EventServices

I was the announcer at this race. Saved the roster for some unknown reason. It was a veritable Who's Who of the U.S. (and Midwest) scene racing in Ohio in '89. It was one month after Lemond won Worlds. The promoter paid about $10k to bring him to Athens.

Of note...
#88 and #67 are brothers of Pat McQuaid.
#17 and #37 are still racing well.
#89 sells clothing

It was probably the best race I've seen in terms of ambiance and excitement. Plus the racing was on fire.

Good times.

mattm

Rad.

Who won?

Racer Ex 

The neat thing about masters racing...I've raced and ridden with quite a few of those guys and even finished ahead of a few of them (using the term "beat" would be pretty obtuse given my actual talent level).

in addition to Tilford and Rodgers, Carter and Knickman are still hammering people. I was in a 40 mile break with Carter at Gila a few years back until I took a side trip to Offthebackistan.

carpediemracing 

Wow. That's a great list at so many levels. The names, teams, the waived (or not), the oweds are especially funny.

I want to say Huber won, solo, but maybe I'm thinking of a different race. Oravetz was my first thought but I know Huber won a big (for those in the US) race solo, snuck away in the last lap or two or something like that.

Jandro 

Awesome bit of (recent) history, there!

OT but I used this saying (don't worry I gave attribution) around a pro mechanic friend of mine and it's now his favorite term ever. He's an Iraq/Afghanistan veteran.

texbiker

My Mother spotted Greg Lemond on 4th or 5th streets in Zanesville at the end of the race and asked for his autograph. He signed a piece of paper and my Mother gave to me when i came to visit that year.

revchuck 

I went to OU for a year and a half before I ran out of money for college. Athens would've been awesome for a crit.

Did Hincapie ever cough up the $28 he owed?

Homebrew01

#7 was a hot junior on our local team, then got poached by the big guys a few years later. Found out later he got to ride domestique at the Giro 1 year. I heard he couldn't get a good contract, so quick cold turkey and went back to school.

botto 

i wonder if #23 is in jail.

merlinextraligh

What? Just because he swings 2x4's at people, does that make him a bad guy?

Cleave

Hi, mentioned it before but I'll mention it again, took Greg Oravetz to his first race when he was a Junior and a teammate. Definitely an amazing collection of talent. I knew (a few) or recognized most of the names on the first four pages. As Racer Ex mentioned, a few of these guys race Masters in SoCal. Ex thinks it's bad that he has to race against them. What about me?
@EventServices, glad that you kept the entry list. It's getting to the point that if it isn't digital, it didn't exist. Oh, wait -- it is digital now.

shovelhd

So is John Loehner, the McCormacks, yada yada yada. I didn't race that race but many like it in the same timeframe. They were all the same. The best national class riders mixed with European imports (often because they paid start fees) in huge fields. It's hard to describe to those who didn't race back then what it was like being a local Cat2 in a field like that. Your list brought it back to life. Thanks for posting.

Homebrew01

It was a matter of seeing how many laps you could last before becoming a spectator. Not very many for me.

shovelhd

I finished. Didn't do much else, but I finished.

jsutkeepspining

My old coach was a pro way back in the day, and he loved to talk about the difference between cat 1s now, versus cat 1s back in the day, and how if you upgraded to 1 you better plan on becoming a pro. He also liked to talk about the glory days of riding in Europe as a pro. It was pretty cool, and i wish i still rode with him as much as i used to.

shovelhd

There were very, very few Cat1's back then, at least on the East Coast. The only ones I knew were on the National Team.

jsutkeepspining

yeah, far less local depth. I love hearing those stories, and our weekly 4 hour rides together were always the highlight of my week. Nothing better than hearing about the race culture of Europe, and the crazyness of racing back in the day (and the crazyness of today's racing )

carpediemracing 

At some point there was a rule that limited the number of Cat 1s, or maybe it was just "understood". I want to say the number was 200 riders nationwide. They were basically "National Team Alternates", i.e. the team might call you up to take place of an actual National Team member on some trip to some race.

Of course that could have been a total myth also but I think it had its roots in truth.

Grumpy McTrumpy

Didn't there used to be some specific rules about the path to Cat 1, such as only a certain percentage of the points gained could be from any one type of race? e.g. you had to do both Criteriums and Road Races in order to get there.

jsutkeepspining

yes and you had to resubmit your points total each year. If you didn't preform you could lose your cat 1 status

shovelhd

Correct.

mattm

cool. did he tell you about doping too?

EventServices

Do you know of specifics? Or are you just a bit jaded and are now looking at this through 2013 glasses?

Because if you were around back then and can verify stories, please do. But if you're relatively new to the sport and are just surmising based on what you know now, then I'll address it this way: coaches* back then taught you to how to race your bike. Nobody that I know was taking anything or talking about anything illicit. It was the rare dude that was taking heavy stuff to race.

It wasn't until cycling became big business in the Lemond era (when salaries grew to +six figures) that doping became serious. Before that, it was individuals experimenting with stuff. You had the Tommy Simpson level of amphetamine use. But the lower levels was kid's stuff, really, compared to where we are now. EPO came along and people started dying. That's when things really changed.


*I knew Mike Walden. He could teach you the dirty tricks to get the advantage. He would teach you to use your elbows and sit out laps on the back stretch and grab jerseys. That was actually commonplace back then. (I reference this in my new book. See page 19.) And he also taught you how to be a complete rider. But I never heard him utter a word about drugs.

But if you know more, then spill.

shovelhd

I definitely had my jersey grabbed more than once. Skinsuits became more popular and that became less effective. Another trick was to put your hand up on the back stretch, pull over, and let the air out of one of your tires. Ride it back to the pit, get a wheel, and go back in refreshed.

carpediemracing 

Nothstein did that at a crit. The officials were pumping up all the "flats". He got DQed.

My teammate used a pin from his number. Didn't help him as he got shelled regardless.