Retro cycling heros – who's yours?

80s legends for me.

Beryl Burton

Jan – new talent at a time when I started following Le Tour

Il Pirata – flawed, but when he took off uphill, it was awesome

Reading “Uphill Battle” at the moment – cyclings great climbers. Good stuff

Anquetil had style.

Tomac. Palmer. Whitehead.

Indurain

Started watching the Tour when he was at his peak.

Merckx

Jason McRoy

Shaun Palmer

another vote for Graeme

http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2632239/DIY-cycling-champion-Graeme-Obree-goes-full-cycle.html?print=yes

Alf Engers, the bad boy of time trialling.
He passed me in my first ever 25 and gave me a big grin and a shout of “come on young un, dig in”.
I thought he was cooler than any pop star.

JMC.

IIRC there was a rather attractive brunette that rode for Specialised in the early nineties. Bumped into her when Jesus Jones were DJing at the Malverns (92?) – she was so pissed she got on her bike and fell straight off the other side…

John Tomac, used to have a signed MBUK poster of him in my room when I was young.

These two ladies

millar, delgado, pantani

Harold “H” Nelson. 80-odd years old and coaching more riders than ever – he’s one of the early innovators of training by heart rate, power and intervals. His somewhat old fashioned attitudes on race are a little harder to recommend.

Wiki link

jruk – Elladee Brown. Cutie 2nd from the RHS here.

[/url] 1990Team-3[/url] by alan cole[/url], on Flickr

http://www.muddbunnies.com/founding-sisters-of-freeride-part-one-elladee-brown/

Eddie Fiola
.
Kevin Keegan

Sean Kelly for being “Kelly” and I raced against him too.

Sean Yates for taking the Yellow Jersey and doing everything for others and spending one day on his own and gets yellow.

Chris Boardman for taking the track and TT to a new level.

Joe Murray. Not only a great ‘do everything’ racer, but he was one of the first guys to take an active role in designing bikes that I remember.

King Kelly for being frickin nails….

Tim Gould

John Tomac and Missy Giove off road or Eddy Mercx on the road.

http://www.bigringriding.com

My hero was Francesco Moser, Kelly was more of an inspiration. Sadly I missed the Merckx thing as I was a bit too young.

I had a ‘real life’ hero as well, the man that got me racing, John ‘Gino’ Goddard.

Ian Hibell – Into the Remote Places is quite a read.

As a kid, Andy Ruffell
MTB’ing, Jason McRoy and Tim Gould. I always thought Shaun Palmer was a big headed tw*t 🙂

Rode on atraining camp with Henrik Djernis a few years back, he rode the legs off most of the WCPP riders then.
He was just about ready to retire then.

Preferred him when he was on Ritchey with the awesome Thomas Frish. Class riders, class bikes

The lady from the US who completed some crazy endurance race minus her saddle after it broke about 5 miles in. Respect. Wish I could remember her name; anyone help?

Anquetil, Motta, Yates, Kelly, Millar

Peat, Palmer, Tomac

Tinker Juarez

The lady from the US who completed some crazy endurance race minus her saddle after it broke about 5 miles in. Respect. Wish I could remember her name; anyone help?

cindy whitehead

+1 Sean Yates, was local to me as a lad. My Dad explained his role to me as “the one all does all the f**king hard work whilst the others goal hang”. Chalked his name on my garage floor as though it was a French B road.

cav strutt and andy ruffle. eddie merykx dan cowan (not so retro)

Yeah andy Rufel was the man when I first got into bikes properly BMX rather than just owning one. Indurain was the first road cyclist I admired.
Overall though ad as retro as they come

Tommy Godwin, (1912–1975) was an English cyclist who holds the world cycling records for miles covered in a year (75,065 miles / 120,805 kilometres) and the fastest completion of 100,000 mi (160,000 km).
In May 1940 after 500 days’ riding he secured the 100,000-mile (160,000 km) record as well. Godwin dismounted and spent weeks learning how to walk before going to war in the RAF.

Take yer pick. Sideburn posse, reprazent.

Tim Gould all the way 🙂

Gotta be these guys…