Cyclist
Pro race history: Connie Carpenter-Phinney wins the first women’s Olympic road race in 1984
At 4.38pm on 28th July 1984, 110 trumpeters and 20 drummers struck up the opening bars of composer John Williams’ ‘Fanfare Olympique’. Watching on were 92,000 spectators who had crammed into the Memorial Coliseum stadium in Los Angeles for the opening ceremony of what was officially called the Games of the 23rd Olympiad.
‘As soon as the notes of the Olympic theme faded, five skywriting airplanes began forming 2,000-foot letters and spelled out the word “welcome”,’ stated the organising committee’s official report. ‘Flower girls then passed out flowers with multi-language greetings of welcome written on the attached ribbons, and a man with “welcome” written on his back and powered by a rocket belt flew into the stadium and landed on the field.’
Among those being welcomed to the Olympic Games for the first time were female cyclists. Less than 24 hours after President Reagan had proclaimed the Games open and the Olympic flame had been lit, 45 riders lined up for the start of the Olympics’ first women’s cycling race. Five laps of a hilly 16km circuit lay ahead of them. It was to be a day when Olympic history would truly be written.
Included in the field were two Americans who had dominated much of the pre-race talk. Rebecca Twigg and Connie Carpenter-Phinney had raced against each other in the build-up to the race, with Twigg twice beating Carpenter-Phinney in Olympic trials. Twigg was 21 years old and portrayed as the up-and-coming star in comparison to the 27-year-old Carpenter-Phinney.
‘The world’s press has made this event a personal duel between the two Americans – the ageing veteran who for years reigned supreme, and the newcomer who many predicted would win the Olympic gold medal,’ the narrator of the 1985 documentary 16 Days of Glory reported over footage of the pair getting ready for the race.
While this may have been the first time female cyclists were taking part in the Olympics, it was actually Carpenter-Phinney’s second Games, having placed seventh in speed skating at the 1972 Winter Olympics at the age of just 14.
‘I grew up in Wisconsin across the street from a playground that flooded [and then froze] during the winter,’ Carpenter-Phinney told TrainingPeaks CoachCast host Dirk Friel in 2021. ‘We ran across the street when the lights came on and skated our winters away.’
An ankle injury in early 1976 forced a switch to cycling, with Carpenter-Phinney claiming the road National Championships later that same year. By the time of the 1984 Olympics, she had four national road race titles to her name as well as a Pursuit World Championships gold medal.
Two decades of lobbying
Three years before the Los Angeles Olympics, Carpenter-Phinney thought she was done with cycling. She had graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in physical education and was seeking to focus on her career. However in July 1980, following a landmark vote at the 83rd International Olympic Committee (IOC) Congress, it was announced that a women’s road race would finally feature in the Olympics at the 1984 Games, prompting Carpenter-Phinney to rethink hanging up her wheels.
‘Davis [Phinney, a professional cyclist and Carpenter-Phinney’s husband] actually told me I hadn’t yet lived up to my potential as a cyclist,’ Carpenter-Phinney told Friel in 2021. ‘There were so many corporate sponsors coming into sports like cycling because of the ’84 Olympics… there was just so much more interest in women’s cycling the minute the Olympics were announced. It gave me a real definitive goal.’
It had taken some two decades of lobbying to secure an Olympic cycling event for women, the International Federation for Amateur Cycling (FIAC) having first tried to get a women’s road race on the Olympic programme for the Tokyo 1964 Games.
At the forefront of efforts was Eileen Gray, founder member of the Women’s Cycle Racing Association in Britain and, from 1976, President of the British Cycling Federation (now British Cycling). Gray had called for women to be included in the Olympics throughout the 1970s, attending Olympic Games, meeting with officials and corresponding with the IOC. In February 1977, not long into her BCF presidency, Gray gave a talk to the Pedal Club, saying that the inclusion of women’s cycling in the Olympic Games was the next logical step in the campaign for equality. Seven years later Gray’s tireless work was rewarded when she finally got to see women roll away from the start line of an Olympic cycling race.
The throw for gold
As the race progressed, a leading group of six formed after Twigg attacked on the third ascent of the Vista del Lago climb. Italy’s Maria Canins bridged across, followed by France’s Jeannie Longo, West Germany’s Sandra Schumacher, Norway’s Unni Larsen and Carpenter-Phinney. In front of an estimated 200,000 spectators the group built an unassailable lead and, as the final lap commenced, it was clear that the first female Olympic cycling champion would come from this group.
With all efforts to escape neutralised, the six riders were still together when, in the final 400m, Longo’s gears jammed. Now there were five in the race to make Olympic history. Schumacher came off Canins’ wheel, with Twigg quickly sprinting around the lefthand side to hit the front as the finish line neared. Then Carpenter-Phinney burst through to Twigg’s right. The two Americans converged to sprint wheel-to-wheel, the line just a handful of metres away. Carpenter-Phinney timed her bike-throw perfectly, taking the win by a matter of inches to become the first female cyclist to win Olympic gold.
‘It was close enough that I was not sure I had won,’ Carpenter-Phinney said afterwards. ‘[Davis] taught me how to throw my bike just before the line, which perhaps gives me an extra foot or two in a sprint.’
It would be Carpenter-Phinney’s last competitive race, but 30 years later she returned to the scene of her triumph and rode the course again.
‘The hills have got a little steeper in the last 30 years,’ she laughed while talking to a reporter at the anniversary celebrations of the Games. ‘It was really fun to go back there. There were so many people at our Olympic road race. It was a big day for women’s cycling.’
• This article originally appeared in issue 156 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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