Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 14, 1993 TAG: 9305140182
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUCHANAN LENGTH: Medium
Who even knows who's racing?
Certainly not Jan and Gwen Peters. They didn't even know for sure what day the Tour DuPont was supposed to come through. But none of this dampened their spirits.
Thursday, they stood patriotically in the middle of Main Street in Buchanan, waving American flags they'd bought up the road at the Ben Franklin store for $1.59 each.
Gwen Peters didn't care who won. She couldn't name a single cyclist competing. She was just happy to see an event like the Tour DuPont come through Botetourt County.
Her husband, Jan, felt the same way. He said he heard the name of the race leader on the news, but could not recall it.
"He's got a yellow jersey on, right?"
The Peterses had first come into town Wednesday to view the race. They waited 15 minutes before finding out they had their days mixed up. "We just thought there wasn't much interest," Gwen Peters said.
Her husband surveyed the several hundred people who lined the race route Thursday. "We're pretty sure it's today," he quipped.
Others, too, were less interested in who was racing than they were enthused about boosting Buchanan. Few could name any of the racers.
Barbara Clark came out with her brother's basset hound, Maggie. "I'm out here just to watch them. It's nice to see something going on in this little town," she said. "Not much happens here."
Virginia Harper shaded herself and her 2-year-old granddaughter, Brittany, under a bright pink umbrella.
Who were they cheering for? "All of them," she said. "Just so they have a safe trip."
Debbie Peery and some co-workers from the Glad Rags plant took their lunch break on the curb along the James River bridge.
She said it was far better than her usual routine of eating lunch in her truck.
One of Peery's co-workers added that the scenery was better, too. She was there to scope the racers.
"Yeah!" agreed Jeannette Morris, a cafeteria worker at Buchanan Elementary School. "I like those nice, tight, knit shorts."
Morris and four other cafeteria workers came out after serving hot lunches to the younger children who did not get to watch the race, and packing 125 boxed lunches for the older ones who watched the cyclists go by from the town's sewage treatment plant.
Morris pulled for a few stragglers who had fallen behind the pack. She didn't know who they were. "Get his picture! Get his picture!" she told someone nearby with a camera.
"I like the losers," she explained.
"Doing good! Come on buddy, you can do it!"
Not everyone was in the dark about the racers. Kay and Joe Ryder have watched race updates on ESPN all week.
They like Texan Lance Armstrong of Team Motorola, who was second overall going into Thursday's leg.
"He was the first American who caught our eye, I guess," said Joe Ryder. His wife added: "He's going to be the next Greg LeMond." LeMond is the American cyclist who has twice won the Tour de France.
Bob McKinney of Arcadia also had been following Armstrong's efforts, but didn't have much hope of spotting him.
"They will go by so quick and they will be in such a pack when they hit this turn, it'll be hard to know who's who," he said.
John Glick of Cleveland was impressed.
Glick has followed the Tour DuPont all week and chose Buchanan to watch the racers from Thursday. He planned to rush to Hot Springs for Thursday's finish.
Glick gave Buchanan high marks for its turnout and enthusiastic welcome. He said it was one of the best he had seen and outshined the receptions in many much bigger towns.
"The small towns get into it more than the big towns," he said. "In small towns, the race is the focal point of the day. . . . In the big towns, half the people are only there because they're waiting for the bus."
by CNB