, the race went from being largely French teams and French riders with a smattering of foreigners, to being largely international with enough Frenchmen to ensure the home crowds kept interested. There were more teams and bigger, multinational sponsors. The Tour went from being watched mainly by local crowds, to being an event fans travel to, perhaps building an entire vacation around watching the race and being bussed in by a travel company.

Such growth is not without danger, and the Tour is now threatened by its own ma.s.sive scale, what the French term le gigantisme. Doping is part of that, as the vast amounts of money on offer mean it's worth a cyclist paying for sophisticated practices, if he feels he can live with the risk to his reputation. There is now so much media coverage of the race that any scandal creates its own momentum, but the size of the race has brought other problems as well.

With 4,000 people and some 1,500 vehicles, the Tour caravan is now so ma.s.sive that it causes vast traffic jams in stage towns, and it can take hours to get down from mountain top finishes in the Alps and Pyrenees. So many people travel with the race that hotel rooms are solidly booked for 60 miles around many finishes; the huge convoy of race vehicles has caused a series of deaths among spectators, and the event is vulnerable to political protests of any kind. But in 1904 Desgrange lamented that his Tour had been a victim of ma.s.sive public interest: the race's success has been founded on excess and that will always be the case.

Recommended further reading: The Great Bike Race, Geoffrey Nicholson, Magnum, 1977; The Yellow Jersey Companion to the Tour de France, Les Woodland, Yellow Jersey, 2003; Le Tour, A History of the Tour de France, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Simon and Schuster UK, 2007 TRACK RACING.

Initially, cyclists competed on the same asphalt and gra.s.s running tracks used for athletics, or on the oval circuits used for horse racing, but the quest for speed and spectacle led to an early generation of banked cycle tracks built in the late 19th century: in the US, most early professional races were contested on tracks, typically wooden, between 200 and 500 yards, with banked turns at either end. It is estimated that by 1895 there were 100 velodromes across the United States, with a "Grand Circuit" drawing together the country's best cyclists between May and November. A. A. ZIMMERMAN and Major TAYLOR were the two biggest stars of the early years.

Paris boasted the Buffalo velodrome, built in 1893 on the site of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show near Porte Maillot and promoted by the owner of the Folies Bergere; it was here that the tradition of ringing the bell on the final lap of a race began. In a brief stint of track mania, velodromes sprang up in many provincial towns, and races such as PARIs...o...b..IX were organized to promote them. It was in France that the first use of the banking to gain speed was recorded, in a six-man sprint that decided the French one-kilometer t.i.tle in 1894. Henri Farman, recorded La Bicyclette, "left the string and went obliquely across the track to the outside, as if inviting his rivals to go to the front. He had gained a little speed and seeing that the others were almost at a halt, he used the momentum to attack suddenly and using the slope of the track he arrived at the middle of the bend with 20 m lead."

In Europe there were events such as the Cuca Coca Cup, a 24-hour race behind pacemakers held at London's Herne Hill and the Bol d'Or, held at the Buffalo. In the United States, the early SIX-DAY races earned a fearsome reputation and were to be a mainstay of the calendar until the 1930s. Ma.s.sive prizes were earned by the biggest stars such as ALF GOULLET, Frank Kramer, and Reggie MacNamara. In spite of efforts of promoters like John M. Chapman, who set up a franchised circuit in the northeast and ran six-day races in New York, track cycling died a slow death in the United States between World War I and II as the emphasis s.h.i.+fted to baseball and football. The final event was held at Madison Square Gardens in 1939.

Paced riding was initially the norm in record attempts and long-distance track races: riders would shelter themselves behind multicycles with five or six riders, nicknamed "pedaling artillery." There might be an additional team riding alongside the solo rider to shelter him from sidewinds. Demi-fond, as it was known, became popular in the 1890s, particularly in Germany, where purpose-built tracks were constructed, and the first world t.i.tle was won by the Welshman Jimmy Michael in Cologne in 1895.

These were spectacular and dangerous events, and they were succeeded by motorpaced races just after the turn of the century, which were even riskier. The death toll early on was high; if anything broke at speeds between 50 and 60 mph, the rider stood little chance, as in the 1918 accident at the VELODROME D'HIVER (Vel d'Hiv) that killed the French champion Louis Darragon, who broke a pedal while at full speed, hit the bal.u.s.trade around the track with his head, and died instantly. Today's roadsize motorbike events are a spectacular throwback to this very dodgy past.

As stadium sports gained popularity, track suffered in the early years of the 20th century; the golden era in Europe was between World War I and II, with the arrival of sprinters such as Britain's Bill Bailey, France's Lucien Michard, and Australia's Bob Spears, and later Belgium's Jeff Scherens and Louis "Toto" Gerardin. In Europe, even after World War II, vast crowds would flock to venues such as the Vigorelli velodrome in Milan, the Vel d'Hiv in Paris, and the Palais des Sports in Brussels. The French journalist Pierre Chany described the spectacle in Milan, with scalpers selling tickets for five times their value, crowds six deep on the pavement stopping traffic, and a crowd of 20,000 inside rising as one to applaud their heroes and jeer at the "villains." An open-sprint compet.i.tion at the Vel d'Hiv could readily attract 400 starters.

The key to track racing's survival after its death in the United States was the presence of stars of road racing such as Fausto Coppi alongside established track racers such as the sprinters Antonio Maspes, Arie Van Vliet, and Reg Harris. The Vel d'Hiv drew crowds that might have included the millionaire Henri de Rothschild and the writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote of the "smoky light of the afternoon, the high banked wooden track, the whirring sound the tires made on the wood as the riders pa.s.sed, the effort and tactics as the riders climbed and plunged, each one a part of his machine."

Road racing was a gritty, grimy occupation, but evening track meetings were the glamour side of cycling. Road champions would ride into town on the overnight train, then stage a dramatic entrance to the velodrome in sungla.s.ses-to hide the bags under their eyes-wearing tailored suits, with Brylcreemed hair. Afterward, they might dine on oysters, steak, and champagne.

In one winter, Coppi rode 21 such meets, either invitation pursuit matches or international omniums. What mattered was performance and pleasing the crowd: TOM SIMPSON, for example, would ride, wall-of-death style, up the vertical advertising boards at the top of the track, or take one hand off the bars in a finish sprint and "pretend" to take a tow by grabbing a rival's saddle.

In Europe track racing gradually declined with the advent of television: the road stars lost their mystique, so there was no reason for the crowds to come and watch them on the track. Sponsors realized they would get more exposure from having their men race on the road. Most of the great velodromes, like the Vel d'Hiv, are gone or they are dying, like the Vigorelli. The sixes cling on, mainly as late-evening entertainment for German drinkers, but are threatened by the removal of the Madison from the Olympic program.

If there is a flicker of hope, it has come from Britain's creation of a new style of track racing: the Revolution meetings, which have taken advantage of GREAT BRITAIN's success at successive OLYMPIC GAMES, and have also been run in Australia. America may well be next. The format is accessible and lively, entry prices are low, and it boasts celebrities as well as Olympic champions to draw in the crowds; a champions.h.i.+p format of the Revolution meetings was adopted in 2009, with big names leading teams that included youth riders to create a narrative over the winter.

TRACK RACING-DISCIPLINES The Olympic track disciplines are as follows: * Sprint: two riders compete in a series of knockout races over three laps. Seeding is determined by a time trial over 200 m; fastest meeting slowest and so on. The early knockout rounds are sudden-death; the later rounds are best of three. Riders who exit early have a chance to re-enter the contest via the repechages, a second chance, which offer losers a chance to fight their way back in.

* Individual pursuit: two riders start from opposite sides of the track and are timed over their distance. The objective is to "pursue" the opponent and overtake them; if that does not happen, the fastest wins. First round is a time trial to determine seeding for the medal ride-offs; first v. second, third v. fourth. Women race over 3 km, men over 4 km.

* Team pursuit: for men, run on the same basis as the individual, over 4 km. Riders do half-lap or one-lap turns at the front.

* Team sprint: for men, two teams of three riders timed over three laps. Qualifying through a time trial round to determine seeding for the ride-offs.

* Points race: a bunched race over 160 laps (40 km) for men, 100 laps (25 km) for women, decided on points awarded every ten laps-5, 3, 2, 1-with a 20-point bonus for any rider who can lap the field. If riders tie on points their final positions when they take the checkered flag determines their place.

* Madison: a relay bunch race for men held over 200 laps (50 km) for teams of two riders, one of whom is racing while the other circles at the top of the track waiting to be put in the race. This is done by a hand-sling, in which the faster rider grabs the other's outstretched hand and "throws" him into the race. There are two objectives: to lap the field, and to earn points in sprints every 20 laps. If teams finish on the same lap, points total determines their placings.

* Keirin: j.a.panese discipline for men and women in which six riders follow a pacing motorbike which accelerates to 50 kph for men, 40 kph for women before pulling off the track with two and a half laps to go, after which it is a sprint for the line. Run through a series of qualifying rounds in which the lineups are determined by a draw (see KEIRIN for details of the intricate ceremonial the sport involves in j.a.pan, and the ma.s.sive betting scene).

The same disciplines are included in the world champions.h.i.+p program, plus the following: * Women's team pursuit: over three kilometers for three riders.

* Women's team sprint: over two laps, for two riders.

* Time trials: over one kilometer for men, 500 m for women. These events were dropped from the Olympic program after 2004.

* Scratch: a bunch race over 15 kilometers for men, 10 kilometers for women. First over the line wins.

* Omnium (men and women): a test of all-round skills held over a single day: 250 m time trial, scratch, pursuit, points race, kilometer time trial, devil (see below).

Other track events include: Devil Take the Hindmost, a crowd-pleasing event in which the last rider over the line each time is eliminated until three are left to contest the final sprint; Win and Out, the opposite, held over five laps in which the winner is the first rider over the line on lap one; he or she has to pull out, then the second is the first over the line on lap two and so on; Danish pursuit, which is a points race followed by a Devil with rankings decided over the two events; Course des Primes, a race with prizes awarded every lap; Motor-paced, in which the riders race in the slipstream of motorbikes, usually low-powered machines known as DERNYS, although on outdoor tracks full-size bikes may be used.

TRICYCLE The pioneering days of bicycle design between 1870 and 1900 gave rise to a huge variety of multi-wheeled machines-primarily tricycles and quadricycles-with different seating configurations and wheel arrangements. By 1884, over 120 different models were being made in 20 factories in just one English manufacturing center, Coventry.

JAMES STARLEY's Coventry Lever Tricycle of 1876, with a large central wheel, and smaller ones at either end, was the first lightweight tricycle to enter ma.s.s production. Starley also designed the Salvo quad, which was sold to Queen Victoria and renamed the Royal Salvo.

There were rear-drive tricycles with dual steering wheels at the front, quads in which the drivers sat side by side, and the Hen and Chickens, a HIGH-WHEEL bike in the middle of four small wheels, the idea being to make the machine as stable as possible for cargo carrying.

The cla.s.sic upright tricycle as we know it today, with one steering wheel at the front and two driving wheels at the back, began to appear in the mid-1880s, at the same time as the SAFETY BICYCLE. Early examples were the Humber Cripper-named after a professional racer, Robert Cripps-and the curiously named Psycho from Starley.

The stability of the tricycle makes it suitable for carrying heavy loads over short distances: the design is used for rickshaws in Asia and in some cities in the UK, Europe, and the US. Delta tricycles have a rec.u.mbent design, while Tadpole trikes are REc.u.mBENTS with two steered wheels at the front and one driving wheel at the rear.

The largest British tricycle maker today is Pashley, founded in 1926 and based in Stratford-Upon-Avon. In the UK, the Tricycle a.s.sociation was founded in 1929 to cater for trike enthusiasts, and the Road Records a.s.sociation recognizes tricycle place-to-place records. There are a small number of tricycle criteriums, and a tricycle world champions.h.i.+p, on a time-trial format.

U.

UCI see UNION CYCLISTE INTERNATIONALE UNION CYCLISTE INTERNATIONALE Also known in English as International Cycling Union.

Cycling's worldwide governing body, founded in 1900, split into two arms in 1965, one governing pro racing (FICP) and one for amateur federations (FIAC), with the UCI as an umbrella body. In 1992 all three were merged; in 1996 the distinction between amateur and professional racers was ended.

The UCI inhabits a purpose-built center in the Swiss town of Aigle, near Lausanne, that includes offices, a library, a 200-meter velodrome, and the world cycling center, where cyclists from outside the European heartland can come to train.

Compet.i.tions Run by the UCI: =.

World champions.h.i.+ps UCI ProTour UCI Continental Tours Women's world road cup CYCLO-CROSS world cup MOUNTAIN-BIKING world cup BMX world cup INDOOR CYCLING champions.h.i.+ps, for artistic cycling and cycle ball The UCI is no stranger to controversy: questions were asked about a major contribution to its antidoping program from seven-time TOUR DE FRANCE winner LANCE ARMSTRONG. The ProTour circuit was controversial (see HEIN VERBRUGGEN), so too various restructurings of the professional ROAD RACING calendar, and recent decisions to drop some of the most traditional events from the OLYMPIC GAMES track racing program.

The UCI owns the rights to the WORLD CHAMPIONs.h.i.+PS, which are sold to various towns or regions each year. It also runs antidoping, in tandem with national antidoping bodies, and provides race referees (commissaires) who levy fines in Swiss francs. The current president is Pat MacQuaid of Ireland, who was reelected unopposed in 2009.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Whereas Europe has always been seen as the heartland of cycle racing and China is the nation that goes to work on its collective bike, cycling in the United States has known fluctuating fortunes. Having once been as popular as baseball is today, it hit the doldrums as the automobile took over but has enjoyed a strong renaissance over the last quarter of a century: the Tour de France has entered public consciousness and LANCE ARMSTRONG has become a national celebrity.

In the HEROIC ERA following the invention of the safety bicycle, cycle racing was as popular in the United States as in Europe, if not more so. There were 600 professionals competing in track races at the end of the 19th century, and as A. A. ZIMMERMAN, America's first cycling star, explained, "the racing in those days extended over a greater part of the country. Nearly every state and county fair had bicycle racing as an attraction. We rode princ.i.p.ally on dirt tracks and we made a regular circuit, going from one town to another and riding practically every day." Crowds of up to 20,000 attended track races to watch stars such as Major TAYLOR, and SIX-DAY RACING was a lucrative, glamorous little industry in its own right.

As the sixes died out during the Depression, there was no homegrown tradition of road cycling to replace them. Unlike in Europe, where cycling became the mode of transport of the working cla.s.s and road racing expressed that cultural tie, in the United States the automobile was king. That only began to change in the 1970s, as the middle cla.s.s discovered cycling's health and environmental benefits. The early part of the decade saw a 40-fold increase in demand for lightweight bikes. Even so, in FILMS such as American Flyers (1985) and Breaking Away (1979) cycle racing is depicted as a strange activity performed by marginalized young men.

The revival in the United States was spearheaded in women's track racing through the 1970s, with Sheila Young, Sue Novara, and Connie Paraskevin winning sprint world t.i.tles, while men's amateur teams gradually improved on the road, and the first professional pioneer, JONATHAN BOYER, traveled to France to ride for the ACBB club in Paris (see FOREIGN LEGION for how ACBB played host to numerous English-speakers), then rode the 1981 Tour de France for BERNARD HINAULT's Renault team.

A key factor was the rise of a major stage race: the Red Zinger Cla.s.sic, later the Coors Cla.s.sic, held in Colorado during the 1970s and 1980s. Organized by charismatic marketing professional Michael Aisner, the race was responsible for turning Boulder, Colorado, into the center of American cycling. The town hosted the world road champions.h.i.+p in 1986, and now more US pros live in and around Boulder than anywhere else.

The Coors Cla.s.sic broke new ground by launching a women's stage race alongside the men's event. It was watched by President Gerald Ford and is credited with sparking comedian Robin Williams's obsession with bike racing. Aisner eventually took his event to California and Hawaii, brought in top European teams, and even got the best Soviet racers to turn up for the 1981 event, less than a year after the US had boycotted the Moscow Olympics (see EASTERN EUROPE for more on the Russians).

The Russians, led by Olympic champion Sergei Soukhoroutchenkov, met fearless opposition in a new American star: junior world champion GREG LEMOND, then only 20 years old. LeMond fought off the Soviets, drawing a crowd of 40,000 to the race finale in Boulder. He followed Boyer to Renault, and the pair finished 2nd and 10th in the world road champions.h.i.+p in 1982. The 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles gave cycling more momentum, with America taking nine medals. The RACE ACROSS AMERICA helped raise the profile of cycling as well. So too did the first US stage win in the Tour, LeMond's time trial victory at Lac de Va.s.siviere in 1985. Later that year, LeMond raced the Coors Cla.s.sic with Hinault. When the pair posed in Stetsons with their legendary manager, Cyrille Guimard, for l'Equipe, America's return to the cycling mainstream seemed complete.

American Cycle Racing at a Glance =.

Biggest race: Tour of California Legendary racing hill: Manayunk Wall Biggest star: Lance Armstrong First Tour stage win: Greg LeMond, Lac de Va.s.siviere, 1985 Tour overall wins to 2010: 10 America has given cycling: the Giro helmet, the mountain bike, triathlon handlebars, the Livestrong bracelet, Oakley sungla.s.ses On the road, the next step was a US pro team racing the European circuit, and that appeared in 1985 when 7-Eleven convenience stores backed a squad managed by Mike Neel, who had raced in Italy, and JIM OCHOWICZ, who had raced for the US in the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. They broke taboos by employing a blonde female SOIGNEUR named Sh.e.l.ley Verses, but more substantially, their bucktoothed climber named Andy Hampsten took a stage in the Giro, and the team won more stages at the Tour in 1986. Under Jim Ochowicz, the squad would go on to a successful run backed by the Motorola phone company from 1991 to 1996. After that, US Postal Service and Discovery Channel moved in as European pro team sponsors.

AMERICAN FACTOID.

Coors Cla.s.sic organizer Michael Aisner also masterminded Brigitte Bardot's campaign against the slaughter of fur seals in the Arctic.

4.

The Coors Cla.s.sic ceased in 1988, but a new US Tour ran from 1991 to 1996 sponsored by DuPont, and this was followed in 2006 by the Tour of California, which has drawn professionals of ever-higher quality. The US can also boast its own CLa.s.sIC: the Philadelphia International Champions.h.i.+p dates back to 1985 and is the final leg of the Triple Crown that includes the Lancaster Cla.s.sic and the Reading Cla.s.sic, all held in the same week. Until 1985, the best American in Philadelphia was crowned US champion. The race includes its own legendary cobbled climb, the Manayunk "Wall," two streets where the gradient reaches one in six.

Stars of US Racing =.

Frank Kramer: Along with Major Taylor and A. A. Zimmerman, a hero of the halcyon era of US track racing. Kramer was persuaded to turn pro in 1900 by Taylor, and his career outlasted that of the Major: he won the US sprint t.i.tle 18 times, with his last t.i.tle coming in 1921, when he was 41 years old. He raced mainly in the United States, but had two successful seasons in Europe, 1905 and 1906, and also took the world sprint t.i.tle in the only year he entered, 1912, when it was held in Newark. He retired in 1922.

Andy Hampsten: Bucktoothed, slender climbing specialist from Ohio who turned pro for 7-Eleven in 1985, won a stage in the Giro d'Italia, and was signed by Bernard Hinault's La Vie Claire team for 1986, when he won the first of two back-to-back wins in the Tour of Switzerland. In 1988, back with 7-Eleven, Hampsten won the Giro d'Italia, a victory forged in a snowstorm on the Gavia Pa.s.s. His final major win was the l'Alpe d'Huez stage in the 1992 Tour de France, the year he finished fourth overall in the Tour, a repeat of his placing of 1986.

Sheila Young: One of a bunch of US cyclists who doubled up successfully with speed skating, Young achieved a rare double in 1973 when she took the world sprint t.i.tle on the velodrome and the rink. She went on to win the sprint t.i.tle twice more, and won gold, silver, and bronze medals in skating at the winter Olympics in Innsbruck in 1976, becoming the first US athlete to win three medals at a winter Games. In that year she married JIM OCHOWICZ, who would go on to manage the 7-Eleven and Motorola pro road teams. She retired, then returned to compet.i.tion in 1981 to take another track sprint world t.i.tle. Young's big rival was another speed skater turned sprinter, Sue Novara, who won a total of seven world champions.h.i.+p medals. Other speed skaters who were also successful cyclists are Beth Heiden, winner of the world road t.i.tle in 1980, and her brother Eric, regarded as the greatest speedskater ever but also capable of finis.h.i.+ng the Giro d'Italia for 7-Eleven in 1985.

Landmarks in US Cycle Racing =.

1866- Pierre Lallement files the first US patent application for a pedal cycle 1878- Albert August Pope begins producing Columbia high-wheelers 1880- League of American Wheelmen founded in Newport, Rhode Island 1891- First six-day races held in Madison Square Gardens 1893- A. A. Zimmerman takes gold medal at first world champions.h.i.+p 1899- Major Taylor becomes world sprint champion 1912- Frank Kramer wins world sprint t.i.tle at Madison Square Garden 1950- Final six-day race in New York 1973- Sheila Young wins gold medal in women's world sprint champions.h.i.+p 1975- First Red Zinger Cla.s.sic stage race held in Colorado; from 1980 it is known as the Coors Cla.s.sic 1975- Sue Novara follows Young to women's sprint gold 1980- Beth Heiden wins women's world road champions.h.i.+p 1981- Eric Boyer becomes the first American to finish the Tour de France 1983- Greg LeMond becomes first American to win world pro road champions.h.i.+p 1984- Marianne Martin wins first women's Tour de France 1985- 7-Eleven begins racing in Europe; Andy Hampsten and Ron Keifel win stages at the Giro d'Italia; Greg LeMond, riding for La Vie Claire, is first US stage winner in the Tour de France 1986- 7-Eleven is the first US team to compete in Tour de France; Alex Stieda wears the yellow jersey; LeMond wins the Tour, becoming first American to wear yellow; World road and track champions.h.i.+ps held in Colorado Springs 1988- Last Coors Cla.s.sic held; Hampsten wins Giro d'Italia 1989- LeMond wins his comeback Tour after near-fatal injury and adds the world road champions.h.i.+p 1991- First Tour DuPont held; it continues until 1996 1993- Lance Armstrong wins world road t.i.tle in Oslo, Norway 1994- LeMond retires 1996- Armstrong wins Fleche Wallonne; is diagnosed with testicular cancer in September 1999- Armstrong wins his comeback Tour 2003- Armstrong joins Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, and Bernard Hinault as a five-time winner of the Tour de France 2005- Armstrong retires for the first time after winning seventh Tour 2006- First professional Tour of California held, won by Floyd Landis who is disqualified later that season from winning Tour de France after testing positive for testosterone 2009- Armstrong makes his second comeback to racing 2011- Armstrong rides his final race as a pro. Maybe.

2011- US city of Richmond, Virginia, among the favorites to host 2015 world road champions.h.i.+p In 1986 the Canadian Alex Stieda, riding for the US team 7-Eleven, briefly wore the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, and LeMond began an extraordinary run of US successes in the great race. Since then, LeMond and Armstrong have between them won the Tour 10 times.

Between the LeMond and Armstrong eras, the cycling world discovered two purely American disciplines: BMX and MOUNTAIN BIKING. Both introduced whole new generations of cyclists to the sport, while the mountain bike brought in its wake a raft of technical innovations and sp.a.w.ned a crop of manufacturers who now enjoy strong reputations on the road. Trek started out as a small frame builder in Wisconsin in the late 1970s, Specialized were producers of the first ma.s.s produced mountain bikes, while Cannondale began as a cycle-bag maker and began making its characteristic oversized aluminum frames in 1983.

Armstrong's run of successes drew major sponsors into a sport that had been hit by doping problems: in 2010 Columbia Sportswear, Garmin, and Radioshack were all backing teams in the UCI ProTour, while BMC, run by Ochowicz, is a fourth major US team. In Armstrong's protege, Taylor Phinney, now a pro with BMC, America may just have a new LeMond in the making.

V.

VAN LOOY, Rik Born: Grobbendonk, Belgium, December 20, 1933 Major wins: World road race champion 19601; MilanSan Remo 1958; Tour of Flanders 1959, 1962; Paris...o...b..ix 19612, 1965; LiegeBastogneLiege 1961; Giro di Lombardia 1959; GhentWevelgem 19567, 1962; Paris-Brussels 1956, 1958; ParisTours, 1959, 1967; Fleche Wallonne, 1968; points winner Tour de France 1963; 7 Tour stage wins; 12 Giro stage wins; 18 Vuelta stage wins Nicknames: the Emperor of Herentals, Rik II, the Wheelbreaker One of the great figures of postwar cycling, with between 400 and 500 wins and a record in the one-day CLa.s.sICS surpa.s.sed only by EDDY MERCKX, and one of many stars to emerge from FLANDERS.

Unlike Merckx, Van Looy was never a good enough time triallist or climber to win a major Tour but he managed to take every Cla.s.sic at least once, apart from the Amstel Gold Race, which was founded as his career came to an end. He was a dominant force between 1956 and 1968; he ran his team, the "Red Guard" with an iron hand (see TEAMS for other iconic squads). He selected devoted riders with specific skills-sprinting, working on windy days, stamina, climbing-and decided what gears they used, when they would go to bed, and how much they were paid. One domestique had to carry a wrench in case "the Emperor" wanted to adjust his saddle or handlebars in a race.

INTRIGUING VeLIB FACTOIDS.

The bikes are washed using pure rainwater so no polluting detergent is necessary.

The bikes are 99 percent recyclable including the tires. The service teams use vehicles powered by biofuel and electric bikes.

The estimated distance each machine travels each year is 18,250 km. They were used 42 million times in the first 18 months.

There is a glut of bikes that have been dropped off at the bottom of France's two hilly districts, Belleville and Montmartre, with few left at the top, for obvious reasons.

Videos have been posted on the Internet showing the bikes being ridden on BMX tracks, down the steps of Montmartre, and in Metro stations: Velib Extreme.

Not all the bikes are roughed up. One repairman found a bike that had been customized with fur-covered tires.

4.