By: Alan D. Fischer

Arizona bicycle road racing has changed a lot during its long and colorful history. Items that would be considered antiquities today, like wool shorts and jerseys, leather hairnet helmets, toe straps and bikes with only 10 gears (no indexing, of course) were good enough to use, and good enough to win with back then.

After losing much of its popularity to the motor car, bike racing began to return after World War II in scattered areas of the country. The sport migrated here from other areas as participants moved to the state. The University of Arizona, which attracted students from across the nation, was a fertile ground for racers to get together and train.

Two of the earliest Arizona clubs were the Phoenix Comsumers' Cycle Club and the Tucson Wheelmen. They were the fertile soil from which the sport germinated and grew.

The first recorded bicycle race in the modern area was April 28, 1968 when a handful of racers from Phoenix and Tucson tackled the climb of Mt. Lemmon north of Tucson. Mike Keller won the climb with a time of 2 hours, 20 minutes for the 31-mile event. Karl Broberg finished second, 10 minutes behind. The event was stopped by local law enforcement officials not used to seeing packs of cyclists on the roads. The race was stopped and riders were admonished to ride single file up the climb, with no passing allowed. But after the officers left, racing resumed.

After the inaugural Mt. Lemmon event, races gradually became more plentiful. A strong Phoenix vs. Tucson rivalry developed, as the riders duked it out each weekend.

Arizonans developed a reputation as strong climbers. The Iron Horse Classic which climbs Coal Bank and Molas Passes between Durango and Silverton, Colorado, has seen numerous Arizona victors. John Timbers and Louella Holter won two each, and Bob Cook and Tom Sain, who were Arizona residents for a while, also won the event. Mark Wilson won the Senior 1-II event at California's San Gabriel Hill Climb as a junior. And Cook was strong in several editions of the Red Zinger, which later became the Coors Classic.

Along with the Mt. Lemmon Hill Climb, another challenging climbing events was the Mining Country Classic, which included three long mountains in its 93 mile circuit through Miami, Superior and Globe. Even though the event attracted top fields from the west, Arizona riders, like Tom Nesdill, frequently won.

The prize jewel of Arizona racing has been La Vuelta de Bisbee. Growing from a point to point road race from Tucson to Bisbee, the race has grown to one of the nation's top stage races. John Timbers was instrumental in the development of the race, and many others have worked hard to make it what it is today.

A skinny blond 16-year-old kid named Greg LeMond won the race in 1978, spankling the best that American cycling had to offer and denying Bob Cook a repeat of his win a year before. The stage race started out humbly, with a time trial, road race, and flat criterium in Warren Park. Quite a difference from the five-day extravaganza we see today.

Arizona also hosted the national championships in 1980. The road race was brutal, covering about two-thirds of the steep uphill La Vuelta prologue before plunging back down into town on the highway. The only flat part was about 50 meters entering the finish area. Only a handful of riders finished, as Dale Stetina and Beth Heiden won the senior titles. Heiden and Tom Doughty won the senior time trial jerseys. Local favorite and Bisbee resident Tom Sain was favored in the time trial, but a mechanical ruined his chances. In the team time trial event, Arizona placed third. Tom Sain anchored the team, and Doug Brawley, Ross Potoff and Bob Reis aided in the bronze medal effort. Sain got sick and was unable to contest the road race in front of his fans.

Arizona also hosted an international women's race in 1978 that attracted some of the world's best cyclists to Tucson. The event itself was a huge success, but experienced sponsorship problems in the form of a lack of funds to pay a big airline bill for bringing the riders across the Atlantic. The ensuing legal hassles pretty much ended the Tucson Wheelmen for several years until it was later revived by Andy Gilmour.

Currenty Olympian Kent Bostick began his racing career while attending graduate school at the University of Arizona. In his early racing days his mechanical abilities did not match is physical ones, and he regularly experienced bike problems like having his bottom bracket fall out.

Family support was common and important in the early days. Families would load up the car with bikes and go to the races. Mark and Tim Wilson, Mike and Tom Nesdill, and Barry and Brian Smith, were all dominant riders both locally and beyond.

The sport has grown dramatically from the time when Tom Kelly, a legendary fixture in the early days, said he knew everyone in Tucson with a 10-speed and a pair of black shorts. Today people enter the sport, try a few races and drop out. There is very little of the continuity, and sense of community, Arizona cycling once enjoyed.