| Unquestionably the largest cycling
event to ever grace Northern California, and possibly the entire
West Coast, took place on September 9th, 2001, with the first
annual San Francisco Grand Prix. With the huge attraction of
Lance Armstrong, competing on US soil for the first time in a
couple years, it was almost guaranteed to be a crowd
pleaser. But fortunately, the crowds were there for much
more than just Lance, and cheered enthusiastically for every
single rider on the course, every single time they went by.
Who knows, cycling just could catch on! |
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| 8:27am Half an hour before the first-ever San
Francisco Grand Prix, and US Postal's George Hincapie signs in for
the day. |
9:04am The race begins, on time and with huge
crowds to see the riders off! The gray skies would give way
to sunshine a couple hours later. |
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| 9:09am Within moments of the riders
passing on the first lap, waves of spectators headed out for the
hills! You'll see why just a bit further down the page. |
9:22am KGO showed the entire race live, all
5 1/2 hours of it! In fact, if I wanted to know what was
going on while prowling the course, I used the cell phone to call
home, where the family was watching. |
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| 9:44am Is that "The
Bone's" (KSAN) Steven Seaweed passing out religious
tracts? Well, it's Steven Seaweed all right, but he's
passing out sponsor tickets for the Lance Armstrong Foundation's
Peloton Project. |
10:16am US Postal has a job to do, as the Saturn
team, led by Trent Klasna, has quite a break off the front, at
this point leading by about 2 minutes. Not a good thing when
you want one of your own to win the race. Here you can see
the 'Posties taking charge of the chase. |
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| 10:17am Michael Mayer, the point-man for the
TREK/ USPS connection, is explaining USPS strategy for the race to
Chain Reaction's Steve Jacoubowsky (and his son Ed). Michael
definitely had the inside track. |
That's Lance on the left, still working to
motivate the pack the catch the breakaway. Lance, it turns
out, has been ill for the past week, and wasn't expected to be
able to complete the race. But he did have a job to do. |
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| 11:28 & 11:56am Here's what
kept Lance and the postal guys busy! On the left you see the
3-man breakaway, with Michael Sayers (Mercury, #15), Eric Wohlberg
(Saturn, #30) and Trent Klasna (Saturn, #25). Klasna's the
big threat here, as he pretty much rules the east-coast racing
circuit. On the right you find a "chase" group
dominated by more Saturn riders, along with USPS's Lance
Armstrong, Viatcheslav Ekimov and George Hincapie. Armstrong
and Ekimov's job is to get Hincapie to the front group, while
trying to keep more Saturn riders from joining it. Not an
easy task! |
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| 12:17pm Did you hear about the
Fillmore Street hill? Have you seen grown men cry?
Well, check out the photo on the right, taken from one of the
Mavic support vehicles that Steve was able to land a ride in. Yes, they're riding back & forth across the road in
order to get up the hill. Never thought you'd see Pro riders
do that, did you? Never thought you'd see crowds like that
in the US either! |
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| 12:18pm Anyone seen the movie Bullitt? Here
Steve and his son Ed are about to be treated to a re-enactment of
the famous chase scene (where the car flies over each bump and
becomes airborne). |
12:22pm The climbing's not over
yet! And look at these crowds, miles from the finish
line. Is it any wonder this race's field started splitting
up early? |
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| 12:22pm Meanwhile, your
foot-bound observer catches the remnants of the chase group, where
Armstrong (who's now dropped out) and Ekimov have succeeded in
getting George Hincapie launched up to the leaders. On the
right is our final view from the Mavic support vehicle, which is
nearing the start/finish line. |
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| 1:42pm One of many splintered packs out on
the course, wishing they were up there with... |
1:55pm ...George Hincapie, leading Trent Klasna
through the corner just past the start/finish line. |
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| 2:09pm Next lap through and we no longer
have Michael Sayers in the lead group, just George and his Saturn
"friends", Klasna & Wohlberg. |
2:10pm Our leaders have rounded the bend at the
bottom of the course and have back towards the start /finish line
again. As you can tell, a beautiful day! |
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| 2:24pm And just how do you view
the end of a big race, with a couple hundred thousand of your
closest friends around you? Well, either you don't, or you
try to find a spot where you can watch the finish on the
big-screen TV they've set up just before the finish line.
There's an old saying that the best place to watch a bike race
from is a TV, not in person, and there's something to that.
On the other hand, nothing compares to the experience of actually
being there (or the weirdness of being there and calling home on
the cell phone to find out what's going on!).
If you hadn't heard, George Hincapie made what,
at the time, looked like either a brilliant or absolutely stupid
move, taking off on the last hill and ditching his two Saturn
companions. The problem with such a move, when there's a
mile or two left in the race, is that your competitors can work
together and chase you down, unless you're feeling super human or
they're on their last legs. A combination of the two is
probably what did the trick, and George brought home a very nice
victory his team (US Postal) and their most appreciative sponsor,
TREK bicycles! And, for those who need to know such things,
George is still riding a stock 5500 OCLV 120 frameset. |
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| Now for the strange stuff. Yes,
that's someone's leg and shoulder that had been tattooed prior to
the race. She's apparently a Chain Reaction Los Altos
customer... nobody from Redwood City would do something like
that! Well, actually, someone suggested that I probably did,
in fact, have a TREK tattoo on my butt... (but I'm not the kind
that tells!). |
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| That's US Postal racer Christian Vande Velde in
the center, listening to Steve J tell some tall tale about a race
he never rode in. Actually, I made that up, but it could
be true! |
Whoa! We just got in trouble with our
"G" web rating, didn't we? This woman didn't have
a program (or apparently anything else) to get autographs on, so
she started collecting them... on herself! |
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| To tell you the truth, Christian
really didn't seem to mind. Not at all. In fact, it
seemed like he'd been down this road before. Check
here for a close-up inspection of his handiwork! |
You want to know the easiest way to park close to
the action? Definitely a motorcycle! I managed to park
about 100 feet from the start/finish line, arriving there about 45
minutes before the start. People taking BART in fared
equally well, although those taking the train arrived about half
an hour late. --Mike-- |
