ROLLING ALONG : U.S. Female Cyclists Gain Support in What Has Been Uphill Race

BOULDER, Colo. — When Connie Carpenter and Rebecca Twigg crossed the finish line together in the 1984 Summer Olympics at Mission Viejo, it was expected to ignite a renaissance in U.S. women’s cycling.

Instead, it ignited a fire in Jeannie Longo, a 28-year-old French rider.

Longo was in the six-rider sprint near the end of the Olympic road race, but just as she started her challenge--less than 100 meters from the finish--her bike’s chain broke.

“At that point Jeannie was at the crossroads,” Carpenter said here while working as a TV commentator at the Coors International bicycle race --an event she won three times.

“She could have retired (as Carpenter did) and perhaps wondered what might have happened had her chain not broken, or she could do what she did, totally focus on becoming the best rider in the world.”

Longo is such a standout--world road racing champion, Tour de France winner and about to become the first, male or female, to win the Coors three years in a row--that she makes the next level of competitors look almost mediocre.

Carpenter’s record three wins were not in succession, coming in 1977, 1981 and 1982.

“We (the United States) have some good women riders coming along for the Olympics in Seoul, but you don’t see their names in headlines because it’s always Longo,” Carpenter said. Longo, who works as a publicist for the City of Grenoble, was named French athlete of the year after her 1986 season, and the balloting included male athletes.

She has won three stages and finished second in three others. Only once has she finished worse than sixth.

Her rivals call her Madame Cannibal.

“Sometimes it takes such a high level of disappointment to motivate someone the way it has Jeannie,” Carpenter said. “Nothing seems to make her complacent. She won the world championship and then trained harder than she ever had before for the Tour de France. She looks like she lost 15 pounds and is physically at her peak.

“She has improved every year when it wasn’t necessary. It’s as if she has something to prove to the world. Now we will see if her dedication can last another year (through Seoul).”

Longo believes it can.

“I thought last year I was at my peak,” she said. “But I am better this year. I have more maturity since I married (cycling coach Patrice Ciprenni), and I feel I get more from my training.

“I love to train, and I hope to do more and more of it before next year.”

Of the U.S. cyclists, the logical Olympic candidates are Rebecca Twigg-Whitehead, who won both the road race and time trial at the Pan American Games in Indianapolis, and Inga Benedict, the surprise member of the ’84 team after becoming a cyclist only a year earlier.

“Inga has the most potential, but she doesn’t seem to have the motivation it takes to sacrifice everything else,” Carpenter said. “She improved in 1985 and 1986 but seems to have leveled off.

“Rebecca has had health problems and was hurt pretty badly in an accident, but of all the U.S. girls, she cannot be discounted because she is such a competitor. I certainly wouldn’t count her out at Seoul.”

Twigg-Whitehead flew from Indianapolis barely in time to make the start of the first race Aug. 15 in Grand Junction, Colo.

“Until today I thought Rebecca was pacing herself for the world championships next month, but not now,” Carpenter said Saturday. “I knew she wanted another world pursuit championship, but today she looked like she’s ready for the road race, too.”

The Olympic silver medalist won Saturday’s 53-mile Morgul-Bismarck road race, most trying of the 10 women’s stages. She won with a long uphill sprint that buried challengers Bunki Bankaitis-Davis and Susan Ehlers.

Tricia Walters, a 17-year-old from Santa Rosa, Calif., is one Carpenter tabs as a sleeper for the Olympic team.

Walters is a candidate for the turquoise jersey that goes to the event’s best young rider.

“Kristin Tobin is another girl bearing watching,” Carpenter said. “She started as a downhill skier, the same way Jeannie (Longo) did and last year she won the national road race championship.”

Unlike the men’s competition here, which is watered down considerably from past years, the women’s Coors has a world-class field. The only reason it might not seem that way is Longo’s domination.

Benedict is second behind Longo, but only because Maria Canins of Italy was forced out of competition Friday. Canins, 38, the 1984 Coors winner and a former Tour de France champion, broke her collarbone in a four-rider spill during the rainy Denver Tivoli criterium.

“What a pity to see her hurt like that,” Longo said. “I know Maria would have been my best competition in the world championships.”

The world road racing championships will be Sept. 6 in Austria.

Carpenter, who is married to Davis Phinney, one of the world’s best professional riders, retired after becoming the first U.S. cyclist to win an Olympic gold medal. Thus ended an international athletic career that began in 1972 when she was 14 and a member of the U.S. speed skating team at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan.

Now she is busy trying to build a cadre of women riders who can continue her legacy.

“When Rebecca and I finished one-two in L.A., the women’s cycling movement should have taken off, but the USCF (United States Cycling Federation) missed the boat,” she said. “They didn’t capitalize on our performances at all.

“The USCF has a new director now in Jerry Lace, who should do a lot of good for the sport. And for the first time, the women have some financial backing of their own.”

That’s where Carpenter comes in. As a member of Team Nabisco, a group of athletes and former athletes such as Jack Nicklaus, Frank Gifford and Reggie Jackson who serve as ambassadors for the company, Carpenter recruited Del Monte Fresh Fruit, a Nabisco subsidiary, to sponsor the women’s national team, and to finance a recruiting program to get women involved.

“The sport has been growing despite itself,” she said. “When I was racing, the women had no support. Now we have our own national coach, a support system to take care of racing expenses and the future looks strong.

“Jeannie has put the fear in other women riders, but that will pass.”

How would Connie Carpenter, at 30, do against Longo today?

A smile swept across her freckled face as she pondered the possibility.

“Who can say,” she answered. “When we raced, I usually beat her, but she was always the one I feared most. In the Olympics, it was Jeannie I keyed on before her accident.

“It would be interesting, but right now I’d rather enjoy watching the way my husband is improving than ride myself. I really don’t miss racing.

“There is nothing in life that duplicates what you did in your athletic life, but I’m lucky to stay close to the sport, both professionally and as a wife.”

Phinney, a member of the 7-Eleven team that is dominating this year’s Coors race, finished fifth in the men’s Olympic road race and won a bronze medal as a member of the U.S. time trial team. After the Games he turned professional.

Last year when he won the 133-mile race from Levallois Perret to Lievin in the Tour de France, he became the first U.S. rider to win a road race in world’s premier cycling event.

Last July 12, in a 144-mile road race from Brive-la-Gaillarde to Bourdeaux, he scored his second Tour de France win.

“Isn’t it funny, Davis has never won a Coors road race in 10 years and he wins two in France,” Carpenter said.

Phinney, however, is the biggest medal winner in Coors history, having finished first, second or third in 33 races since his first victory in 1979. A native of Boulder, the first race he saw was a criterium around North Boulder Park in 1975, the final event of the inaugural Red Zinger--as the Coors race was known for its first five years.

The criterium--a multi-lap race on a relatively flat course usually a mile or less in length that favors a sprinter--became Phinney’s specialty. Sixteen of his near-record 17 Coors victories have been in criteriums. He scored his 17th this year in Aspen, in a 60-mile circuit race through the streets of the Colorado ski resort community. It was sort of stretched-out criterium.

One more win would put Phinney in a tie with his wife for most Coors wins at 18.

Surprisingly, this year he has not won a criterium. Three times he has finished second, to Alan McCormack of Ireland in Hilo, Andreas Kappes of Germany in Sacramento, and Paolo Rosola of Italy in Vail.

“Davis has worked so hard on his climbing to compete in Europe that it seems he’s lost a little snap in his sprint,” analyzed his wife. “I know it frustrates him, not being able to win in front of all his hometown friends.”

The Phinneys, when Davis isn’t racing or Connie isn’t on a goodwill tour for women’s cycling, run a training camp for cyclists at Copper Mountain.

“It’s for serious riders, and we had to limit the number to 50,” Carpenter said. “We turned away nearly as many. We had quite a spread in age, from 13 to 52.”

Phinney will get his last chance to catch his wife in Coors victories today in North Boulder Park, a race he has won twice.

“I’ll be rooting for him,” Connie said.