Maynard Hershon wrote some great articles, wish I still had my collection

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Team FB page
Team Leapfrog

O.k., I don't believe the Tour de France starting in Manhattan within two or three years of 1986 panned out.



Now that was a bike. I'm glad to see mention of the Benotto handlebar tape (still my favorite), which is "Used by all Cycling Champions"

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Slam your stem.

What a coup that was to have Lemond on the cover of the Tour issue before his win and presumably as he was having the Giro from hell!

Happy days!

Happy days indeed

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Slam your stem.

And I so wanted the Lemond branded TVT from the Worlds. 18lbs!!!!! Superlight by 1989 standards, now sadly a porker!

One of the things I really liked about Lemond was he would train on a heavier steel bike/wheels then later race on a lighter carbon/Ti bike thus giving the feeling that you were literally flying...

I see so little of this these days, I can't help but laugh when I see people training on their $2000+ carbon wheels...

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"It never gets easier, you just go faster..." - Greg Lemond

"Because technology alone is a poor substitute for experience." - Richard Sachs

Better still was that that pic is taken from Het Volk or Flanders. Lemond is often slated for focusing on only the Tour yet he still rode the Classics, and before his shooting was often a contender.

I can remember an interview in Cycling Weekly with Robert Millar where they talked about his training bike. He used old tubulars with the base tape removed as inner tubes! So combined with heavy wheels & early clinchers his wheels were super heavy. Come the season when you swapped over to tubulars it felt like you were flying such was the massive weight difference. Also as he lived near Troyes in central France where winters are viscously cold the chances of having to stopping for a flat were reduced to practically zero.

Yes, I loved the days when I couldn't wait for Winning to come out with pics of the classics & various tours...my heroes were Roche, Kelly, Lemond, Bauer, Fignon, Anderson, Millar, Delgado, Hampsten, Phinney, Vanderaerden etc.

The internet is handy and killed magazine sales to a point but there was something about waiting for that edition of Winning to arrive in the news agency...

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"It never gets easier, you just go faster..." - Greg Lemond

"Because technology alone is a poor substitute for experience." - Richard Sachs

Winning = The best cycling magazine of this modern age. The TdF papers were excellent, and I think they also came out in French language versions - Tour Herdo, or something similar.

The editor, Luke Evans, had a simple premise that worked very well: No one under the age of about 40 had the life experiences or cycling know-how to write anything worthwhile.

After the Luke Evans/original large format, the publication deteriorated somewhat when Kenny Pryde took over the editorship and it became very Americanized. Not sure of the story behind it becoming more of a North American cycling magazine, but it lost everything it had.

I came into cycling as a sport around 1990 so WINNING of the time was about the first serious magazine i bought and thought it was superb. Looking back through my old copies (Kenny Pryde editor)now, it is still so enjoyable and the race action shots are superb considering it is pre digital stuff.

Incidentally, the pro bike features, which offered a side on studio shot of each bike, sadly seemed to become less and less and the once quoted bike weight's were either not recorded or not published.

Having just read edition 102 from June 1992 Spring Classics edition, I came across an interesting quote from Moreno Argentin on that years MSR "The first time I saw Kelly he was on my wheel. I turned to him, but before I could say anything he told me he was too tired to come through. He's too smart to be caught out like that, too wise - there was no way he was going to lead out the sprint. maybe if I had seen him coming things would have been different."

Interesting, in the light of some of the internet forum comments surrounding Gerrans win this year!

Yeah funny that!

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"It never gets easier, you just go faster..." - Greg Lemond

"Because technology alone is a poor substitute for experience." - Richard Sachs

The Winning years: The last spell of cycling as a mainly European sport and when the great riders valued winning races other than the TdF. The Americanization of the sport has been resoundingly bad, as exemplified by the arrival of a certain Lance Armstrong and his unwillingness to win races other than the Tour.

Much as I dislike Uniballer, I can't agree with you wholeheartedly. LA prior to cancer was an exciting and interesting rider to follow. Plus he did try to win a few other races, such as Flèche, and the Worlds. Come to think of it he actually won them!

Just got a whole bunch of old issues delivered which I'll scan a selection from. 1985-91!

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I am unsure of just how creditable that Worlds win was ... run in a built up area in very heavy rain and with lots of falls.