Everything was nicer than today.. the bikes, the apparel, recognizable riders,nice pristine landscapes with undestroyed cities and villages, men riding not boys, and the innocence in the air everywhere. Loved the TI Raleigh team.
@@trevormorris1208 You kinda have to be old enough to have actually lived pro/am cycling back then to get what he’s saying, watching old race vids on RU-vid and GCN commentators riding old bikes doesn’t really explain it all.
@@chrisstrobel3439 I am that old and I did race in the 80s. You can romanticize your era but the idea that they were men then and not now is false. It wasn't an innocent time either. While they didn't have EPO then Kimmage wrote about sticking amphetamines up his butt in the middle of TdF stages.
Watch the 87 Tour coverage or 87 Paris Roubaix. Storytelling, literary references, compelling (albeit somewhat crafted) storylines. No one cared it was tape delayed. Live coverage now is lame. Might get an eye seizure with all the unnecessary stats and graphics. We have not made cycling more enjoyable to watch.
Had the great honor of meeting Anderson while riding to work one morning a few days before the '94 Commonwealth Games in Victoria BC. I was fan-struck. He was very nice, and we rode side by side for a few kms while he asked my thoughts on the course.
Back in the day Phil Anderson was well respected in the uk I saw him at the 1982 world rr championships.He was a real trail blazer, showed slot of courage. Along with Piper,Yates,Millar,Graham Jones Kelly,Roche,Greg Lomond Boyer and Early,Kimmage brothers they gave confidence to others to venture over to Europe to have ago.Thank you.
Wow, written and produced in Adelaide (Australia), what a inspiring and truly well researched film, with amazingly broad film access.. it is a huge achievement from a city so far away from Europe.
I really enjoyed this documentary! Reminds me of the excellent Jørgen Leth films like "Stars and Water Carriers" and "A Sunday in Hell". thank you for finding and sharing
This film was made by Tim Sullivan who owned a small film company in Adelaide, Australia. Tim Died suddenly early this century and left a widow, Jennifer, and two sons. Copyright to this film does not belong to Classic Cycling, who just posted it because they could.
Love all these old cycling videos. The narration, music, personal lives and the scenes all make it very pleasant and relatable to watch. I can only say in amazement of the physiques of the riders decades ago were MORE Athletic with MUSCLE. Unlike today's Cycling Pros who are only skin and bones and pedal 36x32 when these Pros from decades past pedaled a 42x23 or 42x25.
I remember those pedals with cleats and straps. Before SPD pedals came out, I rode off road in Alaska with road shoes, cleats, and double straps. I couldn’t stand not being locked in; but it meant I couldn’t get out! It forced me to become a good bike handler. No hike a bikes for me! But I was stoked when clipless pedals came out.
Simpson. Anderson, Kelly, Lemond, Roche.... all great champions! All led the charge into Europe when it seemed impossible someone not from the Continent could win the TdF.
@Sills71 Newer, English speaking fans of the modern, cosmopolitan world of pro cycling cannot appreciate the momentous shift that occurred in the early 1980's with the influx of non-continental riders into the upper echelons of the sport!
Thank you for uploading this. I didn't know that Anderson at the time lived in Waregem (Belgium). That's a town some 15 miles from where we live ... Funny to see Anderson cycling in an environment I knew when I was child.
I was 11 years old. Just had got my first Racing bike. Sean Kelly was my first Hero. I still ride a steel frame. Its modern these days mix with carbon. Man those steel frames here are amazing. Cannot help but notice the tyer size. Like 19mm or something. Its what we all had back then lol. I run 32mm these days on Audax runs!
The first Tour when the colombian cyclists appeared. In my country the expectation was huge despite those cyclist were amateurs. Patrocinio Jimenez wore the red points jersey in the alps but lost it to Lucien Van Impe in the end. In Colombia we could not believe an Australian could be so close to win the tour back in the 80s
When racing and racers looked classic and rode classic machines. No technology advantages, no glasses and helmets hiding their faces and emotions. Just a wonderfully made film about cycling in the early ‘80’s.
I could not agree more. Yeah, yeah, yeah., I know I'll probably be annihilated by the "safety first" folks who would be absolutely mortified that someone isn't horrified to see cyclists riding without helmets.
If you look at the average of the winner of the prologue compared to the last opening time trial it is clear that some things have changed since 1983. 43,7 km/h compared to 51,5 km/h in Kopenhagen last year. I remember riding my club's time trial championship back in 1995 in an average of 42 km/h. I guess that is also the reason why riders are complaining so much about safety these days. There was a study that the speed at a certain amount of watts has increased by 18% since the early 90s due to improvements in material, aerodynamics, and especially training, nutrition, and recovery. Seeing that the riders still ate steak for breakfast in 1983 and used non-indexed shifting and toe-clips.
Agreed, even if it sounds slightly too modern, by comparison. Autobahn might be of the era but it's the little things like recreating traffic (Autobahn) vs rhythmic breathing (Tour de France) that give the latter the edge IMO.
The dots jersey on the Tourmalet stage day was not given to Van Impe. It was Patrocinio Jimenez who got it, after having beaten Van Impe on the slopes of the Tourmalet.
The day that Pascal Simon attacked and went into yellow was also the day that Robert Millar won the stage, so why was only Simone seen as the bad guy by Anderson?
They did not need helmets because 20lb steel bikes with proper geometry don't go 14" offline with every pedal stroke and get blown off the road by gusts.
Great to see Sean Kelly winning the green jersey, and holding yellow for a day, not many in his home country knew of him or what he had already achieved in the continental peloton. Likewise Phil Anderson was a great pioneer for Australian cycling, but he was alone in a French team in 83, we'll never know what could have been.
7:29 Strange seeing Phil Anderson with mudguards on his training bike. Sensible though. I bought a new Peugeot Course frame in 1993 and was very impressed at the lungless construction. A pity they stopped manufacturing bicycles in 2003.
Not only that, they were proper, full mudguards, not the little clip on things that you see today. A good mudguard is a courtesy to your fellows on a wet training ride because it keeps the spray out of the face of someone sitting on your wheel.
My dad bought me a Peugeot 753 frame and built it for racing in 1991. It was and still is a beautiful machine. I only ever rode it racing or testing equipment, and it never got crashed. A low mileage frame, with lots of memories.
If it weren't for the fact Lemond was a freak of nature, what happened in this documentary to Anderson could easily have been repeated in 1986. Contrast all this with the TdF 2004 documentary of Jens Voigt where his loyalty was 100% for the team and he didn't hesitate to chase down Jan Ulrich.
I know right , I had to say to many of my friends, boy you need to eat more and get to gym on some upper body. But skinny ones could usually climb well.
And now Paris and other capitals are empty because of a virus!!! Anyway, gonna watch it... This years cycling is over... The Best days of our lives then... Stay safe everyone. Praying things get better.
It's amazing still (as I watched this TdF unfold in real time in '83).... how Peugeot could throw away a podium finish to bolster a Frenchman who didn't stand a chance. That would NEVER happen today. French cycling can be so backwards.
Zoetemelk fails a drug test - and is only given a 10 minute time penalty! That having previously failed drug tests at the 1977 and 1979 tours. Some things do change for the better...
Merckx was also a perennial drug taker, so bad that he got DQ'd three times in big races including Fleche Wallone, Giro and TdF (IIRC) and a fourth at a lesser event. Consider how much he must have been on it to get caught so often in an era of hardly any testing and to get DQ'd in that era he must have been on it at a high level, one wonders why his results were so extraordinary.
@@tonyfranklin8306 Yes, I guess different eras viewed these things differently and you can't look back judgmentally using today's morals. Plus given this was when I first got interested in cycling it's very nostalgic for me. I was a fan of Phil Anderson - but Sean Kelly was (and still is) my all time hero!
@@tonyfranklin8306 though he still maintains he didn't abuse in his career. i read his biography and he says the positive drug tests were a set up because he was so good! but who really knows?
golden years of cycling for me, got my first racing bike in 1983 though i was a rugby player cycling wasn't my 'sport' as a kid nor into adulthood. We just all cycled back in those days to get places not like the pampered taxi kids of today!
12:00 The age old complaint of pro riders..."arghhh...I have to go out and ride my bike for 5 hours...poor me!" What about the guy that has to work on the factory floor or locked in a cubicle for 8-10 hours, day in, day out?! I've admired many pro riders over the years (including Phil Anderson) but I've never had much sympathy for their complaints of getting paid to do what many of us would do just for the love of it!
Doesn't make it easy though does it. I'm sure the stress and pressure of being a team leader is enough to make most people crack. 5 hours a day on a bike, must be brutal.
You have a point. Bicycle racing in Europe was always a working man's sport. The racers were blue collar guys and so were their fans. It wasn’t until the Tour got commercial media attention that middle-class heroes came along. After a stage win old pro Bartali commented, “It was easier than a day in the fields.”
I'm sure Phil and other Pro riders were aware they were lucky, that doesn't mean it is not sometime a drag to go out for 5 hours day after day after day for training when your feeling tired and its raining and windy outside. Turn any hobby into a job and its no longer a hobby. I can assure you that even as an amateur racer, there is the pressure to train whether you feel like it or not, try doing a years training programme and then tell me it was never a drag.
Was always a big fan of Fignon, but Anderson was in an unfortunate situation, maybe Simone was too selfish? It would have been extremely intriguing to make a documentary as to how Fignon won IMHO
Times are different. There's now a lot more money involved, so everything is about winning. Everything. It's always been about winning, but now there's more pressure. Which has sucked the soul out of it. I prefer the 80-90's racing for sure
