Cyclopedia (37 page)

RACE ACROSS AMERICA
Iconic long-distance event run from the West Coast of the UNITED STATES to the East, founded in 1982 as the Great American Bike Race. That event was run from Santa Monica to the Empire State Building, had just four entrants, and was won by Lon Haldeman in 9 days, 20 hours, 2 minutes, at an average of 12.57 mph, a far cry from the first crossing of the US in 1887, when the journalist George Nellis took just under 80 days on a HIGH-WHEELER.

The RAAM is not run in stages, but instead the clock runs continuously as on a RECORD attempt such as the END TO END, making it a battle against sleep deprivation as well as a test of cycling stamina. Sometimes up to half the solo racers pull out due to exhaustion. As in record attempts, the cyclists have support teams traveling with them; at night they must be accompanied by a vehicle with flashing lights for safety reasons.

The race is divided into solo and team categories, with teams of up to eight riders permitted, each man racing a separate leg while the others rest. The relay teams average over 500 miles per day and have gotten the record down to six or seven days although the solo category remains the most prestigious. In 1989 teams of RECUMBENT cycles entered. Entrants must be members of the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association and must have ridden a set number of qualifying events.

Because the course varies from year to year—although it is always run west to east—RAAM records are measured in average speed, not time. The fastest average is by Pete Penseyres in 1986, 15.4 mph for 3,107 miles; the women's record was set by Seana Hogan (1995), 13.23 mph for 2,912 miles.

 

(SEE
PARIS–BREST–PARIS
AND
RAID PYRENEAN
FOR THE MOST LEGENDARY LONG-DISTANCE EVENTS IN EUROPE)

RADIOS
Since the late 1990s, team managers and riders in professional races have used small radios for communication; the rider carries a transmitter/ receiver in the back pocket of his jersey connected to an earpiece/ microphone while the manager has a microphone and receiver in the car. If the race is being televised live, the manager or mechanic will have a small-screen
TV in the car so that he can observe the race in real time and issue instructions—time gaps on a break, when to chase a break or get across to an attack—as the action happens. The radios are also used to warn riders of obstacles such as traffic islands and dangerous corners, while a sprinter such as MARK CAVENDISH will be advised on conditions close to the finish; riders will use the system to tell the manager if they need service, for example after a crash or puncture.

The system originated in the US and was brought to Europe by GREG LEMOND in 1991. The Motorola team of SEAN YATES, PHIL ANDERSON, and LANCE ARMSTRONG was the first squad to use it from 1994 onwards. Previously, communication between riders and team staff was minimal. The managers would rely on Radio Tour—the internal radio system used by most major races—while the riders would watch for a blackboard carried by a motorcycle marshal, on which was written information such as a break's time gap and the numbers of the riders in a move. To give instructions to his riders, the manager would have to wait for one of them to call him to the back of the bunch—for example to collect bottles—or he would have to drive up to the bunch and find them.

There is some debate about the use of the radios, as opponents claim it gives the managers too much influence over tactics and the riders are mere pawns. In particular, it is said that attacking racing is impossible, because teams can react so quickly to threatening moves. To encourage riders to use their initiative, the UCI banned radios in under-23 races. At the 2009 TOUR DE FRANCE, the organizers attempted to run two stages without radios being used, but were stymied when riders did not race, apparently in protest. The UCI decided at the end of 2009 that it would phase out the devices' use, but did not give a timescale and it seems that a battle with the teams might well be in prospect.

 

RAID PYRENEAN
An informal challenge for the fit cyclist that takes in all the major passes in the PYRENÉES and has been going since 1952. The 713 km route from Hendaye on the Atlantic to Cerbère on the Mediterranean is pre-set, includes 11,000 m of climbing and has to be covered within a time limit of 100 hours. There is a window when it can be done, between June and September, when the highest passes are free of snow.

Cyclists wishing to tackle the Raid have to acquire pass books (
brevets
) from the organizing club, CC Béarnais, in the town of Pau. They supply accommodation info and numbered bike tags, as well as medals for those completing the course. The books are stamped at overnight stops, while there may be informal checkpoints along the way. The Raid can be tackled independently, although there are also package companies that will arrange the trip.

The Alpine equivalents, the Raids Alpine (see ALPS) are longer, tougher, and less popular. Other less well-known raids include Calais–Brindisi and Paris–Gibraltar while France has nine “diagonals” connecting the extremes of the country, starting or finishing in Brest, Strasbourg, Perpignan, Dunkirk, Menton, and Hendaye.

RALEIGH
One of the world's most celebrated bike makers, once the biggest in the world. Its world-famous “heron” frame badge once graced an industry leader, sturdy roadsters ridden worldwide, and a TOUR DE FRANCE winner.

The company began in 1886 on Raleigh Street in Nottingham, England, in a small workshop that made three safety bicycles a week; local lawyer Frank Bowden bought the operation and founded the Raleigh Cycle Company in 1888. One of Raleigh's earliest stars was the great American track cyclist A. A. ZIMMERMAN.

Apart from a brief spell as a public company it remained in the Bowden family until 1934, making cycles, Sturmey Archer hub gears—patented in 1902—motorcycles, and motorbike gear boxes. By the 1920s the company was making 3,000 cycles per week.

It flirted with making a three-wheel car but by 1938 was solely a bike company turning out half a million bikes a year. Production was over a million in 1951, at the zenith of the British cycle industry, but business went rapidly downhill in the 1950s as the car gained in popularity. A series of mergers, including Raleigh's own takeover by the Tube Investments Group, brought other famous British cycle and motorcycle names such as BSA, Triumph, Sunbeam, and Hercules under the Raleigh banner.

The 1960s saw attempts at
collaboration with SIR ALEX MOULTON to produce small-wheel bikes, after Moulton's invention had revitalized the market. From 1965 Raleigh competed with its own small-wheeler, the RSW16, with a massively expensive publicity campaign. The war with Moulton ended when Raleigh bought its competitor out. With two hugely successful models, the Chopper, an iconic kids' bike, and the Twenty, a small-wheel shopping bike, the 1970s saw the company boom again. Raleigh profited from a massive increase in the market in the UNITED STATES and had other overseas operations including the Gazelle company in Holland and large sales of classic old roadsters across the former British empire. By 1975 its site in Nottingham covered 75 acres.

In Europe, Raleigh sponsored the most successful professional team of the late 1970s and early 1980s, managed by the Dutchman Peter Post but barely ever including more than one British cyclist in its lineup. Post brought the company world titles in 1978 and 1979 and the Tour de France title with Joop Zoetemelk in 1980, with 77 stage wins in the Tour between 1976 and 1983.

Raleigh had largely abandoned high-end racing bikes at the end of the 1950s, producing them in the 1960s through the Carlton brand then changing tack to its own lightweight department, which never truly flourished. Along with much of British manufacturing, Raleigh suffered in the 1980s when the British cycle market expanded but mainly on the back of imported machines and the sudden craze for BMX; Raleigh was hit by imports—its image simply wasn't glamorous, and its products seemed backward—while the BMX boom was shortlived. Market share plummeted, component manufacture gradually ceased, jobs were slashed, and the company was sold in 1987 to Derby International, a specially created parent company. Initially, Raleigh flourished
again, as the market grew after the arrival of the MOUNTAIN BIKE, thanks in part to a highly successful off-road team led by stars such as the glamorous Caroline Alexander and a high-end range of mountain-bikes under the M-Trax label. Derby expanded to buy a string of cycle makers, most notably US mountain-bike company Diamondback.

In the early 1990s, Raleigh devised the first hybrid bike, the Pioneer, which used mountainbike technology adapted for solely on-road use, to get away from the exclusive image of racing bikes. The company also experimented with suspension at the inexpensive end of the market, something that is ubiquitous today, and produced an early electric bike, the Select, in 1997.