Nebraska Cycling News

I can sit in front of my computer and read nearly minute-by-minute updates about the Tour over the Internet. Or if I have the correct tier of digital cable, I can tune in for live or taped same-day coverage on the Outdoor Life Network. Should I happen to be the go while the Tour is taking place, I can even sign up for results via text message updates on my cell phone.
 

But it wasn’t always so convenient to learn what was going on during the world’s biggest and most prestigious bicycle race. No, you only have to go back 24 years to recall how far France can seem from Omaha, Neb.

My first attempt at following the Tour came in 1981 when I was riding RAGBRAI IX (read more in “Bike Bits” below about this historic edition of the across-Iowa ride). I picked up a copy of the Des Moines Register that was delivered daily to the campgrounds and read the agate (the small print on the “results” page of a sports section). From the time gaps of the stage and thanks to the newspaper printing the overall standings, I was able to figure out that Bernard Hinault was close to wrapping up his third Tour victory

Flash forward two years to the 1983 Tour. This was the first one covered by CBS Sports. The network’s coverage consisted of a one-hour show on the Tour’s second weekend and a one-hour wrap-up show on the final weekend. So how could you learn about what was going on in the days in between? You could pick up a copy of the Omaha World-Herald (remember, this was back when USA Today was just getting going). But rarely – and I mean rarely did the sports section print anything about the race.

So, if you wanted the stage results, much less the overall, you had to call the newspaper. The conversation would go something like this:

Me: “Sports, please.”
Sports Dept.: “Sports, Bob Williams.”
Me: “Bob, can you please tell me who won today’s stage of the Tour de France.”
Sports Dept.: “Look in the newspaper.”
Me: “It’s not in the newspaper.”
Sports Dept.: (Long pause) “Hold on just a minute.” (sound of typing on computer)
Me: “Can you give me the stage winner and the overall leader?”
Sports Dept.: “Ok, the winner today was Angel Arr-ow”
Me: “Angel Arroyo?”
Sports Dept.: “Yeah, whatever.”
Me: “What was his time?”
Sports Dept.: “3 hours, 51 minutes and two seconds.”
Me: “OK. Who’s leading the race.”
Sports Dept.: “Some French guy, Loren FIE-gon”
Me: “You mean Laurent Fignon.”
Sports Dept.: “Yeah, whatever.” (Hangs up)

The next day when I would call the newspaper and get the same guy, he’d be just as cranky giving me the results. Finally, I told him if the World-Herald would just print the darn results, I wouldn’t have to call every day and ask for them. Eventually, by about stage 10, they’d get the message.

In 1984 – the same year Greg LeMond rode his first Tour, CBS Sports expanded its coverage of the race to Saturdays and Sundays. The coverage was interspersed between other sports, so if you taped it, you also got a 15-round boxing match and a feature on a baseball player or other athlete. The other downside came when a significant stage happened on a Sunday. Because the coverage (which was so well produced it won several Emmys) was all pre-taped, it rarely included coverage of the same-day’s action. So you were left waiting to see what happened in that stage – six days later.

You also have to consider the breadth of the coverage in the mid to late 80s. Compressing six or seven days of racing into an hour or 90-minute program meant CBS eliminated coverage of some stages of the race completely. It was a month after the 1986 Tour when I read in “Winning” magazine that Jean Francois Bernard was given a car by Team La Vie Claire’s owner for winning a stage. He won a stage? And forget figuring out how fast the teams went in the team time trial. You were lucky just to see some footage of the guys competing in it. Since the race is decided in the mountains, coverage of the flat stages was often compressed into a 20-second “recap” segment.

I could go on and on about the struggle to get results – even as Greg LeMond was winning his first Tour (1986). But suffice it to say, we have it awfully nice these days. Now if we could just get OLN to offer same-day, live coverage of the other grand tours, right?

Bike Bits

Reader Comments About Stage 4:

Mark Guthart of Iowa City, Iowa writes in response to my team time trial commentary:
“Another interesting tidbit about the TTT. It appears that they've changed the rules this year so that any rider who finishes intact with the rest of the team gets the team's time, which means your team leader (Ivan Basso, for example) could finish as the sixth, seventh, etc. member of the team - and as long as he finished with the team it didn't matter if he was in the top five places.<p>
 
“In last year's tour it was different. The team could still only lose xx number of seconds (like this year), but everyone after the fifth rider received their own time - even if they finished with the team! This was catastrophic for Gilberto Simoni last year. For those that don't remember, his team crashed on the finishing cobbles last year and in the chaos that ensued, he ended up being the sixth rider across the line. Given that the team itself was already some two minutes down (or something like that) the first five riders minimized their loss, but Gilberto was given his own individual time, essentially ending his realistic chances at challenging Lance last year. Ouch!”

Thanks for the interesting insight, Mark. And remember, comments are welcome about any of my articles. Simply mail to:sweide@yahoo.com" click here to send an e-mail

Tour For The Working Class

For those of you who don’t have the luxury of lounging around the house watching the live OLN broadcast, there is a tremendous source of nearly-live Tour video on the Internet. It is courtesy of France 2TV and can be found  http://tour-de-france.france2.fr/tour-de-france_video.php3

RAGBRAI IX and Soggy Monday

RAGBRAI IX had the distinction of having the worst weather of any year in the ride's history. The beginning campground at Missouri Valley was damp from continuous rains, and it poured off and on as the riders went up over the Loess Hills to Mapleton on Sunday

The next day between Mapleton and Lake City the temperature dropped to the upper 40s (I am not making this up) and riders rode the hills into a strong headwind and pouring rain. Very few made it beyond Schleswig, which was the first town of the day. Farmers and townspeople pitched in to haul riders into Lake City in cattle trucks, campers, pickup trucks, etc – some paying as much as $25 for a lift.

The campgrounds in Lake City were under water, so residents came to the rescue and put the riders up in homes and garages, and even on the newly refinished gym floor at the high school. The day later was named “Soggy Monday” and The Des Moines Register marketed a patch commemorating that day. The weather then turned beautiful and stayed that way the rest of the week for the ride to Greenfield, Leon, Centerville, Keosauqua (the second smallest overnight town with just 1,000 residents) and Keokuk.