International Bicycle Race : Alcala, Longo Win Titles

The Coors International bicycle race, America’s counterpart to the Tour de France, is coming to Southern California next year.

As this year’s 13th annual stage race ended Sunday at North Boulder Park with Raul Alcala of Mexico and Jeannie Longo of France as its champions, expansion plans were revealed by race director Michael Aisner, who has run the Coors International since 1978.

“California has taken our race to its bosom with larger crowds than we ever see in Colorado,” Aisner said of the stage races held in San Francisco and Sacramento. “Now that we know our future lies in expansion, we want to showcase our event in the Los Angeles, and perhaps San Diego, areas.”

The emergence of Alcala, a 23-year-old from Monterrey, as the sport’s newest star, has not been lost on Aisner. One of the locations he is investigating for a 1988 stage is Baja California.

“Our problem now is how and where to conduct our events,” Aisner said. “We hear that cycling is big in Baja, and we know that if Alcala is there, it could be the biggest sporting event in Mexico since the World Cup.”

Other sites under consideration include Griffith Park, Westwood-UCLA for a criterium street race, Redlands, San Diego and the Olympic road race course in Mission Viejo.

“We haven’t talked with anyone there yet, but it would be intriguing to have a race on the Olympic course in the Olympic year,” Aisner said. “Redlands has also been talked about, although I have never seen the course they use.”

Carol Bestwick, the mayor of Redlands and the city’s No. 1 cycling booster, was here as an observer and perhaps to lobby for becoming part of Aisner’s carnival.

It was Alcala’s performance two years ago in the Tour of Redlands that caught the eye of 7-Eleven team officials and resulted in the young Mexican joining the dominant American team.

No less an authority than the legendary Bernard Hinault, five-time Tour de France winner who retired after winning last year’s Coors International, tabbed Alcala as “a certain winner of the Tour de France in not too many years.”

Alcala finished ninth in last month’s Tour de France, the highest 7-Eleven placing, and his victory here brought him several offers to ride for major European teams next year. However, his manager, Louis Viggio, said he will probably remain with the U.S. team.

7-Eleven riders took the first four positions in overall standings. Alcala was followed by Jeff Pierce, Andy Hampsten and Ron Kiefel.

Los Angeles also had an observer here. Kathleen St. John, administrative assistant to Mayor Bradley, was here to prepare a report to the Los Angeles Chamber Sports Council.

“This certainly is quite a spectacle,” St. John said as she watched thousands of spectators sitting and standing through a driving rain Saturday. “I think it would fit in well in Los Angeles.”

The men’s field, with only 52 riders, was the smallest since the event started in 1975 as the Red Zinger race with three days of racing in Boulder. Aisner believes that the 20-day duration and the distances involved are reasons for the small field.

“Next year we are cutting back to 16 days, and by going Southern California, it should help attract more foreign riders,” Aisner said. “We are expecting a banner year. Greg LeMond (injured former Tour de France and Coors International winner) should be back and he always makes a difference.”

Aisner admitted that his expansion to Hawaii was a mistake this year.

“Hawaii is definitely out next year,” he said. “A number of the European teams were turned off by so much travel. They just didn’t want to go through 12 time zones to race and then have to go right back for the (Sept. 6) world championships in Austria.”

No riders except the 7-Eleven team rode in the Tour de France and then came to the Coors.

“We learned a lesson in logistics,” Aisner said. “We know we can’t have but one air lift. We had two, one from Hawaii to San Francisco and another from Reno to Colorado. The teams have made it plain that one is enough.”

Pierce, the San Diego rider who had appeared to be 7-Eleven’s “designed winner” until Alcala took command with a powerful ride up the hill from Golden to Estes Park last Thursday, voiced concern over travel.

“There were times when winning a stage depended more on a rider’s ability to adjust from plane travel that what he could do on his bicycle,” Pierce said.

That would mean that if races were held in Southern California, it would eliminate Northern California and Nevada, where races were held this year.

“We’ll have to look at the picture and perhaps alternate between San Francisco and Los Angeles,” Aisner said. “What we would like next year is to start in Colorado and end up in Los Angeles.”

Fittingly, the winners of Sunday’s final circuit race at North Boulder Park were the two world road racing champions, Longo and Moreno Argentin of Italy.

Longo, winning her fourth race this year, simply pedaled away from the field on the final lap of the 1.65-mile course.

“When Jeannie wants to win, there’s no way any woman in the world can stop her,” said Genny Brunet of Canada, who finished third. Brunet’s Celestial Seasonings teammate, Madonna Harris of New Zealand, was second.

Argentin, after riding back in the pack for two weeks, emerged Sunday with a sprint that dashed hometown favorite Davis Phinney’s hopes of winning at North Boulder for the third time.

It was the fourth time Phinney finished second this year, frustrating his efforts to tie his wife, Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter, for most career Coors victories at 18.

The North Boulder Park criterium, which has traditionally been the final event of the Coors race in cycle-conscious Boulder, probably had its final showing. It was here in 1975 that the race was born, but like so many small-town spectacles, it has outgrown itself.

“Boulder has more licensed cyclists than any state except California,” Aisner said. “That’s right, I didn’t say city, I said state. But it got so the residents around the park complained so much about the traffic and inconvenience that we are going to have to move.”

Cold and treatning weather, which turned into intermittent drizzles, kept fans away, but last year when Hinault and LeMond were riding, there were an estimated 50,000 people swarming around the grassy residential park.