The Wrong American. The Right Bike.
The Story of Ben Serotta, Team 7-Eleven, Alex Stieda and the 1986 Tour de France
It wasn't a grand scheme, let's put it that way. But, you know, I've always been a rider who was opportunistic
The Wrong American
The 1986 Tour de France was pre-ordained to belong to American Greg LeMond. The script that had been already written, trailed by La Vie Claire team and approved by his team-mate and outgoing ‘patron’ Bernard Hinault, aka, The Badger. LeMond was to be the first American to ever wear the hallowed yellow jersey.
I wrote a chapter called Killer Winners for my new book, The Cycling Addiction, that, in part, takes a revisionist look at the ensuing team-mate internecine, caused by Hinault going improv, ripping up the aforementioned script and plummeting LeMond into three weeks of confusion and indecision. The drama hits a crescendo when Hinault appears to attack his team-mate, in the dying days of the ‘86 Tour with LeMond wearing the yellow jersey. Killer Winners is an interrogation of Hinault’s and LeMond’s underlying psychology and the grand theatre of the Tour de France’s unwritten constitution. Could either of them actually have behaved any differently, if we understand the whole context?
Pain is no signal to stop (Tim Krabbé - The Rider)
The research for The Cycling Addiction was truly fascinating - I spoke to professional riders past and present, sports psychiatrists, neurobiologists, physiologists and genuine agents of change in the sport of cycling, such as Dr Peter Keen - the original architect of ‘marginal gains’. My central enquiry was the bike-racer’s motivation to suffer as we relentlessly test and expand our physiological boundaries.
The bike-racing peloton being a real-time microcosm of the human condition and the petri-dish to which The Cycling Addiction returns, to examine a spectrum of competitive personalities actions and motivations. Each chapter posits and interrogates a plausible justification as to why so many of us seek to suffer, and why the bicycle is our preferred instrument of self-torture. My conversations led me to Ben Serotta, Alex Stieda, Davis Phinney, to name a few.
Ben & The Slurpees
The occasionally wonderful part of researching a book is the trail of breadcrumbs sometimes leads to unexpected coincidences and intersections, that bring resonance to a central vignette you were pursuing. Team 7-Eleven, Alex Stieda and Ben Serotta was a beautiful segue that fed straight back in to central drama that featured the lead stars of LeMond, Hinault and Robert Millar. Team 7-Eleven started as an amateur team in 1981 as a creative spasm by Jim Ochowicz, a former 1972 Olympian (pursuit). Ben Serotta remember’s Ochowicz entrepreneurial vision :
”Jim saw both the opportunity and a pathway to bring US cycling into the modern era and a plan was hatched that would change not only change US Cycling, but the sport of cycling. Leveraging the upcoming 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in every way imaginable.”
Ben Serotta was only thirty years old at the time of the 1984 Olympics, but had already developed a reputation as a distinguished frame designer and builder. What ultimately earned Ben the role of frame builder to Team USA for the ‘84 Olympics was the way he balanced his respect for the classics with a vision that they could be better. I have known Ben for twenty-five years and I would have to say that is precisely how he is today. Ben’s flair for ingenuity and great engineering, made Serotta the obvious choice to build 7-Eleven’s Murray and then Huffy badged bikes. I spoke to Ben recently and here is his recollection of that time nearly forty years ago.
“We approached the bike building in the same way. Excited to be given an opportunity to join in the grand spectacle of Pro cycling in Europe, wanting to be accepted as an equal participant, succeed in supporting the team effort in a matching manner and style of the organization and athletes. For all, success required both recognizing the long traditions that had evolved in the European epicenter of 20th century cycling, but also adequate confidence that somewhere, someway, we would not only come to match the perennial leaders of the industry, but do them one (or so) better.”
In The Frame
Being the underdogs was, I sense, a feeling that everyone at 7-Eleven knew to savour, because it wouldn’t last. Americans have history of innovating and learning fast and Ben Serotta was thirty two years old, restless and already leading a new generation of bicycle designers and frame builders, primed to threaten the European hegemony. Ben’s was appraised and indeed respectful of the classic and European tradition, partly because he served his apprenticeship at Witcomb Lightweights in South London (as did Richard Sachs and Chris Chance). But he also knew that Serotta bicycles must have multiple points of difference to the classical European traditions.
Ben made every rider in the 1986 Team 7-Eleven, Tour de France squad, two full-custom frames - one ‘regular’ frame for general stages, and notably, a ‘superlight’ one for the mountains.
1980’s Science-Fiction
The regular frames were made using Columbus SL performance, road tubesets and featured chromed chain stays and forks. In contrast, the mountain-stage frames were packed with experimental technology and were fabricated from a combination of Columbus SL and Columbus Record tubing. Columbus Record was a specialist track or pursuit tubing, which whilst preternaturally light and stiff, was not suited to prolonged high intensity use. The Supers also featured a re-design of lightweight lugs, that Ben originally crafted for the 1984 USA Pursuit team. The re-fashioned ‘86 TdF lugs, were individually hand-cut for the team by Ben’s lead craftsman, Kelly Bedford. The Superlights also utilised another feature that Ben had first tested during the R&D for the ‘84 Olympics - S-Bend chain-stays. Mainstream now but generally perceived as outrageous in 1986 at a time when Madona was lamenting that her ‘Papa’ really ought not to ‘Preach’.
‘We found that putting a bend pattern into the steel chainstay, most particularly on the non-drive side, increased the bending stiffness of that important tube by about 10%.”
Ben Serotta
And finally Ben Serotta painted the chain stays and forks rather than chroming them. This was both to save weight and reduce the threat of interior corrosion that the chroming process could potentially cause… “the tubes were thin enough already!”
Aside from the scrapbook team picture above, every other ‘86 7-Eleven picture shows the rider electing to race their Serotta Superlight, on every stage and every day. To the point where it became a bit of a problem - Ben Serotta remembers:
“IN fact, we proposed that after the Tour they should be retired, this based in part because Columbus, our tubing supplier, advised that the specific ‘pursuit’ tubes were not designed for season long levels of stress”. Ben Serotta
Record tubing is super crazy light steel tubing - Ben Serotta
7-Eleven and Ron Kiefel secured the USA’s first ever Grand Tour stage victory
‘85 Giro - ‘86 Tour - The American Invasion
7-Eleven fully justified their inclusion into the ‘85 Giro d’Italia when Ron Kiefel won Stage 15 and Andy Hampsten won Stage 20 in the mountains. 7-Eleven and Ron Kiefel secured the USA’s first ever Grand Tour stage victory. And Hampsten’s was the second. Small bylines of course but significant ones if you think that Greg LeMond had been a major star on the biggest continental teams, since 1981. Clearly, whatever 7-Eleven may have lacked in funding and experience, they were evidently back-filling with curiosity, self-belief and boundless ingenuity. Whilst LeMond was mired in bewildering European dogma and orthodoxy, Team 7-Eleven was learning, strategising, experimenting. As Ben Remembers.
“Our collective confidence (the team’s and ours) had grown after two+ years of working closely together (later ’83 into early ’86). The team had worked hard and had earned a modicum level of respect from the European pro peloton, who eventually noticed their work ethic and determination ought to be taken seriously, validated by a number of high placings in notable races. Yet, no matter how the Americans might pronounce it, there is but one TOUR and only one time to register a first impression to a global audience that the 7/11 Team was to be taken as a serious entrant into the greatest arena our sport has to offer. For everyone involved, the stakes were simply higher.”
(Under)Dog-Day Afternoon
I previewed a little of my interview with Alex Stieda in my recent Substack - Feedback Over The Race-Radio.
None of Stieda’s team-mates knew of his loose plan to gain as many of the four time bonuses on the 80k stage as possible. Alex Stieda was a pursuit/criterium rider from Vancouver in Canada, first year pro and self-aware enough to know that he couldn’t touch the bottom of the biggest pond in which he was now swimming. Rather than be overawed, Stieda decided to relish the experience and race as he always had - opportunistically.
The 7-Elevens squad was already busy being studiously ignored or the objects of open derision and humour. The Slurpees sprinter, Davis Phinney recalled to me recently, the ratcheted tension when Stieda rolls up to the start of the stage in his shrink-wrapped Descente skinsuit and breakaway-bike with its curved chainstays - “and here we all were doing our best to be invisible and fit in!”
Alex Stieda was the first person to put in an attack at the 1986 Tour de France, but to do so he had to gently prod Bernard Hinault out of the way.
‘This is my mindset. 80K stage, which is like, you know, a long criterium, which I've raced a lot of in North America. I don't need pockets for food. So why not wear a skin suit?”
In point of fact, Stieda embarked on the most important breakaway of his life, under-fuelled and under-prepared. The Badger (Hinault) scowled and growled something at Stieda as headed up the road into the unknown.
“So, you know, back then, everybody was was racing on fumes, to be honest. We were under-fuelled every day. But we didn't know it.”
Alex Stieda had put in a superb Prologue and was only twelve seconds behind the winner and yellow jersey holder, Thierry Marie. But Stieda wasn’t much interested in Thierry Marie - no the man he needed to hold off was Panasonic sprinter, Eric Vanderaerden (second place in the Prologue), who could also be busy picking up time bonuses if he wins (indeed he was).
No more will the Tour de France field think that the American team is a novelty - Phil Liggett
The complacency of the peloton is challenged as Stieda rides on his own at 50kmh, quickly building a two-minute gap. The ever vigilant and pragmatic, Robert Millar (Panasonic Team Leader), gives Australian, Phil Anderson the nod to initiate a chase to neutralise an unknowable threat from an unknown Canadian. Alex Stieda now has a chasing group of five riders, who are all working together to bring him to heel and win the stage for themselves. Stieda is only tangentially interested in the stage win; his focus is the four time-bonuses, which are the secret route to North America’s first ever yellow jersey.
Anderson and The Honest Broker Effect
The inevitable catch happens with ten miles or so of the stage to run. Phil Anderson reaches out and marks the catch with a respectful and encouraging hand on Stieda’s back. As an Australian he was an outsider once and knows precisely how it feels. But Anderson was also fifth in the 1985 Tour de France and is now a bone-fide big-hitter in his own right and captain-on-the-road of Millar’s Panasonic juggernaut. The touch on the hip therefore meant everything and Phil Liggett was quite right to pick such a pivotal moment in his superbly balanced commentary. It presaged the wind of change that not many could yet feel.
Alex Stieda reflects, in our interview, that he was somewhat grateful to be caught.
“Yeah, I was starting to run out to be honest. I had to change the mindset.
Anderson’s encouragement was also a recognition that if a rapidly tiring Stieda was to wear the yellow jersey at the end of the day, his first objective was to stay with the now six-man break. But Stieda achieved even more than that. Every time someone missed a turn at the front or attacked or otherwise interrupted the break’s progress, Stieda would immediately take responsibility as the honest broker and take a huge turn on the front. He became the glue that held the break together and a few seconds aloft of the two-hundred strong peloton and the ominous threat of Anderson’s marauding teammate, Eric Vanderaerden.
On the run in to Sceaux, Stieda was slightly distanced, but still managed to grasp onto fifth place in the sprint. He had won thirty-six seconds of time-bonuses on the road from Nanterre and now held a precious eight seconds on Vanderaerden, who had picked up eighteen bonus seconds of his own on the roads from Nanterre to Sceaux. Alex Stieda was right all along in his assumption that the central challenge would come from the Panasonic sprinter.
Stieda knew the maths was complicated and did not celebrate. Until journalists, John Wilkockson and then Phil Liggett broke the news that he had in fact won the yellow jersey.
Liggett was jubilant and quickly coined the phrase that Alex Stieda “was the first American to win a Tour de France yellow jersey”
Stieda quietly clarified that he was Canadian. Phil Liggett, the consummate professional quickly adjusted his byline -
“The first North American to win the yellow jersey!”
Which is how it will forever read.
The Wind of Change
Most of the 1986 Tour de France caravan continued to ignore Team 7-Eleven. Even when Davis Phinney grabbed Stage 3 into Liévin with another demonstration of intelligent improvisation and confident sprinting.
It was as if ignoring the wind of change that was blowing in the race’s face required Le Tour circus to simultaneously acknowledge 7-Eleven’s mishaps (and they had plenty), and at the same time maintain inscrutable indifference to the dynamism they foreshadowed. The Tour was French and their Napoleonic champion, Bernard Hinault was still exerting his snarling authority over the race. But Californian Greg LeMond was looking to upend the orthodoxy and his Canadian team-mate, Steve Bauer, was in third place overall behind Vanderaerden. One would have expected some contact or even acknowledgement between LeMond, Bauer and the 7-Elevens but nothing was forthcoming. Given the internecine demolition that was to come later in the race, they certainly could have done with the help. Nearly forty years on I ask Stieda if The Slurpees would have been minded to help, if they had been asked.
“And it wouldn't have taken much, and we would have probably done what we could, you know, to give him some help.”
Chess Players and Boxers
At the front of the race it is essentially a boxing match. Two, three or four of the strongest riders slugging it out. Maybe they have been spoilt by being so genetically talented that they don’t have to think so much about how to race anymore? Meanwhile further back is is a chess tournament - thinking, planning and learning to breathe in the spaces after all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room by the pugilists.
“I was never the strongest rider. You know, of course, growing up, locally, okay, fair enough, in Vancouver, but, you know, a as a full time amateur and then pro, I was never the strongest. I always had to think about how to use my strengths, take advantage of the situation”.
A few though did notice Team 7-Eleven and the spirit of ingenuity they bought to the ‘86 race - Phil Anderson, Gerrie Knetemann, Robert Millar, Phil Liggett, Ronan Pensec, John Wilcockson, to name a few. The Slurpees returned in 1987 to take three stages with: Davis Phinney, Jeff Pierce and Dag Otto Lauritzen - Raúl Alcalá came in an impressive ninth overall. And then they kept returning, even when the team changed to Motorola, whom Phil Anderson joined in 1991. Paying attention had its rewards.
postscript - Making Frenemies
Writing about bike racing is enthralling because of the overlapping stories and drama.
One of the spin-offs from Alex Stieda’s defining stage from Nanterre to Sceaux, shows a side of Le Tour that is impossible to see if you are not inside the bubble.
Alex Stieda only finished the 1986 Tour de France because he was to become a friend of a charismatic grand champion, who pressed upon Alex, the imperative that he must finish in order “to honour the yellow jersey” .
That champion was Gerrie ‘De Kneet', Knetemann.
De Kneet was coming to the end of an incredible career that included ten Tour France stage wins as well as becoming world road-race champion in 1978. In my conversations with Alex Stieda, he made it very clear that Knetemann made it a personal project to help the young Canadian finish the 1986 Tour de France. It was as if he wanted to bequeath to Stieda a continental race-apprenticeship in just three weeks.
When I shared the piece with Philippa York (rode as Robert Millar) - she replied that Gerrie Knetemann caught her in an individual time-trial in her first Tour de France (1983).
Awaiting clarification from Philippa but I think it was 1984 TdF - 67k Stage 7 from Alençon to Le Mans. Two things to say here.
Firstly that 67k is an unhelpfully long time-trial and doesn’t happen anymore; precisely because it disproportionately favoured riders who were good at the discipline and hampered pure climbers, like Robert Millar, who were also interested GC.
And secondly, Gerrie Knetemann was an accomplished time-triallist. But not such a great climber. At the end of the 1984 Tour de France, Robert Millar was fourth and winner of the polka dot climber’s jersey and Knetemann was nearly three hours adrift in 103rd place.
And Finally
I suggested that maybe Alex write a piece on Knetemann - it is such a great example of another hidden drama. I will post Alex’s lovely piece on my Substack very soon - in the meantime here is a link to Making Frenimies on Linkedin
In Touch
Ben Serotta still hand builds custom bicycle frames in Upstate New York.
Jason Krupnick recently made a superb short film about Serotta
Alex Stieda still rides his bike almost everyday. He retired from professional bike-racing in 1992 and now writes, speaks and informs - you can find Alex at Alex Stieda