Cyclopedia (21 page)

Monocoques, solid one-piece carbon-fiber frames, were permitted by the UCI between 1990 and 2000. MIKE BURROWS began working on carbon monocoques in the early 1980s and his Lotus, used by CHRIS BOARDMAN in the 1992 Olympics and 1994 Tour de France, opened minds. MIGUEL INDURAIN used a futuristic carbon Pinarello, the Espada (Spanish for sword), to beat the HOUR RECORD in 1994, while Boardman switched from the Lotus to a Corima monocoque for his 1993 record. French firm Look's KG196 from the early 1990s was equally radical. It had a flattened carbon-kevlar frame with an early, crude-looking adjustable stem.

The GREAT BRITAIN Olympic team use UKSI bikes with sleek black carbon-fiber frames, in which the carbon fibers run in different directions depending on the forces exerted by the cyclist in the various parts of the frame. Most of the carbon-fiber parts are made at Advanced Components Group on an anonymous-looking industrial estate in Heanor in the East Midlands.

The company has an exotic client list: every car on a Formula One starting grid will include something made here, while other products include ejector seats for fighter aircraft. The cost of the frames is kept down by using a modular system: different lengths of stem joined with different bars to produce a one-piece item; different models for the front end of a frame combined with a standard back end.

FRANCE
Together with GREAT BRITAIN, one of cycling's founding nations: home of the BONESHAKER, the clipless pedal and the first derailleur GEAR, the world's greatest bike
race, the HOUR RECORD, and organized cycle touring events. French cycling has two fathers, TOUR DE FRANCE founder HENRI DESGRANGE and the journalist Paul de Viviès (see VÉLOCIO), who had a more open-minded, less monastic attitude and campaigned for cycling as enjoyment, coining the term
cyclotourisme
.

Cycling was hugely popular in the velocipede era, with 120 races organized in June and July 1869, according to the world's first cycling magazine,
Le Vélocipède Illustré
. ITALY and Britain were where the initial growth came in the 1870s as France coped with the aftermath of the Franco–Prussian war, but in the early 1890s, growth was rapid as the notion of long-distance events was adopted from Britain; and in the mid-1890s a host of cycle tracks were built to cater to the fans, with the Buffalo Vélodrome one of three to open in Paris in 1893 alone.

Among the early short-distance stars was one Henri Farman, who later built pioneering airplanes with his brother Maurice. The top endurance specialists were Constant Huret and Charles Terront. The latter famously won one 1,000 km event—2,500 laps of the VÉLODROME D'HIVER—by not taking any toilet stops, but instead urinating into an inner-tube.

The magazines and papers continued to develop long-distance events culminating in the founding of the Tour de France in 1903. As Henri Desgrange expanded his race, De Viviès pushed
cyclotourisme
through his magazine
Le Cycliste
. A whole world of mass events was born—the Diagonal
rides from one corner of France to another, the RAID PYRENEAN, AUDAX, and other
randonneur
marathons.

Alongside the commercial razzmatazz of the Tour, there is now nostalgia for a golden era: when RAYMOND POULIDOR and JACQUES ANQUETIL fought elbow to elbow, when the accordionist Yvette Horner provided the soundtrack to July each year, when each village in Brittany and Normandy had at least one circuit race organized to coincide with the annual fête, and every
pays
had a son of its own in one of four or five French regional teams in the great bike race. It is the Tour captured on film by Louis Malle and in words by Antoine Blondin.

The golden era of French cycling can be accurately dated: it began when Henri Desgrange brought national teams into the Tour in 1930, opening the way for riders like André Leducq, Antonin Magne, and Jean Robic, and it closed with BERNARD HINAULT's fifth win in 1986. What ended it? The Tour grew quickly in the 1980s and 1990s, and French cyclists couldn't keep up. With the talent of the entire cycling world eligible to ride the race after the arrival of Australians and Americans and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there was less room for the home riders. Hence the fact that there has been no young star to succeed Hinault or LAURENT FIGNON, both men of the 1980s.

French cycling was traumatized by the Festina DRUG scandal of 1998 that centered on the nation's leading team and its national hero, Richard Virenque, but also hit other teams including Casino and Française des Jeux; a more stringent attitude to doping gained ground and the Tour came under greater scrutiny from newspapers such as
Le Monde
. There were allegations of two-speed cycling, with the French at a disadvantage because they stayed clean. There was an element of truth in that, but it wasn't quite that simple.

Post Festina, cycle racing in France has suffered, even though cycling is probably more popular than ever due to the growth of CYCLOSPORTIVES. But the structure has changed: village races are dying out as organizers become older and traffic increases even in the regions; the criteriums, which used to be a cottage industry in themselves after the Tour, are declining due to a lack of French stars. Fewer young people come into bike racing because of its tarnished reputation, along with competition from other sports.

The French cycle-component industry was once one of the largest in the world boasting names such as Mafac (brakes), Simplex (gears), and TA (bottle cages), not to mention manufacturers like PEUGEOT. However, the companies largely failed to compete with the Japanese when SHIMANO and SunTour moved into Europe in the 1970s. There was a big shakeout during the 1980s and the industry is now headed by pedal makers Look and Time, and wheelmakers Mavic. Once market leaders, Peugeot no longer make many bikes.

Sponsors are still drawn to
the top end of the sport, because the Tour organizers' need for a strong French element guarantees them a place in the field, but no Frenchman has looked a likely winner since Fignon in 1989; the last French world road champion was Laurent Brochard in 1997 but he was subsequently disgraced in the Festina scandal.

FREESTYLE
Most BMX riders like to do fancy moves to test their bikehandling; push that to the limit and you end up with a cross between skateboarding and cycling.

Freestyle kicked off in the 1970s in San Diego, not long after the BMX boom started in the USA. One of the founders was a teenager named Bob Haro, who now builds most of the bikes used by freestylers. The first public demonstrations began in 1980.

Straightforward flat surfaces are used (Flatland) but so too are street obstacles, purpose-built skate or BMX parks or trails, and large ramps known as “Verts,” which have two semicircular ramps facing each other so that the riders can continually go up one and down the other, using the top of each ramp to perform tricks on vertical extensions, hence the name. The biggest ramp used is a 27-footer at the X Games. The unofficial record for a jump is over 15 meters from the ground.

The bikes are subtly adapted from BMX machines, using heavier-duty tubing if necessary, and with three- to five-inch pegs at the front and rear hubs to give additional contact points for doing grinds. Some riders have pegs on one side only; street riders often have no brakes, while dirt riders have knobbly tires. The bikes often have two-piece brake-cable detanglers (a gyro, or rotor) on ball-bearings, so that the bars can be spun time and time again.

One of the earliest tricks was the Rock Walk, in which the bike is stationary and first the rear then the front tire is pulled through 180 degrees so the bike
does a 360-degree turn. Others include: grinds, where the bike slides along a surface (e.g., the lip of a ramp) on a part of the bike other than the wheels, for example the rear and front axle pegs or a pedal, and air tricks such as back and front flips and spins and the CanCan, in which one foot is taken from one side of the bike to the other.

Flatland tricks are closer to conventional BMX moves: wheelies, manuals—in which the bike is ridden over a hump with the front wheel in the air—and bunny hops. These are given twists such as the nose manual, in which only the front wheel is on the ground, and the cherry picker, in which the bike is hopped on only the rear wheel.

FRENCH
The lingua franca of international cycle sports since its inception, certain French terms are now universal in cycling (see also SLANG). Often they are simply anglicized in pronunciation.

 

bidon:
term for waterbottle now used by most English-speaking cyclists. French pronunciation is bee-daw(n); it's anglicised as bidden.

 

bonification:
time bonus, used in stage racing, when seconds may be deducted from the overall time of riders who place in the first three in the stage, or at intermediate sprints.

 

casquette:
cotton racing hat.

 

classement general:
overall classification.

 

commissaire:
race referee even in events outside France.