Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 10, 1994 TAG: 9405100083
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Those memoirs of the Roanoke Valley time trial were mountain-delivered by Twelve O'Clock Knob, Mount Chestnut or switchbacks in between. Other riders less daring - or more skilled - came away with simply a gaze, a smile or a shrug that answered the question:
"How was it up there?"
It seemed no rider who sailed or pedaled into the Roanoke City Market did so without a mental video of his two-wheeled mobile lunch with gravity.
The huge-screen television at Center in the Square occasionally showed a rider on a mountain road, pulsing forward against invisible resistance, every now and then standing up as the bike swung like a metronome underneath him. Sometimes the screen would show a rider coasting down, content like a kid on a 3-speed in the summer to let the earth tug him along.
Some weren't content, period. Jose-Luis Jiminez of the amateur Mexican national team rolled down Campbell Avenue toward the market with his head bobbing up to look at the road, down to rest, up, down.
Queried, he stared somewhere.
"It's too hard," he said. "Too long."
The 22.9-mile C-shaped course from the Salem Civic Center to downtown Roanoke, with its Twelve O'Clock Knob hump at 2,501 feet, lasted but a few minutes for Australian Brett Dennis. It was a pleasant lunch hour for Sean Yates of Motorola, whom one rider called "the best descender in the world."
In a downtown parking lot, Yates leaned nonchalantly against a Cadillac lighter blue than the fair spring sky above, his gold hoop earring glinting. The Sussex, England, native was 10th in Monday's time trial and is seventh overall.
"There was nothing too tricky today," he said.
Don't even whisper that to Latvian Dainis Ozols. On his right palm was a flap of skin raised like the pull-tab on a soda. He pulled his shirt down from his shoulder to show a teammate a red, oozing L-shaped reminder of asphalt's gritty embrace.
How did it happen? Ozols, who despite the fall was 11th in the trial, wouldn't chat. A team member, however, said "a bike that follows the race" - an official's bike, he meant - knocked Ozols over.
Then, there was Dennis' mishap.
"He was getting a bit enthusiastic, I expect," said Yates, whose downhill mastery appears capsuled in common sense. "You just have to go down as fast as you feel safe."
Yates agreed with several other riders that the Roanoke Valley's peaks were made more imposing because this was a time trial, where the slightest daydream, wobble or blow-up costs seconds that can cost places in the standings.
Jean-Phillipe Dojwa of France's Gan team has ridden up and down European mountains.
"It's the same, huh?" he said. "[But] for time trials in Europe, we don't have."
Roanoke's ridges possessed even the capacity to surprise. Some riders who drove or rode the course to practice admitted they nearly wiped out on some folded curves.
"It was a little bit steeper than I expected," said U.S. team rider Kirk Willett, whose grin was faster than he was Monday. "I had to stand up a lot. It hurt a bit.
"This hill was no joke, I'll tell you."
Saturn team member Tim Swift can testify. The goal, he said, is to "try to stay focused while pedaling as hard as you can and try to forget about the pain."
Even then you might take a turn too fast, as did Swift and Coors Light's Mike Engleman.
"I just didn't think I had to brake much for it," Engleman said. "I had too much speed and had to lay on the brakes. You just hope you have enough road."
And enough legs left to catch the seconds you just cast down the ravine. Some didn't.
"I just totally blew it. I cracked," Coors Light's Andy Bishop told Engleman as he arrived at the team van.
Once off 1,980-foot Mount Chestnut, it was mostly downhill, and the riders cruised into Roanoke to cheering spectators lining the streets.
They thought they had done their day's work until discovering one last hard turn remained - this one to avoid four lanes of rattling Williamson Road traffic. Until Roanoke City Public Works Director Bill Clark installed himself as a human stop sign, little prevented cyclists such as Italy's Andrea Chiurato from shooting out into the intersection.
Only a right-angle left turn prevented him from kissing a Ford.
Chiurato, of Mapei-Clas, finished second in the time trial and is second overall.
Hurrying through town is one thing; hurrying down the high hill, another. You had to be a little bit cool to make it without leaving skin or bones on the mountain.
"There's no point in taking a drastic risk," Yates said calmly. "You're not going to win on the descent."
by CNB