Big chance for Horner (not unlike Worlds last year)
500,000 spectators this Sunday
Defending Champ
Star-studded field (minus BJ)
Local team Webcor poised to make some news with two of the three SFGP
winners on their start list.
$100,000 in salary 2002 with Prime Alliance,Signed a two year deal
with Saturn for $130,000/yr in salary 2003.
And you still wonder why he isn't in the "Show". It's not hard to see
why. FDJ paid him $37,000+ in '97.
From: [email hidden] ([email hidden])
Subject: Chris Horner article in S.D. Union-Tribune
Date: 1997/01/30
From the San Diego Union Tribune:
Wheels of fortune
Lemon Grove cyclist heads for ride of his life, with French team
Chris Jenkins STAFF WRITER
29-Jan-1997 Wednesday
Just an hour earlier, the assistant at Chris Horner's dentist's office
was
left incredulous. Not just because it'd been so long since Horner's
last
cleaning, either.
"Six years," said Horner, teeth sparkling. "She looked at me like I
was
evil."
Horner needed the dental work done soon, for he was flying to Europe
in a
few days. Vacation, she presumed. Business, he said. The bicycle
business.
While he's over there, though, Horner does plan on taking all the
European
tours. Spain. Italy. Switzerland. Eventually, he hopes, even the Tour
de
France.
Horner departed last week for Paris, where he was to be introduced in
a
news conference with La Francaise des Jeux, the No. 3-ranked
professional
cycling team in the world. He's the lone American on an 18-member
cycling
squad representing a country, France, that's still convinced Greg
LeMond
was really a Frenchman with a bad accent.
"I'll probably be the last one introduced," said Horner. "I just hope
nobody asks me any questions."
Given cycling's semi-secret status on this side of the Atlantic, some
introductions also are probably in order here, even in Horner's
hometown.
He's a resident of Lemon Grove, a Serra High graduate who hadn't
played
sports since retiring from wrestling in eighth grade.
With strawberry-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, a lightly
freckled
face and high-beam smile, Horner indeed is so American-looking they'll
pick him out of any peloton.
That Horner could be paid for riding a bike was something he had a
hard
time explaining to the dubious dental assistant. Nothing new there. In
a
country consumed with football, basketball and baseball, Horner can't
possibly explain to most Americans how big his sport is in Europe.
But even with a total comprehension of international cycling -- a
glamorous, yet grueling, cutthroat realm -- it is almost beyond belief
that Horner is already riding among its best cyclists.
"Going over, I'm only worried about two things," he said. "One's the
weather, which has been brutal in France this winter. The other's the
fact
that I don't speak French."
There wasn't much call for another language out on the U.S. cycling
circuit, where Horner has been a regular for several years, riding for
a
low-budget team in a jam-packed van, sleeping on the road or on floors
in
overpopulated motel rooms, essentially pedaling for his supper and his
pleasure.
A year ago, that was still Horner's lifestyle, one he'd committed
himself
to since giving up a longtime job at a Kearny Mesa bicycle shop. Free
to
do nothing but ride and strength-train and ride some more -- upward of
600
miles a week around San Diego County -- Horner turned 1996 into a boom
year.
First he won a stage of the prestigious Tour DuPont, then the opening
stage of the U.S. Olympic Trials. Only politics, apparently, kept him
from
riding for the United States in Atlanta.
"All I know is that my phone started ringing off the hook (after the
Trials)," said Horner, "and some man speaking broken English was
coming up
to me at a race in Wisconsin."
The man was Alain Galopin, manager of La Francaise des Jeux, a team
subsidized by the French national lottery.
"He asked me if I wanted to race in France with a team with a $7
million
budget," said Horner. "Tough question, huh? I was, like, yeah!"
All he'd ever ridden for before was expenses, and he'd get that from
La
Francaise as well, but also an apartment in Paris and a two-year
contract
with an annual salary of roughly $37,000, U.S.
"One hundred seventy-four thousand French francs," Horner said,
flashing a
boyish grin. "It sounds like more that way."
For starters, Horner merely was expected to begin training in the
south of
France. Although it's highly unlikely he'd be chosen for this year's
Tour
de France, since only nine riders can represent a team, Horner
expected to
be racing in Europe's other major stage races, most notably the Tours
of
Spain, Italy and Switzerland.
Primarily, the team leaders want to bring Horner along slowly. He's
been
told to use this year to get familiar with race strategies and fellow
riders.
"He proved capable of competing with the best of the U.S.," said Frank
Stanley, an administrator with USA Cycling. "Where he's going now is
the
next step. You can probably expect him to vanish for a while, which
isn't
unusual, and you never know when he might pop up again."
"He is going to get hammered at first," said Sean Petty, managing
director
of U.S. Pro, the professional arm of USA Cycling. "But he's a tough
kid.
And he is, if anything, adaptable."
At that level of cycling, teams are geared, literally, to their best
riders. Teammates conspire, via attacks and counterattacks and drafts,
to
have their top man at the front at the finish. Horner, you'd expect,
would
be one of La Francaise des Jeux' pawns. Not so fast.
"If I do well, then I'll probably be a sacrificial lamb," said Horner.
"If
I win a big race, though, my sacrificial-lamb days are over."
His personal hope is to convince La Francaise des Jeux's management to
let
him return to the States for key races, continuing to make a name for
himself while giving his team a U.S. identity.
"I think it's good for them to have an American," said Horner,
"because if
he does well, we'll get a lot of press. I think they think I have that
kind of potential."
Potential that few could see when Horner, just out of Serra High, was
working construction from sunup to sundown, seven days a week. Cycling
was
just his favorite mode of transportation, a way of getting from
Tierrasanta to Point Loma, where he'd ride to watch his stepfather
bowling
on the naval base.
His stepdad, no longer married to Horner's mother, drove 17-year-old
Chris
to his first race in Mission Viejo.
"I took off with one lap to go," said Horner. "I thought I had it won,
without a doubt. I finished last. It happens every time. Somebody goes
off
on his own. That time, it was me. One minute I'm thinking I'm the best
rider out there, and then I'm getting dropped (left behind) by
everybody.
"It was demoralizing. I was like, what happened? It's not that I
wasn't
strong enough. I wasn't smart enough."
A lesson learned? Well, for a while.
Horner himself volunteered the story about his first Olympic Trials,
in
1992 at Altoona, Pa. Once again, he jumped out on the breakaway,
flying
solo in front of everybody for at least 60 miles.
"This kid took off," said Stanley, "and nobody knew who the heck he
was."
There was no time for getting acquainted, either, when Horner started
getting passed as if he were on training wheels.
"The break (of 10 riders) caught up to me and spit me out the back,"
said
Horner. "Then the pack caught me, and I got spit out the back of that,
too. I wasn't very smart there, either."
Horner's freckles suddenly disappeared, camouflaged by the red-faced
glow
of embarrassment.
"That's the thing about intelligence -- it comes in and goes out,"
Horner
said. "Even now, you do stupid stuff."
In his second-ever race, Horner crashed at the University of San Diego
Grand Prix, but it also was at USD that he claimed his first victory
in
'91, beating a field that included future world champion Lance
Armstrong.
By '95, Horner was a regular among top-20 finishers at major races
across
the nation, but even the difference between top 10 and first place is
immense in cycling.
Horner crossed that bridge, ironically, when he began to step up
training
off his bike. Just under 5-foot-11 and only 145 pounds, Horner
actually
considers himself "on the heavy side" for his sport, but half his body
weight must be lungs and heart. In the vernacular, he's got a "big
engine."
What Galopin found so appealing about Horner, in fact, was his
tendency to
grow stronger when racing day after day. Few Americans, too, have
Horner's
ability to attack from the very start of a race and remain a
contender.
At the Tour DuPont, the highest-rated race on American roads, Horner
had
more steam left than anybody in winning the 10th of 12 stages, run on
a
murderously hot and windy day in late May in the rolling hills of the
Carolinas. Which Carolina, he wasn't sure.
"The finish line was in Greenville (S.C.)," he said. "Most of the
time, in
races like that, you don't even know what state you're in. Ride and
rest,
ride and rest, and that's all. Just put your bags outside your door
and go
to sleep."
The victory elevated Horner from 23rd to 22nd overall, but it was a
mighty
boost to his confidence. He'd beaten cyclists such as Armstrong and
Swiss