2019-11-01_Bicycling

34 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE

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THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 21, 1990, WAS

probably a beautiful, sunny summer

day in Denver, Colorado, but I don’t

really remember. That summer in

the Tour de France, American Greg

LeMond was gunning for his second straight

victory and, that last Sunday of the race,

ABC’s Wide World of Sports would cover it.

For three weeks, LeMond had chipped

away at a massive lead that Claudio Chiap-

pucci took with a Stage 1 breakaway, and

the final week of racing featured desperate

gambles by both riders as they vied back

and forth. I knew these things with all the

certainty of rumor, whispered in the scant

results the Denver Post printed, with an

occasional sentence or two of wire copy

from New York Times reporter Sam Abt on

the page-two roundup column.

I already loved bike racing at that point,

a nascent devotion that cemented with

LeMond’s legendary comeback in the 1989

Tour. An ebullient, disbelieving LeMond,

mobbed on the Champs as a devastated,

empty Laurent Fignon falls from his bike,

like a toppled piece of sculpture; who could

resist that?

WWoS was a 90-minute newsmagazine

format that typically featured three sports,

and never told you in what order they’d

air. I sat for an hour with the VCR remote

gripped in my hand like Ken Jennings on a

Jeopardy buzzer. Eventually, Frank Gifford

threw it to France and I literally sighed. And

then got mad.

There were historical segments on the

Tour for Americans who were puzzled why

❯❯

bike racing was on TV. There were soft-focus

bio sketches. There was a Pierre Salinger

feature on the fucking wines of Bordeaux,

some five interminable minutes of vineyard

vistas and cavorting in caveaux that sawed

at my soul like a dull blade. In between:

snippets of actual racing! Chiappucci’s

audacious, gamble-it-all attack on Stage 16

and LeMond’s frantic chase. LeMond’s f lat

tire on the final mountain stage that almost

cost him the victory, and a few precious

frames of his daredevil descent that saved it.

Why am I yammering on about a three-

decade-old bike race and an antiquated

sports-magazine TV show? Because if you

had told me, in 1990, that I could watch

bike racing live; that I could watch every

stage of the Tour, and this mythic exotica

known as the Giro d’Italia; that I could

watch Classics I’d never even heard of;

cyclocross, mountain bike racing, even

track, hundreds of racing days, for $200 a

year, I’d have asked where could I send my

SASE for more information?

We have exactly that today, and yet even

race fans don’t fully appreciate it. Our path

to this point was long and winding: Back in

the ’80s and early ’90s, VeloNews had a 900

number you could call for race results, and

Outdoor Life Network began broadcasting

live Tour coverage in the Armstrong era.

We got a glimpse of streaming coverage’s

potential in 2004, when OLN got broadcast

rights for the Giro but didn’t add studio

commentary, so they just ran the raw video

feed, and the only sounds were crowds and

the staccato thwack-thwack-thwack of the

STOP STEALING

RACE COVERAGE

JOE LINDSEY | FROM: BOULDER, COLORADO | CREDENTIALS: “BICYCLING” CONTRIBUTOR SINCE STEEL WAS REAL | GO-TO BIKE: TREK CHECKPOINT SL6 | FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR: IBEX

BICICLETA WOOL CAP (RIP IBEX) | HARDEST RIDE EVER: MONTEZUMA’S REVENGE | BEST RIDE EVER: A WEEK ON THE COLORADO TRAIL | SOUL ROUTE: FOURMILE-ESCAPE ROUTE-CHAPMAN |

CYCLING PHILOSOPHY: WHEN IN DOUBT, GO

What You

Can Watch on

Flo & NBCS

CAN’T-MISS

Flo: Giro d'Italia

NBCS: To u r d e Fr a n ce

2

CHAMPIONSHIPS

Flo: Italian, French, Spanish,

British road nats

NBCS: Road, mountain,

cyclocross worlds

7

FOR THE CORE

Flo: Omloop, KBK,

Milan-San Remo, RVV

NBCS: Paris-Roubaix,

Flèche Wallonne, LBL,

Strade Bianche

8

MORE THAN 100 OTHERS

Ranging from the Vuelta a

España (NBCS) to the Athens

Twilight Criterium (Flo)

34 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 1| 2020