Racer Chaser: Aspen and Cycling, a Great Fit

Wagner Park and Ajax Mountain in the summer

Sorry this took so long to post, but I’ve been a bit busy since the US Pro Cycling Challenge stormed through Aspen. As part of the Coors Classic/Red Zinger reunion tour the Aspen stop of the US Pro Challenge was a great reminder of Aspen’s wonderful past history as a cycling-race host town as well as a reminder that it is still a great place to hold a bike race, because everybody will show up.

The day before the race came to town I had a true Coors Classic flashback moment — I was outside my hotel in the great Mountain Chalet in the early morning and felt that cool summer-morning breeze that I long associated with waking up for stages in town when the Coors was there. I almost reflexively expected to see banners and race vehicles on the streets, but all that would arrive the next day for the US Pro Challenge.

Flashing back some more, Aspen was always a treat for me to visit in the summer — though I have spent way more time there in the winter, skiing with all my old ski team buddies as well as there for various World Cup events when I was a sports writer — summer was special since you basically got to hang out in Aspen all day while the circuit race went on. With my Coors media pass I had access to just about every part of the course I wanted to see, including the press areas near the start/finish for an unobstructed view of the sprint.

But it was always the walking around that was as much fun as the race — seeing old friends course-side, catching up on town gossip — or even the only-in-Aspen moment of watching some high-society woman sitting in a parked car in the middle of the day, filling her nose with two big spoonfuls of cocaine. Whee! Aspen is always fun.

From the Coors memory banks I have two fun short stories: One was a perfect intersection of my personal and professional lifes, I believe during the last trip of the Coors through town in 1988. As the obvious local expert among the media types covering the race I organized a big group dinner at the famous La Cocina, now just a memory. But that night saw us ask the impossible at the always-crowded LaCo — “can we get a table for 20?” — and of course they delivered, setting up a cool long table right through the middle of the whole restaurant. Me and my media pals were joined by a large group of other race-types as well as Aspen locals I knew for a memorable night of chips, blue corn tacos and way too many margaritas.

The second story is one I will tell on Michael Aisner, who spared nobody with many old-days embarrassment tales as part of his excellent Coors Classic reunion presentation in Vail. This story is from 1987, when I was on the race media “staff,” in probably the least-responsible position (all I did was write a wire-service story about the race every day, a task that was kind of meaningless when AP staffed the race itself from the Colorado stages on).

The cool part of being on race staff — other than getting a hot jacket — was having a race walkie talkie to carry by my side at every moment. In case you were never on staff, the walkie talkies were the lifeblood of the race, helping the seat-of-the-pants operational mode happen by simply allowing anyone to talk to anyone else at any time. As a newbie and a low-totem-poler I didn’t do much talking on the walkie but I was fascinated by the staff interaction I could listen to each day. The Aspen moment came late that night in town, sometime after 10 p.m. I would guess, when the following statement came over the main race channel:

“I’m cold, I’m tired, and I’m hungry… and I’m lost,” said the voice that was instantly recognizable as nobody else but Michael. “I’m near some street sign that says Hyman… can someone with a vehicle help me out?”

Since I had keys to one of the media pickup trucks — one of my responsibilities was to park it and get it to the start line each day — I got on the walkie talkie and told Michael I could pick him up, but one of the Kennys — can’t remember which one — followed up and called me off. So not an especially funny story but one I will always remember about Aspen.

This year, the US Pro Challenge was an incredible success, with the town full of race fans all day long (thanks to a women’s race in the morning). What I loved was seeing people pack the sides of the road of the finish even though the rain was coming down. I didn’t make it up the pass but according to those who did the crowds there were Alpe d’Huez quality, in terms of number and craziness.

I spent the day as a spectator, going for a quick ride in the morning (even after riding Maroon Bells the day before) before hooking up with my friends Joel & Kathy to watch the events, cruise the expo and in general just soak up the scene. It just felt so good to see bike racing in Aspen again. May it never leave.

A terrible picture of the Aspen Start/Finish. If you squint you can see Connie Carpenter.

Racer Chaser: The Big LeMond/Hinault Argument Scoop — Part 2

(Read Part 1 first if you haven’t already. Trust us, it will make more sense.)

When I visited the Tour of California a couple years ago I was blown away by the depth of the real-time reporting going on. Multiple outlets were posting minute-by-minute reports from the road, even photos of races in progress. I even posted a couple times from the race myself, via a cellular modem — just because I could.

It was a lot different, covering a bike race in 1986.

Aside from the obvious technological differences — no Internet, no cell phones — most important of all was the fact that we at the Daily Camera sports department were in a constant underdog battle against the two big Denver dailies, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. Though we tried hard they killed us with resources when it came to covering Denver pro sports like the Broncos; but we fought back hard on our own turf, like covering the University of Colorado and covering truly “Boulder” things like running… and the Coors Classic.

Even though I joke about the Camera sports staff’s preference for the football-baseball-basketball triad, editor Dan Creedon knew his readership and knew Boulder, and that’s why when it came to the Coors the Camera went hog wild. A beat writer for both races, men’s and women’s. (No other paper had a writer covering the women’s race exclusively). Full statistics, stage and GC, every day, for both races. Multiple, full-color photographs from Camera photographers — even if it meant rushing to the Grand Junction or Aspen airports to shuttle film back to Boulder in time for the next morning’s paper.

When we covered the Coors, we played to win. That’s why when I came back to the office on Pearl Street with my notebook full o’ scoop, I didn’t object at all — not even in the smallest bit — when Creedon digested the information and almost immediately decreed that Craig Harper would take my material and write a column on it. With his name and picture at the top, and not mine. (See a PDF of the original page here.)

Why did this happen? Simple — it would have seemed weird and weak if the Camera’s low man on the totem pole had the top-of-the-page story, while the respected columnist — Harper, who had years of solid credit behind his writing — would have been forced to write about something minor. I’m not even sure he was in Estes Park that day; he most certainly was not present when LeMond went postal on his teammates and coaches. I was the only reporter there. But as a pro writer Harper was able to take my stuff and add the “flavor” and the take that a seasoned columnist knows how to do, starting with the lead about the feud being back on.

Had I stomped my figurative foot I am sure Creedon would have let me had a byline story on my own. Who knows what they all would have thought of me then. But by being a team player I was able to give the Camera’s lead writer on the scene the material he needed to help make the whole page shine. If you look at the Camera Coors coverage that day (PDF) we had it all: Great details from the men’s and women’s races, great photos, and to top it all off a column about the renewed feud between the race’s two biggest stars. That’s a complete package, something it takes a team to produce.

And the wonder of the Daily Camera sports department in those days was how everyone pulled their weight. Craig Harper might not want to admit it but he was a better cycling reporter than almost anyone at the Denver papers — because he knew that if he worked at the Camera he occasionally might have to cover the odd cycling or running event, and he — they — we — were all such professionals that whatever we did, we wanted it to be not just good but great. So nobody slacked, nobody said they couldn’t do something because they didn’t like it or didn’t know about it. And while the general mood of the office might have been public disdain for the “pedalhead” crowd, there was also a certain pride that came from covering the Coors at a level of depth and detail that “the Denvers” couldn’t touch.

I wanted to be a part of that team, I wanted to live and learn sports writing with that bunch of underdogs. And though it was a good story, it wasn’t anything historic or Pulitzer material. I did a lot better by myself to show Creedon, Harper and everyone else that A) I could get a good scoop and B) I was a team player, first and foremost. That meant a lot then. I knew there were other people who I went to school with who would kill for the chance I was getting, to write for a nationally recognized paper with a decent circulation. So yeah, Harper could have my scoop. Like the running back who scores a touchdown and just hands the ball to the ref — I knew there would be more.

Maybe these days, a young writer just breaking into the biz might rightly claim it all up front. Hell, any such flareup by a race leader would probably be caught on a cell-phone video and be broadcast via Twitter minutes after it happened. Scoops in the news business don’t mean so much anymore because of technology; had I been able to tweet the blowup back then the Denver paper writers could have grabbed it and done their own spin, without ever having to credit the Daily Camera — that goes on a lot these days.

But back then, we had the glory of getting on the media bus the next morning, which was picking everyone up at the Harvest House in Boulder and driving reporters down to Denver (since that day’s races started in Golden and finished in Boulder, all the Denver reporters drove up and left their cars at the hotel). Harps and I were among the last to arrive and the Denver guys all gave Harper great praise as we walked on the bus — “Great scoop, Harps,” holding up their copies of that morning’s Camera — but to his credit (or chagrin at suddenly becoming a great cycling writer) Harper didn’t even try to pretend. “Ah hell, I didn’t do any of that, it was all Kaps,” he told anyone who would listen. And a lot of them did.

So — what I learned was to trust my gut when pursuing a story, and then trust my principles when it came time to deciding how to share the bounty of my work. It worked out pretty well that day, and it has ever since. But every person’s career has some big turning points where you realize your confidence, and act on it. That race and that day was one of the biggest for me.

Special thanks to Wendy Hall at the Boulder Library’s Carnegie Local History Branch for her great, fast help in locating the microfilm of that distant day’s paper. So glad to see the Camera’s archives in such caring hands!

Racer Chaser: The Big LeMond/Hinault Argument Scoop — but no Byline

This Coors Classic story is a bit long and very newspaper industry inside-baseball in nature. But stay with it, it’s a good story and one that is special to me because it marked a big turning point in my journalism career — with bicycle racing and the Coors Classic at the center of it all.

The headline across the top of the Daily Camera on Aug. 21, 1986, spoke of a big scoop for our paper: “LeMond-Hinault feud heats up,” we proclaimed, above a column written by Craig Harper. (See a PDF of the original page here.) In it a story was told about disagreements between teammates Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault that boiled over into swearing and rude gestures, and we were the only media outlet following the race with the story.

The big problem: Craig Harper didn’t get the story, I did. But nowhere in the paper that day was my name attached to my biggest scoop ever as a sportswriter. Why did I not care too much? Read on and I will explain.

How I got the scoop was important, because it involved me trusting myself like I hadn’t really ever done before. At most sporting events there isn’t a lot of enterprising reporting going on because the action is pretty much contained and right in front of you, either on a field or a court. Reporters who work a little harder than the rest may stay longer at interviews, in the locker rooms or courtside, but unless athletes tell you something they didn’t tell the others getting something different is a rarity.

In bike racing it’s a little bit different because the “stadium” is usually on streets or roads and I found you could gain more insights than the pack by walking around circuit courses, or by riding in vans or trucks to see as much of the race as possible. At the Coors Classic the organizers did what they could to make the sport easy for anyone to cover, bringing stage winners and the overall leader to a structured press conference after each race. But now in my second year of covering the race I found out that you could learn a lot by cruising the team-van areas after a race to pick up comments and quotes from racers, coaches and others who might not be part of the “official” press opportunities.

Racing in Estes Park, Colo., on Aug. 20 1986 was one of those days liked by probably just the race winners and hardly anyone else. It was one of those summer-cold days you can get in late August in the mountains, where intermittent soaking rains kept most folks indoors. The Coors races, however, went on as scheduled.

After “covering” a somewhat lackluster women’s race — Inga Benedict did her part for drama by picking up some significant time on race leader Jeannie Longo with a solid effort at the end — I hung around to watch the men’s race and see if there was anything I could do to help Cheryl Lindstrom, our men’s race beat writer. Though there wasn’t a lot of race drama due to the weather which broke the riders into small, mostly disinterested groups, close watchers could see that race leader Bernard Hinault was having an even worse day than most, having to change bikes twice.

If you read the column you can get the details — but what got me going was Hinault and LeMond quite clearly arguing with each other at the race’s end. What the hell was going on, I wondered — and wondered if anyone else had really noticed. When the two teammates split up, there was a decision to make: go to the press conference and try to ask Hinault what happened, or catch LeMond. Somewhere in my brain a bunch of circuits clicked telling me that A) Hinault was too savvy to say anything in public and that B) he was an expert at dodging any sensitive questions by claiming his English wasn’t too good. Plus anything I asked Hinault would be heard by the other reporters at the presser. So I dashed off, quickly following LeMond to the team vehicles parking lot.

These days the after-race pursuit for quotes is pretty standard — I think the all-time champ in this department is my old pal John “Raz” Rezell, who easily won any press sprint to the cyclists with his bulldog mentality — but back in 1986 I was the only reporter around running after LeMond that day. By the time I caught up to him at his team van LeMond was in an even more heated argument with teammate Jean-Francois Bernard, which is described in detail in Harper’s column.

After LeMond finished the argument by giving Bernard an Italian “uff-da” gesture he pushed away his coach and walked toward a minivan where I saw LeMond’s dad and wife — apparently getting ready to head back to Boulder that night instead of staying in a team hotel. That’s where I did a quick interview with LeMond, who gave me the “I’m finished with this team” quote.

And then the LeMonds drove off. With no other reporter in sight, I knew what I had: A great scoop about a fight between the last two Tour de France champions. Now the big question: What do I do with the story? As it turns out — I had to give it to someone else.

(Next: Part 2 and the exciting conclusion!)

Racer Chaser: Who Didn’t Like Coors Schwag?

When you get some sunglasses like these for free, you wear them wherever you can. Like to a day game at Wrigley. And this photo is so old, it was taken before Wrigley had lights.

If there was one thing that may outlive the Coors Classic itself, it is all the race schwag that was given away. Jackets, hats, sunglasses, briefcases, bags, water bottles and more — was there anything cooler, or more sought-after, than Coors Classic schwag?

Cycling enthusiasts can and will likely debate for years whether or not the racing itself at the Coors was world class quality. But there was never any doubt that the marketing material for the race — neon, anyone? — was at the top of its class. I know this for a fact since every year I covered the race it seemed like I was writing another story about how Coors Classic concessions were ringing up millions in sales. I am sure most people our age in Colorado still have at least one Coors Classic T-shirt somewhere in a drawer.

Racer Chaser: A Cycling Journalist is Born

The "press vehicle," Women's Coors Classic Tour of the Moon stage, 1985. That's me in the back of the station wagon, sucking down fumes. Jim Pedley of the Longmont Times-Call is behind me in the center of the picture.

I remember it fairly clearly: It was the summer of 1985, and my sports journalism career wasn’t exactly en fuego. I had managed, without too much of a problem, to get my journalism degree from the University of Colorado in December of 1984. I had spent the fall semester as an intern at the Boulder Daily Camera sports department, and even though many people told me that “J-school students don’t go right from school to the Camera” I had seen it happen in the sports department before so I chose not to believe.

My employment at the time consisted of: A morning half-time job as clerk in the Daily Camera newsroom, where I answered the phone, sorted mail and typed wedding and engagement announcements and letters to the editor into the computer system. In the evenings and on weekends I freelanced for Dan Creedon and the sports department, after showing them during the fall semester that not only could I bang out a reliable, accurate high-school game story on deadline but that I could also copy edit, write headlines and do a bunch of other desk-related activity necessary to put the paper out every night. I also worked at the reception desk of a health club in Niwot three nights a week. Typical after-college Boulderite, I guess.