Had the great honor of meeting Anderson while riding to work one morning a few days before the '94 Commonwealth Games in Victoria BC. I was fan-struck. He was very nice, and we rode side by side for a few kms while he asked my thoughts on the course.
Everything was nicer than today.. the bikes, the apparel, recognizable riders,nice pristine landscapes with undestroyed cities and villages, men riding not boys, and the innocence in the air everywhere. Loved the TI Raleigh team.
@@trevormorris1208 You kinda have to be old enough to have actually lived pro/am cycling back then to get what he’s saying, watching old race vids on CZcams and GCN commentators riding old bikes doesn’t really explain it all.
@@chrisstrobel3439 I am that old and I did race in the 80s. You can romanticize your era but the idea that they were men then and not now is false. It wasn't an innocent time either. While they didn't have EPO then Kimmage wrote about sticking amphetamines up his butt in the middle of TdF stages.
Watch the 87 Tour coverage or 87 Paris Roubaix. Storytelling, literary references, compelling (albeit somewhat crafted) storylines. No one cared it was tape delayed. Live coverage now is lame. Might get an eye seizure with all the unnecessary stats and graphics. We have not made cycling more enjoyable to watch.
Back in the day Phil Anderson was well respected in the uk I saw him at the 1982 world rr championships.He was a real trail blazer, showed slot of courage. Along with Piper,Yates,Millar,Graham Jones Kelly,Roche,Greg Lomond Boyer and Early,Kimmage brothers they gave confidence to others to venture over to Europe to have ago.Thank you.
I really enjoyed this documentary! Reminds me of the excellent Jørgen Leth films like "Stars and Water Carriers" and "A Sunday in Hell". thank you for finding and sharing
This film was made by Tim Sullivan who owned a small film company in Adelaide, Australia. Tim Died suddenly early this century and left a widow, Jennifer, and two sons. Copyright to this film does not belong to Classic Cycling, who just posted it because they could.
Wow, written and produced in Adelaide (Australia), what a inspiring and truly well researched film, with amazingly broad film access.. it is a huge achievement from a city so far away from Europe.
I was 11 years old. Just had got my first Racing bike. Sean Kelly was my first Hero. I still ride a steel frame. Its modern these days mix with carbon. Man those steel frames here are amazing. Cannot help but notice the tyer size. Like 19mm or something. Its what we all had back then lol. I run 32mm these days on Audax runs!
They did not need helmets because 20lb steel bikes with proper geometry don't go 14" offline with every pedal stroke and get blown off the road by gusts.
I remember those pedals with cleats and straps. Before SPD pedals came out, I rode off road in Alaska with road shoes, cleats, and double straps. I couldn’t stand not being locked in; but it meant I couldn’t get out! It forced me to become a good bike handler. No hike a bikes for me! But I was stoked when clipless pedals came out.
Love all these old cycling videos. The narration, music, personal lives and the scenes all make it very pleasant and relatable to watch. I can only say in amazement of the physiques of the riders decades ago were MORE Athletic with MUSCLE. Unlike today's Cycling Pros who are only skin and bones and pedal 36x32 when these Pros from decades past pedaled a 42x23 or 42x25.
Thank you for uploading this. I didn't know that Anderson at the time lived in Waregem (Belgium). That's a town some 15 miles from where we live ... Funny to see Anderson cycling in an environment I knew when I was child.
Simpson. Anderson, Kelly, Lemond, Roche.... all great champions! All led the charge into Europe when it seemed impossible someone not from the Continent could win the TdF.
@Sills71 Newer, English speaking fans of the modern, cosmopolitan world of pro cycling cannot appreciate the momentous shift that occurred in the early 1980's with the influx of non-continental riders into the upper echelons of the sport!
If you look at the average of the winner of the prologue compared to the last opening time trial it is clear that some things have changed since 1983. 43,7 km/h compared to 51,5 km/h in Kopenhagen last year. I remember riding my club's time trial championship back in 1995 in an average of 42 km/h. I guess that is also the reason why riders are complaining so much about safety these days. There was a study that the speed at a certain amount of watts has increased by 18% since the early 90s due to improvements in material, aerodynamics, and especially training, nutrition, and recovery. Seeing that the riders still ate steak for breakfast in 1983 and used non-indexed shifting and toe-clips.
When racing and racers looked classic and rode classic machines. No technology advantages, no glasses and helmets hiding their faces and emotions. Just a wonderfully made film about cycling in the early ‘80’s.
I could not agree more. Yeah, yeah, yeah., I know I'll probably be annihilated by the "safety first" folks who would be absolutely mortified that someone isn't horrified to see cyclists riding without helmets.
The first Tour when the colombian cyclists appeared. In my country the expectation was huge despite those cyclist were amateurs. Patrocinio Jimenez wore the red points jersey in the alps but lost it to Lucien Van Impe in the end. In Colombia we could not believe an Australian could be so close to win the tour back in the 80s
@@mattblythe3097 It is Paul Sherwen. He didn't ride the Tour in 1983. The La Redoute team that year was: 71 ALBAN Robert (Fra) 72 BIONDI Laurent (Fra) 73 DE MUYNCK Johan (Bel) ab.13° 74 DE WILDE Etienne (Bel) ab.16° 75 GALLOPIN Guy (Fra) 76 GUYOT Pascal (Fra) ab.4° 77 JOURDAN Christian (Fra) 78 VALLET Bernard (Fra) 79 VANDENBROUCKE Jean-Luc (Bel) 80 VANOVERSCHELDE Didier (Fra)
Great to see Sean Kelly winning the green jersey, and holding yellow for a day, not many in his home country knew of him or what he had already achieved in the continental peloton. Likewise Phil Anderson was a great pioneer for Australian cycling, but he was alone in a French team in 83, we'll never know what could have been.
The dots jersey on the Tourmalet stage day was not given to Van Impe. It was Patrocinio Jimenez who got it, after having beaten Van Impe on the slopes of the Tourmalet.
Agreed, even if it sounds slightly too modern, by comparison. Autobahn might be of the era but it's the little things like recreating traffic (Autobahn) vs rhythmic breathing (Tour de France) that give the latter the edge IMO.
7:29 Strange seeing Phil Anderson with mudguards on his training bike. Sensible though. I bought a new Peugeot Course frame in 1993 and was very impressed at the lungless construction. A pity they stopped manufacturing bicycles in 2003.
Not only that, they were proper, full mudguards, not the little clip on things that you see today. A good mudguard is a courtesy to your fellows on a wet training ride because it keeps the spray out of the face of someone sitting on your wheel.
My dad bought me a Peugeot 753 frame and built it for racing in 1991. It was and still is a beautiful machine. I only ever rode it racing or testing equipment, and it never got crashed. A low mileage frame, with lots of memories.
The day that Pascal Simon attacked and went into yellow was also the day that Robert Millar won the stage, so why was only Simone seen as the bad guy by Anderson?
If it weren't for the fact Lemond was a freak of nature, what happened in this documentary to Anderson could easily have been repeated in 1986. Contrast all this with the TdF 2004 documentary of Jens Voigt where his loyalty was 100% for the team and he didn't hesitate to chase down Jan Ulrich.
I know right , I had to say to many of my friends, boy you need to eat more and get to gym on some upper body. But skinny ones could usually climb well.
And now Paris and other capitals are empty because of a virus!!! Anyway, gonna watch it... This years cycling is over... The Best days of our lives then... Stay safe everyone. Praying things get better.
golden years of cycling for me, got my first racing bike in 1983 though i was a rugby player cycling wasn't my 'sport' as a kid nor into adulthood. We just all cycled back in those days to get places not like the pampered taxi kids of today!
Zoetemelk fails a drug test - and is only given a 10 minute time penalty! That having previously failed drug tests at the 1977 and 1979 tours. Some things do change for the better...
Merckx was also a perennial drug taker, so bad that he got DQ'd three times in big races including Fleche Wallone, Giro and TdF (IIRC) and a fourth at a lesser event. Consider how much he must have been on it to get caught so often in an era of hardly any testing and to get DQ'd in that era he must have been on it at a high level, one wonders why his results were so extraordinary.
@@tonyfranklin8306 Yes, I guess different eras viewed these things differently and you can't look back judgmentally using today's morals. Plus given this was when I first got interested in cycling it's very nostalgic for me. I was a fan of Phil Anderson - but Sean Kelly was (and still is) my all time hero!
@@tonyfranklin8306 though he still maintains he didn't abuse in his career. i read his biography and he says the positive drug tests were a set up because he was so good! but who really knows?
12:00 The age old complaint of pro riders..."arghhh...I have to go out and ride my bike for 5 hours...poor me!" What about the guy that has to work on the factory floor or locked in a cubicle for 8-10 hours, day in, day out?! I've admired many pro riders over the years (including Phil Anderson) but I've never had much sympathy for their complaints of getting paid to do what many of us would do just for the love of it!
Doesn't make it easy though does it. I'm sure the stress and pressure of being a team leader is enough to make most people crack. 5 hours a day on a bike, must be brutal.
You have a point. Bicycle racing in Europe was always a working man's sport. The racers were blue collar guys and so were their fans. It wasn’t until the Tour got commercial media attention that middle-class heroes came along. After a stage win old pro Bartali commented, “It was easier than a day in the fields.”
I'm sure Phil and other Pro riders were aware they were lucky, that doesn't mean it is not sometime a drag to go out for 5 hours day after day after day for training when your feeling tired and its raining and windy outside. Turn any hobby into a job and its no longer a hobby. I can assure you that even as an amateur racer, there is the pressure to train whether you feel like it or not, try doing a years training programme and then tell me it was never a drag.
It's amazing still (as I watched this TdF unfold in real time in '83).... how Peugeot could throw away a podium finish to bolster a Frenchman who didn't stand a chance. That would NEVER happen today. French cycling can be so backwards.
Was always a big fan of Fignon, but Anderson was in an unfortunate situation, maybe Simone was too selfish? It would have been extremely intriguing to make a documentary as to how Fignon won IMHO
Times are different. There's now a lot more money involved, so everything is about winning. Everything. It's always been about winning, but now there's more pressure. Which has sucked the soul out of it. I prefer the 80-90's racing for sure
Peugeot kit and bikes. Best looking ever.
I went to the same school as Phil Anderson. He was a year above me. Nothing rubbed off.
Had the great honor of meeting Anderson while riding to work one morning a few days before the '94 Commonwealth Games in Victoria BC. I was fan-struck. He was very nice, and we rode side by side for a few kms while he asked my thoughts on the course.
takes me back when me and my mate used to watch the tour then go out on our bikes and think we were in the tour ourselves lol
There's nothing like watching tour footage, hitting the road, then watching more when you're back home!
Dylan Standing Alone I prefer the old tour de frances to the modern ones though 👍
It was the same with me, in the 80's I was a amateur ciclist in east Berlin.....good Times....even we had bad Material...
I still do😅
Everything was nicer than today.. the bikes, the apparel, recognizable riders,nice pristine landscapes with undestroyed cities and villages, men riding not boys, and the innocence in the air everywhere. Loved the TI Raleigh team.
Agree
At least the meme's today are better
Men not boys? Anderson is 24, Madiot is 23 and Fignon, the winner, is 22 in this year. Does your bike have toe clips and downtube shifter?
@@trevormorris1208 You kinda have to be old enough to have actually lived pro/am cycling back then to get what he’s saying, watching old race vids on CZcams and GCN commentators riding old bikes doesn’t really explain it all.
@@chrisstrobel3439 I am that old and I did race in the 80s. You can romanticize your era but the idea that they were men then and not now is false. It wasn't an innocent time either. While they didn't have EPO then Kimmage wrote about sticking amphetamines up his butt in the middle of TdF stages.
This kind of well made and thoughtful documentary was typical of the 80s and early 90s. They're extinct now.
Watch the 87 Tour coverage or 87 Paris Roubaix. Storytelling, literary references, compelling (albeit somewhat crafted) storylines. No one cared it was tape delayed. Live coverage now is lame. Might get an eye seizure with all the unnecessary stats and graphics. We have not made cycling more enjoyable to watch.
I was born in 83. Had the same thought. Everything is so dumbed down now.
A flashback to a great era of cycling , thanks 👍🏼
I find I need to mentally slow down to get into the pace of a 1980's documentary but once I'm there, it's a very enjoyable experience.
Back in the day Phil Anderson was well respected in the uk I saw him at the 1982 world rr championships.He was a real trail blazer, showed slot of courage. Along with Piper,Yates,Millar,Graham Jones Kelly,Roche,Greg Lomond Boyer and Early,Kimmage brothers they gave confidence to others to venture over to Europe to have ago.Thank you.
I really enjoyed this documentary! Reminds me of the excellent Jørgen Leth films like "Stars and Water Carriers" and "A Sunday in Hell". thank you for finding and sharing
This film was made by Tim Sullivan who owned a small film company in Adelaide, Australia. Tim Died suddenly early this century and left a widow, Jennifer, and two sons. Copyright to this film does not belong to Classic Cycling, who just posted it because they could.
Wow, written and produced in Adelaide (Australia), what a inspiring and truly well researched film, with amazingly broad film access.. it is a huge achievement from a city so far away from Europe.
We're going to do a remake of this doc this year: "23 Days in late-August and early-September"
1984 • Lemond 3rd
1985 • Lemond 2nd
1986 • Lemond 1st
1987 • Lemond injured
1988 • Lemond injured
1989 • Lemond 1st
1990 • Lemond 1st
Without Doping !!! ... Lemond ... greatest Tour-biker ever
I was 11 years old. Just had got my first Racing bike. Sean Kelly was my first Hero. I still ride a steel frame. Its modern these days mix with carbon. Man those steel frames here are amazing. Cannot help but notice the tyer size. Like 19mm or something. Its what we all had back then lol. I run 32mm these days on Audax runs!
They did not need helmets because 20lb steel bikes with proper geometry don't go 14" offline with every pedal stroke and get blown off the road by gusts.
Love these very informative videos, as a cyclist myself I am in awe when I see the difference in nowadays bikes, amazing really...
I remember those pedals with cleats and straps. Before SPD pedals came out, I rode off road in Alaska with road shoes, cleats, and double straps. I couldn’t stand not being locked in; but it meant I couldn’t get out! It forced me to become a good bike handler. No hike a bikes for me! But I was stoked when clipless pedals came out.
Love all these old cycling videos. The narration, music, personal lives and the scenes all make it very pleasant and relatable to watch. I can only say in amazement of the physiques of the riders decades ago were MORE Athletic with MUSCLE. Unlike today's Cycling Pros who are only skin and bones and pedal 36x32 when these Pros from decades past pedaled a 42x23 or 42x25.
Wout and MDVP have very athletic physiques tbh
This is fantastic!
I was 12. I still remember that year because it was the first year I went to a bike race with my dad and the after Tour criterium in Boxmeer.
Phil Anderson, Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche, Claude Criquielion and others are some that I admire.
Very good, thank you...
Outstanding to see again
Epic! RIP Laurent Fignon.
Yes he was brill.
I love Lemond
But Fignon was a true champion
Thank you for uploading this. I didn't know that Anderson at the time lived in Waregem (Belgium). That's a town some 15 miles from where we live ... Funny to see Anderson cycling in an environment I knew when I was child.
Anderson was one of my heroes around this time, what a sportsman.
Amazing and wonderful movie
Well done also completes for editors
Good ol`days.
Great documentary 👏
Marvelous, great gift ❤
Brilliant vid. . .How things change in 36 years!!!
Simpson. Anderson, Kelly, Lemond, Roche.... all great champions! All led the charge into Europe when it seemed impossible someone not from the Continent could win the TdF.
@Sills71 Newer, English speaking fans of the modern, cosmopolitan world of pro cycling cannot appreciate the momentous shift that occurred in the early 1980's with the influx of non-continental riders into the upper echelons of the sport!
I'm french and I agree with both of you
Don’t forget Millar
And the winner here
Great stuff
beautiful video. thanks for uploading. has a different feel to the other ones.
You're welcome
If you look at the average of the winner of the prologue compared to the last opening time trial it is clear that some things have changed since 1983. 43,7 km/h compared to 51,5 km/h in Kopenhagen last year. I remember riding my club's time trial championship back in 1995 in an average of 42 km/h. I guess that is also the reason why riders are complaining so much about safety these days. There was a study that the speed at a certain amount of watts has increased by 18% since the early 90s due to improvements in material, aerodynamics, and especially training, nutrition, and recovery. Seeing that the riders still ate steak for breakfast in 1983 and used non-indexed shifting and toe-clips.
Great video quality
Merci
great video
When racing and racers looked classic and rode classic machines. No technology advantages, no glasses and helmets hiding their faces and emotions. Just a wonderfully made film about cycling in the early ‘80’s.
I could not agree more. Yeah, yeah, yeah., I know I'll probably be annihilated by the "safety first" folks who would be absolutely mortified that someone isn't horrified to see cyclists riding without helmets.
Yep.. but PURE drugs though 🤣💉
I was born a month later, in august 1983. Amazing how old and antiquated this feels. Love the Kraftwerk soundtrack!
What a enthusiasm among cycling in those days hope these days came back
Kartik Ahlawat It’s unlikely, due to doping.
The first Tour when the colombian cyclists appeared. In my country the expectation was huge despite those cyclist were amateurs. Patrocinio Jimenez wore the red points jersey in the alps but lost it to Lucien Van Impe in the end. In Colombia we could not believe an Australian could be so close to win the tour back in the 80s
The best format.
I recognised a few sound effects borrowed from The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy BBC series... 😄
very good job !!!!
I would love to have any one of those bikes now. I'm a huge steel frame bike fan.
I got my steel bike frame in 1988 to go to College in the USA and I still have and ride it occasionally.
The commentator's voice is almost soothing...
A few days before i was born! Crazy to know that the world existed before my birth...
L’évolution du vélo !
Paul Sherwin at 39:11 RIP Paul a top man and a real gent!
Nice spot! He’s also walking with Phil at just over 32 min. Maybe media support for the team back then?
A capital old fellow if I do say so myself. Capital I say!
That's not Paul Sherwen! He was a rider then with the La Redoute team. He rode his last Tour in 1985 and started commentating on it in 1986.
@@BadgerPat It's not Paul Sherwen. He was still riding then.
@@mattblythe3097 It is Paul Sherwen. He didn't ride the Tour in 1983. The La Redoute team that year was:
71 ALBAN Robert (Fra)
72 BIONDI Laurent (Fra)
73 DE MUYNCK Johan (Bel) ab.13°
74 DE WILDE Etienne (Bel) ab.16°
75 GALLOPIN Guy (Fra)
76 GUYOT Pascal (Fra) ab.4°
77 JOURDAN Christian (Fra)
78 VALLET Bernard (Fra)
79 VANDENBROUCKE Jean-Luc (Bel)
80 VANOVERSCHELDE Didier (Fra)
thank you for this ! I had never heard of Anderson. Reminds me of the story of an explorer.
j en Have been living under a rock?
Great to see Sean Kelly winning the green jersey, and holding yellow for a day, not many in his home country knew of him or what he had already achieved in the continental peloton. Likewise Phil Anderson was a great pioneer for Australian cycling, but he was alone in a French team in 83, we'll never know what could have been.
The dots jersey on the Tourmalet stage day was not given to Van Impe. It was Patrocinio Jimenez who got it, after having beaten Van Impe on the slopes of the Tourmalet.
Try watch this video and, in the other window, listen Kraftwerk's "Autobahn". The sounds and images connect perfectly.
Surely tour de france would be better?
Agreed, even if it sounds slightly too modern, by comparison. Autobahn might be of the era but it's the little things like recreating traffic (Autobahn) vs rhythmic breathing (Tour de France) that give the latter the edge IMO.
@@C345OFR wow, we have a man with good and lovely taste
@@michaelx9079 may be
Phil, checking his stage map. No team radio. Riders had to figure out their tactics on the road. Simpler times.
Classic Retro cycling is the best.....i have ridden a bike since 1957, and am still going...62 years of cycling.....I have never worn a helmet....
Well, there's always that first time....
@unitedwestand because a helmet is completely useless "on today's roads", unless you have a quantum physics impossible helmet.
@@josephfarrugia2350 hitting a pothole will show you different
Or a car door opening on you're while flying along
@@denverspin I got 'doored' twice in NYC, got a scraped arm but no danger to my noggin.
"All For One" is also a good cycling doco.
The masseuse has his shirt off as well 😂
That was a masseur.
No A/C in Europe in those days
good old days-🚴🏽💦
Like a whole different world, a whole different race, France in 1983.
I agree. I got my first real road bike in those days... a Benotto for my 14th birthday ... this video brings back a lot of memories
Don't forget every year Bastille Day on the 14th July, Paris is pretty closed also.
7:29 Strange seeing Phil Anderson with mudguards on his training bike. Sensible though. I bought a new Peugeot Course frame in 1993 and was very impressed at the lungless construction. A pity they stopped manufacturing bicycles in 2003.
Not only that, they were proper, full mudguards, not the little clip on things that you see today. A good mudguard is a courtesy to your fellows on a wet training ride because it keeps the spray out of the face of someone sitting on your wheel.
My dad bought me a Peugeot 753 frame and built it for racing in 1991.
It was and still is a beautiful machine.
I only ever rode it racing or testing equipment, and it never got crashed. A low mileage frame, with lots of memories.
About the year i got into cycling and the sport.
Steaks for breakfast, tiny cassettes, chrome toe clips...
Steel, not %$#@! plastic. No soy boys. No beards. No tattoos.
Still the greatest sporting event on the planet.
There are two bigger sporting events The football(soccer) world cup 4,1 billion fans and The Cricket world cup 1,8 billion fans.
The day that Pascal Simon attacked and went into yellow was also the day that Robert Millar won the stage, so why was only Simone seen as the bad guy by Anderson?
For 2022 and beyond: America must get up to the front and WIN!!!
Crazy to see how close people were allowed to stand at the finish line and nearly get run over by the riders.
I was a big fan of Phil
If it weren't for the fact Lemond was a freak of nature, what happened in this documentary to Anderson could easily have been repeated in 1986. Contrast all this with the TdF 2004 documentary of Jens Voigt where his loyalty was 100% for the team and he didn't hesitate to chase down Jan Ulrich.
And I find it boring to ride 50km alone ..... I need to watch more videos like this and pull my head outta my arse
Funny that oil company (Shell) is sponsoring cycling.
YPO6 you could say the same about INIOS today, or even the UAE and Bahrain as their economies depend on oil.
It was quite often car and fuel companies.. bp, peugeot, etc, I always found that ironic
1:29, no radios. Riders had to actually know what they were doing on the fly.
2011 Cadel Evans Australia. Tour de France winner
wonder how good Phil would have been had he received the full support of his team?
wow, can't believe they did eat steak in the morning for prep
they still had arms! (not sticks)
I know right , I had to say to many of my friends, boy you need to eat more and get to gym on some upper body. But skinny ones could usually climb well.
Failed a dope test and penalized 10 minutes.
😂😂😂😂
Joop!
A true Aussie perspective
When did the pro's begin riding with carbon components and/or clipless pedals? I noticed perforated leather cycling shoes!
Look PP65 pedal was released in 1984 and Hinault was using them to win the TdF in 1985.
29:40 those look like pretty big tyres for the time
I came here for the music.
Oh French cycling greats..we knew you well
I prefer my masseuse to keep his shirt on.
good training, loosing some watts with that squeecky chain. lubing it before the race and it feels like you're flying
And now Paris and other capitals are empty because of a virus!!! Anyway, gonna watch it... This years cycling is over... The Best days of our lives then... Stay safe everyone. Praying things get better.
It's all bullshit do not comply with tyranny
@2:31 weird 80's generic music, im pumped to watch the vid now.
golden years of cycling for me, got my first racing bike in 1983 though i was a rugby player cycling wasn't my 'sport' as a kid nor into adulthood.
We just all cycled back in those days to get places not like the pampered taxi kids of today!
Keep riding, bro
Zoetemelk fails a drug test - and is only given a 10 minute time penalty! That having previously failed drug tests at the 1977 and 1979 tours. Some things do change for the better...
Merckx was also a perennial drug taker, so bad that he got DQ'd three times in big races including Fleche Wallone, Giro and TdF (IIRC) and a fourth at a lesser event. Consider how much he must have been on it to get caught so often in an era of hardly any testing and to get DQ'd in that era he must have been on it at a high level, one wonders why his results were so extraordinary.
@@tonyfranklin8306 Yes, I guess different eras viewed these things differently and you can't look back judgmentally using today's morals. Plus given this was when I first got interested in cycling it's very nostalgic for me. I was a fan of Phil Anderson - but Sean Kelly was (and still is) my all time hero!
@@tonyfranklin8306 though he still maintains he didn't abuse in his career. i read his biography and he says the positive drug tests were a set up because he was so good! but who really knows?
It's been happening forever and will continue, in all sports, at some level.
12:00 The age old complaint of pro riders..."arghhh...I have to go out and ride my bike for 5 hours...poor me!" What about the guy that has to work on the factory floor or locked in a cubicle for 8-10 hours, day in, day out?! I've admired many pro riders over the years (including Phil Anderson) but I've never had much sympathy for their complaints of getting paid to do what many of us would do just for the love of it!
Doesn't make it easy though does it. I'm sure the stress and pressure of being a team leader is enough to make most people crack. 5 hours a day on a bike, must be brutal.
I've always said, no matter how much you love something...when it becomes your job, it becomes a job.
A job is a job, they are workers after all, just better paid. (Cyclists at that time were underpaid tbh before LeMond).
You have a point. Bicycle racing in Europe was always a working man's sport. The racers were blue collar guys and so were their fans. It wasn’t until the Tour got commercial media attention that middle-class heroes came along. After a stage win old pro Bartali commented, “It was easier than a day in the fields.”
I'm sure Phil and other Pro riders were aware they were lucky, that doesn't mean it is not sometime a drag to go out for 5 hours day after day after day for training when your feeling tired and its raining and windy outside. Turn any hobby into a job and its no longer a hobby. I can assure you that even as an amateur racer, there is the pressure to train whether you feel like it or not, try doing a years training programme and then tell me it was never a drag.
Cycling in mallorca
I keep thinking he looks like Benedict Cumberbatch
6.25 looks the first time either of them have ever kissed anyone in their lives.
It's amazing still (as I watched this TdF unfold in real time in '83).... how Peugeot could throw away a podium finish to bolster a Frenchman who didn't stand a chance. That would NEVER happen today. French cycling can be so backwards.
I'm the operator with my pocket calculator
Is Phil Liggett naive or duplicitous ? Never heard him mention doping.
Was always a big fan of Fignon, but Anderson was in an unfortunate situation, maybe Simone was too selfish? It would have been extremely intriguing to make a documentary as to how Fignon won IMHO
1983
;)
02:53 music is?
Generic synthesiser music
My peugeot is a 1983 🥲
This era makes me realise how the Sky team approach is so BORING, including their hideous black strip.
Times are different.
There's now a lot more money involved, so everything is about winning. Everything.
It's always been about winning, but now there's more pressure. Which has sucked the soul out of it.
I prefer the 80-90's racing for sure