Knickman Has Come Full Cycle : After Troubles in Europe, He’s Now Riding High

Roy Knickman, 11-time national champion as a junior and a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympic cycling team, has been billed by some as the next Greg LeMond.

The message has been that he’s very good, and that he or Andy Hampsten, who is currently riding in the Tour de France, may be the United States’ next great cyclist.

But two months ago, Knickman was thinking that he might not have a future in cycling. The 22-year-old rider, who grew up in Ventura and became a road racer after his BMX bike was stolen, was living in Switzerland, riding for a top European team, Toshiba-Look.

And hating it.

Quite a change for the guy who was known to friends and rivals as Mr. Motivation, as the guy who would drive other riders into the ground with his training regimen.

In May, it didn’t look as if he would be driving anything other than his car to the airport.

“I lost my motivation,” Knickman said. “I didn’t care what I ate, if I slept. It wasn’t much fun. I just didn’t want to be there.”

Where he wanted to be was in Boulder, Colo., where he has a house. So he left, went for some good old home cooking and a visit with roommate Doug Smith, a member of the ICN cycling team.

Riding with the 23-year-old Smith in the mountains of Colorado, Knickman started caring again.

In June, Knickman finished second in the Core-States U.S. PRO national road race in Philadelphia. A few hours later, he hopped on a plane back to Europe and won a stage in the Tour of Switzerland.

Last week, in the Cascade series at Bend, Ore., he finished fourth after missing his start in the prologue by 40 seconds and ending Stage One in 30th place, 2 1/2 minutes behind the leader.

Mr. Motivation is back.

Knickman is the overall leader after four stages of the Whiskey Creek stage race here. He finished second to Nathan Sheafor of Unipro in the 102-mile fourth stage Saturday.

In today’s final stage, the Whiskey Creek Criterium that sends the riders over a .6-mile course in Mammoth Lakes, Knickman quite clearly is the rider to beat.

In Friday’s third stage, a 49-mile, 5,000-foot hill climb from Bishop to the Mammoth Mountain Inn, Knickman showed some riding ability he wasn’t even sure he had. When he won in the inaugural Whiskey Creek race in 1985, and last year when he ran interference for eventual winner and former teammate Thurlow Rogers, Knickman fell well behind the pack climbing Sherwin Summit.

Friday, however, he and Smith pulled the pack up the hill only to see James Urbonas edge them and 10 other cyclists at the finish.

Mr. Motivation is not only back, he also may be better than ever.

Prognosticators who were seeing a bright future for Knickman--but took pause when he struggled early in Europe--can regain that vision. Whether that future will be with the French Toshiba-Look team, however, is still unclear.

“Once I’d had a rest, once I’d come home, when I went back, all of a sudden I was racing great,” Knickman said. “The team didn’t really understand what I was going through. Living in a small town where they speak only French and riding with a top European team is difficult. You’re the odd man out a lot of times, being an American.”

In short, and despite his recent success, it has been a trying year for Knickman with Toshiba-Look.

In January, it looked as if he might be with LeMond, the defending champion, and Toshiba-Look at the Tour de France. Organizers at Whiskey Creek figured they had probably seen the last of him in this winter ski resort town in the Eastern Sierra.

Then in April, LeMond was injured in a hunting accident, and Knickman was told to wait until next year by Toshiba-Look.

Now, with LeMond down again, this time because of an emergency appendectomy nearly two weeks ago that forced him to pull out of the Mammoth Lakes event, Knickman is riding at Whiskey Creek without a full team behind him. Or he behind them.

He and the team are committed to each other only through the rest of the year, and the face of Toshiba-Look is quite clearly changing. With LeMond recuperating in the United States, the team is focusing this year on Frenchman Jean-Francois Bernard, currently one of the leaders in the Tour de France. And earlier in the week, LeMond announced that he would not be back with Toshiba.

While speculation at Whiskey Creek focuses on where he will go after leaving Toshiba-Look, Knickman himself will say only that he hasn’t re-signed with Toshiba and he hasn’t started talking to any other teams.

But he has been dropping clues.

Wednesday morning, before the Whiskey Creek prologue, he said: “They’re a French team. Maybe they like it better going with a French rider (Bernard).”

Friday afternoon, after the third stage, he said: “I don’t know about next year, but I know I’m not going to be with another European team where I don’t have any say.”

The say to which Knickman refers deals largely with his racing schedule.

Although Toshiba-Look just informed Knickman that it will field a team behind him in the Coors Classic starting in Hawaii Aug. 5, Knickman’s European team has been less than supportive of his U.S. racing.

“I like Whiskey Creek,” Knickman said. “I’d already committed to coming here. It’s a good tuneup for the Coors, and it’s good, hard racing. . . . Besides, there’s so much to do when you’re done racing.”

Smith, who had his own problems with an Italian team a few years ago, has been an apt ego-booster for Knickman.

“I know what it’s like,” Smith said. “I know how lonely it can be, not the riding part, but the pressure of being on a foreign team. Sometimes, they tend to dismiss you.”

Knickman’s one-year tenure at Toshiba-Look also has been plagued by the long shadow LeMond casts. As a professional cyclist, it might take quite a bit of time for Knickman to build the same kind of career.

As an individual, however, Knickman has never been in the same mold as LeMond. Whereas the superstar aura surrounds LeMond, Knickman prefers to be one of the boys. And Knickman is as talkative as LeMond is reticent.

He comes back to Mammoth Lakes to have fun. That Toshiba-Look did not field a full team here--Knickman rounded up a couple of other cyclists to ride with him--has allowed Knickman to relax with his other crew, “Team Tantra,” sort of a private club that includes Smith and Urbonas.

The “team” is named for the street on which Knickman and Smith live, Tantra Circle. Urbonas, who lives a few miles away, is an associate member.

“We have other temporary members, too, whoever happens to be staying with Roy at the time,” Smith said. “He has a spare bedroom and there’s always somebody in it. We kind of have a revolving door.”

Together, Smith and Knickman are a gregarious pair, more eager to have some fun in Mammoth Lakes than to face reporters after their latest ride at Whiskey Creek. The story--which comes out in pieces--is that Smith came up with the Team Tantra concept while doodling on an airplane airsick bag.

Urbonas’ membership on the team was only natural. The three, who come across a bit like Larry, Curly and Moe when they aren’t giving a discourse on breaking from the pack, have been friends since they met as juniors. They have been practicing their slapstick routine, when they can get together, ever since.

The latest gig is that, in addition to cycling, they’re top players on the professional golf tour--miniature golf.

Urbonas also saddled Knickman with the nickname Spud, which goes back to their junior days when Knickman ate lots of potatoes and liked to listen to the rock group Devo, whose fans are known as Spud Boys.

“And his face is shaped like a potato,” Urbonas said. “I mean, have you looked at it? It’s even the same color.”

Actually, what Knickman’s face does remind people is that, as a professional cyclist, he’s just a baby. He doesn’t have the taut, drawn look of the veterans--too much pudge remains in his cheeks.

When he acknowledges his baby face, Knickman seems to recognize that the Tour de France was just not to be this year, that next year the maturity, and perhaps a new team, will be there.

“With my style of riding, and the way the tour is, it just wasn’t to be done by me yet,” Knickman said. “They have to draw the line somewhere. I just hope they try to understand what I’m doing.”

What he’s doing is winning, with the support of Team Tantra.