VeloNews July/August 2020

I was just a few months into my obsession with cycling when I thumbed through a coffee table book on the “Legends” of the Tour de France. The sport’s 100-year history unfolded in black-and-white photographs as I turned each page. There were entire chapters on celebrated riders like Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx, and sections on the race’s famed routes through the Alps and Pyrenees. L’Alpe d’Huez came to life before my eyes in a series of images taken from Andy Hampsten’s victory there in 1992. Reading about these legends fueled my passion. I was hooked. These days I tend to view the sport’s churn of race results and news through the lens of that history book. After all, we are always living through history. In the future, some of today's…

Who were the legendary cyclists that you looked up to as a novice rider? It was Rebecca Twigg, Inga Thompson, and Bunki Bankaitis-Davis. I remember going to the Meridian Criterium and they showed up in their 7-Eleven kits and raced the men’s race, and I was enamored with that. It was the coolest thing to see these world famous women, and there they were doing this local race. I remember following Rebecca Twigg and watching her do the Coors Classic race in my hometown. It was so inspiring. How did your perspective on these riders change as you became a great rider yourself? It’s true for a lot of top riders that you never think of yourself in that way. I still look up to those three as being unbelievable. I think of…

Who TOP AMERICAN RIDERS What 1991 UNITED STATES CYCLING FEDERATION TRAINING CAMP Where HUNT, TEXAS The top American riders and their coaches pose on the steps of the Heart O’ the Hills Inn outside Hunt, Texas in this photo from 1991. The image was taken during a United States Cycling Federation training camp, and a venerable who’s who of American cycling from the 1980s and 1990s is present. Steve Larsen crouches on the steps, just ahead of Linda Brenneman, Kelly Boyden-Owens, and Bob Mionske. To Mionske’s left stands Chann McRae, Ruthie Matthes, Dede Demet-Barry, Jan Bolland, and Jame Carney. Lance Armstrong stands on the left rail and a young Bobby Julich stands up top. Julie Young, now a coach and a regular columnist with VeloNews, was an attendee at the performance camp as well. She stands several steps…

ANDREW HOOD European Editor It's not a question of if cycling wants to resume, but rather, should it. The hosts of the season's three grand tours — Italy, France and Spain — have seen among the highest Covid-19 fatalities in the world, with nearly 80,000 deaths between the three nations by early May. The virus has especially been devastating for the elderly, and will continue to be so until there is either effective treatment or vaccine. A grand tour could morph into a three-week, rolling infection-train across the world's most impacted nations if the races are not hermetically sealed. True, the pandemic has revealed just how tenuous the economic ecosystem is for teams and races. Without the Tour, many will likely fold. Yet short-term economic interests of cycling should not take precedence…

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Why It’s easy to forget the need to be stable on your bicycle during this time. Stability helps racers maintain their position in the pack. If you’re riding in a group and you’re getting fatigued, a loss of stability can make you unsafe in the group. “We're trying to teach you, when you're fatigued, to fire the muscles that you need to produce stability on the bike,” says Menachem Brodie, a long-time cycling coach and owner of Human Vortex Training. How This workout needs to be done inside with some open space, a six-inch box or step, and a bike on a trainer or some sort of exercise bike: 1. After a 15-minute warm-up on the bike, do a five-minute dynamic warm-up off the bike that includes leg swings, easy lunge walks, or hops. 2.…