Cyclist
Pro race history: Jeannie Longo wins America’s biggest race in 1985
‘Sports and beer don’t mix, poll says.’ That was the headline above a second-page sidebar article in Colorado’s Daily Sentinel on 19th August 1985, reporting on a US nationwide telephone poll that found 62% of respondents thought that beer sales at sporting events should be ‘restricted because drinking contributes to rowdyism’.
It was ironic that on the front page of that very same edition, the conclusion of the Coors Classic, the country’s biggest and most prestigious cycling event of the time, was also being reported.
Founded by the Celestial Seasonings herbal tea company in 1975 and dubbed the Red Zinger Bicycle Classic after one of the company’s key brands, the race was acquired in 1979 by its then promoter, Michael Aisner, for the princely sum of $1.
Aisner brought the Colorado-based Coors Brewing Company on board as the principal sponsor and set about working in his basement office to grow the newly coined Coors International Bicycling Classic (to give the race its full title) into the USA’s most successful cycling event.
‘No other bike race in the United States has had so much influence on the sport,’ wrote VeloNews editorial director John Wilcockson in 2005. ‘Not only did it develop riders, it brought new ones into the sport, provided untold publicity (local, national and international) and made Boulder [Colorado] one of the epicentres of American cycling.’
Both men’s and women’s classifications were staged and the Coors Classic became particularly important for women’s cycling. Held on the same days and on many of the same roads as the men’s event, the women’s race brought equal billing and increased coverage for the world’s best female riders as well as decent financial returns.
‘You would earn between $2,000 and $2,500,’ French rider and multiple world and national champion Jeannie Longo (Ciprelli) wrote in 2012. ‘That amount might make a tennis player smile. He could laugh at me. But for a 25-year-old girl it was really good.
‘And then you would get into it. The announcer shouting and people standing up, excited,’ she added. ‘I liked the cheesy side of cycling, especially in the United States.’
A hat-trick of wins
Longo’s first experience of riding the Coors Classic came in 1981. The race was won by the USA’s Connie Carpenter (Phinney), for whom it was her second success at the event having also triumphed in 1977. Longo finished second in 1982 and 1984, and arrived on the start line in 1985 as a seven-time national champion on the road and just three weeks away from the first of an eventual record five Road Race World Championships, ready to go a step higher on the final podium.
The 1985 women’s race comprised 11 stages, split between criteriums, road stages and a time-trial, for a total of 589km. On 8th August, 52 riders across 13 teams lined up in downtown Grand Junction, Colorado for an early evening race-opening criterium comprising 25 laps of a circuit just over a mile long and featuring plenty of technical twists and turns.
Longo was among the listed favourites for the overall alongside the USA’s Rebecca Twigg, who had taken road race silver in the previous year’s Olympic Games, and Italy’s Maria Canins, who was the defending champion having won the 1984 event by 3min 24sec over Longo.
After just over one hour of racing, 48 riders contested the sprint to the line with Longo, not a rider renowned for her sprinting, taking her first stage win at the event.
‘Longo tore into the final corner, just two blocks from the finish,’ reported the Daily Sentinel, ‘and blasted past the lead sprinters to win.’
Longo had previously finished second in nine stages but had never tasted victory at the event.
‘I’ve been working hard to improve my sprints,’ she reflected afterwards. ‘Until now I haven’t been real good in the sprints. I’ve made some progress,’ before adding, ‘I’m not afraid of the turns. I am a skier and I can cut the corners faster. I just squeezed in between the two other riders.’
Longo immediately followed her maiden stage win with another, claiming the second stage ‘Tour of the Moon’, a 73km race that went over the Colorado National Monument – a national park of sandstone canyons – and again finished with a circuit in Grand Junction. This time she was forced to sprint when her efforts to distance her rivals on the stage’s stiff climb didn’t prevail. The Frenchwoman then made it three out of three the next day, claiming the stage into Aspen.
Longo never lost the race lead, claiming five stage wins in total. Her buffer to her nearest rival grew to over five minutes at one point, but was cut to just over three on the final stage when she lost a spoke with seven laps remaining, leaving her to trail in nearly two minutes down in 19th place, the only time she placed outside the top six.
‘Ever since I began riding in the Coors Classic it has been my goal to win it,’ Longo said afterwards, reflecting on her 1981 debut. ‘I am very happy today.’
But not everyone was happy. In fact there was speculation that 1985 could actually be the last running of the women’s Coors Classic. Organisers faced criticism that there were too many circuit races and that the competition was not of a high enough quality. There was also the threat of the UCI introducing physical limits on women’s racing, which the organisers feared could impact the potential of the race.
‘We have a real sense of obligation to the women,’ Aisner said as the 1985 race was drawing to a close. ‘But if they [the UCI] are going to limit it to some namby-pamby nothing thing, that may contribute to the demise of the women’s division.’
As it happened, the race continued until 1988, with Longo winning again in 1986 and 1987 to become the only rider to win three editions of the race in a row. The Frenchwoman didn’t ride in 1988, leaving the way clear for the US’s Inga Benedict (Thompson), who had stood on the podium three times but never on the top step, to enter cycling’s history books as the last female winner of the Coors Classic.
• This article originally appeared in issue 158 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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