fred@varian.UUCP (Fred Klink) (09/06/85)
Joop Zoetemelk of Holland, the oldest active professional cyclist on the European circuit won the World Championship Pro Road Race Sunday, September 1 in Italy. He was followed by Greg Lemond in second and Mareno Argentin of Italy in third. Zoetemelk was a mere three seconds ahead of a 13 man pack headed by Lemond. This is the best of all possible ways for Joop to end his career. He won the Tour de France once when Hinault had to quit, but otherwise he's generally been one of cycling's perennial seconds. (Is Lemond out to take over this role? :-)) I don't recall his exact age but I think 37 or 38. I gleaned the race data from a table of names, places and times published in the SF Chronicle. There was no accompanying article. If anyone out there in bikenet-land has a better summary I'm sure there's enough interest on the net to make a posting of it. Or at least net-mail me a summary. I'm especially interested in how Joop got a *three second* advantage: did he time trial away in the last few km's; was there a field sprint crash; or was he on the verge of being reeled in from a long break? Or, a good possibility, is the Chronicle screwed up? Other race news: I just read Velo-New's Tour de France summary and its clear that CBS was trying very hard to make a "USA vs. the world" show out of their Tour coverage. In the CBS coverage of Stage 17 we were treated to dramatic footage of Roche and Lemond all alone, increasing their lead over the field and the yellow-jerseyed Hinault with each successive mountain pass. An American boy on his way to a stage win as well as overall victory, right? Hardly. At the point where CBS's graphic showed the Roche/Lemond break with a 2:30 "lead" over the field, there were four other riders out ahead and on the way to the stage victory. These guys never even got mentioned let alone the good tactical racing that got them there. CBS was partially correct in stating that Koechli (La Vie Claire directeur), told Lemond to slow down so as to protect Hinault's lead. What they failed to mention is that at least part of the reason for Lemond's attack was that he had been given an erroneous time check saying he had more of lead on Hinault than he actually did. This time check came from an "American television crew". Guess who. Koechli gave a very good explanation for his decision (which is quoted in full in Velo-News): If and when we did want to turn over the race lead, we wanted to make sure that Lemond was guaranteed on (sic) winning the Tour. We weren't sure of that at Luz [Stage 17 finish] because Roche was going well and could later make a move and taken (sic) the jersey. In sum, we wanted to make absolutely certain a La Vie Claire team member won the Tour and we decided the best way to do this was to defend Hinault's lead. I suppose if the same CBS crew had been assigned to Wimbeldon this year they would have ignored the men's singles final because it had no Americans. I'd like to encourage all those who, like me, enjoyed the CBS Tour coverage and presumed it to be accurate to write to Al Michaels and John Tesh at CBS Sports and voice our dissatisfaction. The final irony: the author of the Velo-News summary, Felix Magowan, was "research assistant" to the CBS crew.