Recycling America 

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In 1978, two years after Montreal, Mount accompanied the U.S. National team to Europe, with Mike Neel as coach. As if from nowhere, the United States had one of the best amateur teams in the world.

"George won a lot of races, big races," Neel recalls.
By 1980, French cycling magazines ranked Mount among the top half-dozen amateurs in the world. After the U.S. decided to boycott the '80 Olympic Games over Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, Mount signed a professional contract with the Sammontana-Benotto team, one of Italy's top squads. The thrill of racing week after week with his childhood bike-racing heroes was intoxicating, at first.

"It was like, you want to be a rock star, you finally make it, and you're at Woodstock every weekend," Mount says.

It was a dream come true, but it was also grueling, depressing work. As a domestique or team helper for superstars such as Roberto Visentini and Moreno Argentin, Mount was actually prohibited from attempting to win races if his captain had even the remotest chance. Winning a race over his captain could have gotten him fired.

The wear and tear of European racing -- a normal season includes 160 races at a typical distance of 150 miles each -- and the regimented obscurity of working for his captain began to sap Mount's morale. After three years, he decided to pack it in.

"I was too burnt out, and I wanted to go home," Mount says. "I also was 28 years old. I thought, 'Could race another five years, and I could be a mid-30s burnt-out bike racer working in a bike shop. Or I could go back into the United States and get something going; either work or get back into school.' When I was 15 years old, my goal was the gran esperienza -- the big experience. To be able to be a pro bike racer in Europe was the goal. And I did it. I did it the hard way. And I did it before anybody else in this country did it.

"But most importantly I did it. I actually got to be in bike races with guys who were my big heroes. Sometimes I beat them, sometimes they beat me. But I did it."

He came back and scraped his way into the American middle-class dream. He got a job selling computers, when that industry was in its infancy. Later, he moved to a high-tech communications company that developed fax-modems. The company went public and Mount cashed in his employee equity to put a down payment on a house. Now he's a product manager at Octel Communications, which sells network equipment.

"This steady paycheck thing is much nicer than racing bikes," he says. "I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking I have to race or train today."

This is nonsense, of course.
No one is ever cured of bicycling. Mount is no exception.
Five years ago Mount staged a comeback, of sorts, competing in the "veterans" class of older riders in Northern California. He helped put on track-racing events at the Hellyer Park velodrome in San Jose, wrote training articles for the bicycle-racing journal Velo News, and now coaches recreational riders as part of a program sponsored by the Leukemia Society. He met his wife through a local racing club, and his wedding nearly three years ago was populated by a who's who of 1970s-80s California bike racing.

"The wedding itself was short," Mount says. "Followed by a lot of barbecuing.

"And a lot of bike riding."

Two-Wheeled Millennium
After the 1976 Olympics, Mike Neel entered the world championship road race and placed 10th. In 1977, Jonathan Boyer of Carmel, Calif., turned professional to race for the French team LeJeune-BP. In 1979, Greg LeMond won the junior world road racing championships in Buenos Aires. In 1980, Boyer finished fifth in the world professional road championships. In 1981, LeMond signed a pro contract with the Gitane team of France, winning the world road championship the following year.

LeMond went on to win three Tours, two world championships, and dozens of top European races, becoming one of the greatest riders in the history of the sport.

In the 1984 Olympics, U.S. riders won the road race, the pursuit, and the match sprint: a virtual sweep.

In 1986, with Mike Neel as coach, a team sponsored by the convenience store chain 7-Eleven went to Europe, winning a stage of the Tour de France. In 1988, Neel coached 7-Eleven team leader Andy Hampsten to win the Giro d'Italia. In 1989, having just won his second Tour de France and his second world championship, Greg LeMond was invited to the White House for a visit with George Bush. In 1994, Marty Nothstein was the first American since Frank Kramer to become world sprint champion.

And in 1997, some 32,000 cyclists took out racing licenses. Organized century rides -- 100-mile pleasure jaunts where participants pay a fee to receive food and mechanical support along the way -- attracted hundreds of thousands of participants.

Thousands more amassed regularly at San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza and rode through the streets of the city to challenge automobiles' hegemony.

Americans were cycling again, into a new and prosperous century, an optimistic and unsullied and two-wheeled millennium.