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!)
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