Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 10, 1994                   TAG: 9405100139
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER NOTE: lede
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

WHAT A BIKE RACE IT WAS!

"Here comes one!" Jennifer Debo shouted, and the paralegals at Parvin Wilson Barnett & Guynn rushed to the open windows once more, alternately shouting and clapping and trying to make sure the wind didn't blow a sheaf of important legal documents down onto the street.

Not that there was any real danger of the papers on her desk fluttering away, what with all the legal types hanging out the windows of the law firm's City Market office, straining to get a better view of the bicyclists whizzing past them on Campbell Avenue below.

"This is like a holiday," one of Debo's co-workers observed.

And so it was.

Heck, in the next office over, even lawyer Doug Wilson's legal eye was trained out the window - squinting through a camera he'd set up to try to squeeze off a few frames of the Tour DuPont racers as they came into view.

Monday was the day the Tour DuPont finally blew through town; it also was the day the Roanoke Valley played hookey to see what all the fuss was about.

From the starting gate at the Salem Civic Center to the finish line on the Roanoke City Market, the tour's route was lined - well, not exactly lined, more like clumped - with folks who probably should have been doing something else.

Not that they worried too much about missing whatever it was they were missing.

Take Max Woltz, a retiree who ventured down to the Salem Civic Center to see the bikers set out, one by one, on their time trial over Twelve O'Clock Knob and Mount Chestnut. "I should be home cutting my yard," he allowed. "But it's so wet I thought I'd let it dry off first and come down and get the race started. So I came with a clear conscience."

The same couldn't exactly be said for Michael Walker, a ninth-grader from E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg who was spotted hanging out on the City Market. Why did he and his three brothers come all this way when they could have stayed home to see parts of the race in their own town?

"My dad's a big cycling fan and he asked if we wanted to get out of school to come see this," Walker said. "We said 'sure.'"

So is young Mr. Walker a cycling fan as well?

"Not really," he admitted. "But it seems like a pretty big deal."

And so it does. You've got the flying-wedge of state troopers on motorcycles, clearing the road with such a show of force you'd think there was a presidential motorcade in tow. (Turns out, the biggest traffic problem the tour faced was a dog and cat who kept crossing the road on Elm Avenue.) You've got the ESPN helicopters buzzing overhead. You've got the "Big Mo" television screen set up on the City Market, televising biking's equivalent of the play-by-play.

All in all, the Tour DuPont may be the most festive road show the Roanoke Valley has seen since the Grateful Dead passed through seven summers ago.

Just think, a few determined souls along the route actually thought they could keep working through this commotion. Ha! They soon discovered otherwise, especially the folks at Parvin Wilson Barnett & Guynn, who found themselves stationed just above the finish line - and within earshot of the loudspeakers blasting classical music that went with it.

"We tried to do some work this morning, but the music got louder and louder," Debo said. "I won't have too many billable hours today."

She didn't seem too disappointed.

Few were.

So what if Roanoke kept its schools in session longer because the race had closed some of the city's major thoroughfares? From the look of the crowd, oodles of parents took their kids out of class to see the race.

"I decided this was educational," said Kathy Surace, who brought her three children to the Roanoke City Market. "We learned a lot. I don't know what it was."

Ah, now there's the catch.

The Roanoke Valley showed off plenty of enthusiasm for bicycle racing , if by enthusiasm you mean a willingness to take a long lunch hour, mill around in the sunshine on a perfect spring day, and cheer loudly whenever a bicycle zoomed by.

But many fans were like stockbroker Ed Nicholson, who peered over the barricades near the finish line, trying to figure out if any cyclists were headed his way. "I guess it's good for Roanoke. People are spending money. I don't know how it works, though."

Not that the fans' ignorance of the sport mattered.

Rusty Pritchard, project manager for a construction job on one of the City Market buildings, found the best spot in the house - on a Campbell Avenue roof. From that vantage point, he was able to study the crowd as well as the cyclists. "The announcer kind of created the excitement," he said. "Everybody knew when to cheer because he told them to."

Well, not everyone. The paralegals at Parvin Wilson Barnett & Guynn had their own system worked out.

"When the WordPerfect guy went by," said paralegal Heidi Turnpin, "Connie yelled 'We support you! We use your product!'"

There's a touching contradiction in the Tour DuPont. On the one hand, it's billed as a major sporting event - the equivalent of having the Super Bowl played in your backyard. Yet when they're not on the course, even the stars melt into the crowd as if they were nothing more than day-trippers on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

"I can't believe how you can walk right up to them," said retiree Steve Brock, as he peered into one of the teams' vans in Salem. "Around anybody else, you can't get close enough to even take a picture of them. Here, it's so open and free."

Except, of course, for Greg LeMond - the one racer whose name just about everyone recognized.

When LeMond sailed across the finish line and pulled into the Tire Station parking lot on Williamson Road to catch his breath, fans crowded around him, waving tour programs for him to autograph. He obliged, sitting in the passenger seat of his Chevy Villager while kids squealed and clamored to get closer.

"What's going on?" one bystander asked, clearly mystified by the wild scramble.

It's Greg LeMond, she was told.

"Oh!," she said, recognizing the name. "He's the one they say is in his last years."

Staff writers Diane Struzzi, Erika Bolstad and Cameron Huddleston contributed to this story.