Show Must Go On : Mechanics See a Different Tour de France

George Noyes, a slight man with sandy hair, was washing Belgian-made bicycles in the parking lot of a hotel when the rains came.

Wearing worker’s overalls and knee-high rubber boots, the chief mechanic for the Motorola bicycle team continued his chore unfazed.

Twenty-four hours earlier, Noyes had worked during a late spring evening when a sudden downpour struck the village of Cherasco, a speck on the map where the Motorola team stayed after the 17th stage of the Tour of Italy, the world’s second-biggest cycling event. He continued scrubbing the team’s red, white and blue bicycles then, too.

After five years of international racing, Noyes, 27, is used to unusual working conditions. Such is life as a behind-the-scenes player in world-class bicycling.

When the 79th Tour de France begins today with a prologue in San Sebastian, Spain, Noyes and his colleagues will face an assortment of obstacles in their efforts to keep the bikes rolling for the next 22 days.

They are an integral part of this quixotic, chaotic caravan that will race in seven countries over 2,380 miles. The 1992 Tour will celebrate the fragile unity of the European community by entering Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Spain before crowning a champion July 26 on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

As they move from stage to stage, country to country, the support crews will feel the tension as much as the cyclists. The mechanics cannot afford even the slightest error.

“They overdo it,” Noyes said of the Tour’s pomp and circumstance. “Every year they’ve got to do more. And everything you do has a potential for oversight. It gets to you after a while.”

Noyes was lamenting that his assistant, Neil Lacey of San Diego, had 2 1/2 weeks after the Giro d’Italia to build 15 bicycles for the Tour de France. During that period the mechanics also had to work two tuneup races--the Tour of Switzerland and a smaller stage race in southern Italy.

“It’s such a big show they need the bikes looking perfect,” Noyes said of the demands.

He returned to scrubbing as soon as the words left his mouth.

MERELY ANOTHER MANIC MECHANIC

Noyes, who plied his craft in a Chicago bike shop before moving to Europe, is considered one of America’s best competition mechanics. Instead of starting as a racer, as did many of his peers, Noyes learned the trade from the ground up. As a 14-year-old, his first bike-shop task was sweeping floors.

Sweeping proved to be good training for the Tour de France, during which Noyes will spend most of his time cleaning bikes, driving a team truck to the next stage stop and gluing sew-up tires to rims. He glued more than 70 tires during the three-week Giro , and will glue even more during the Tour because the tires are changed every two days.

With such repetitive chores, the Tour loses its luster. By now, the mechanics have been on the road for most of four months, performing virtually the same duties at race after race across Western Europe.

When Noyes came to Europe as a 21-year-old, he envisioned miles of adventurous travel with side trips to see all the sights. He was partially right--it was an adventure sleeping in generic hotels for nine months.

“I didn’t have a place to leave a bag,” said Noyes, who lives near team headquarters in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Motorola, the only major American team in professional cycling, recruits much of its staff from the United States. That presents a problem because workers such as Noyes have to start anew in a foreign country.

“I’m amazed anyone lasts more than two years,” said Andy Hampsten, Motorola’s leading cyclist. “After the first year, most of the mechanics can’t believe how much work it is.”

A lot of the work is simply adjusting to new languages and customs. Crews run into a variety of nationalities during a season in which they drive about 50,000 miles to service the 100-odd events--some one-day races, others, like the Tour, three-week logistic nightmares.

“It’s a cowboy existence,” Noyes said. “You’re part of the circus.”

The show begins for Noyes shortly after New Year’s. He returns to Belgium in early January to start assembling 120 bicycles for 18 riders before the season begins in February. By selecting the best frames and components, he gets much of the mechanical work finished then.

Noyes tests the latest products when he has time, but he is not easily swayed by lighter components made with experimental compounds. The riders pester the mechanics to use lightweight graphite or titanium equipment, but Noyes stays with race-proven metals that can withstand the rigors of the Tour.

His rationale: No matter how streamlined the mechanics make the bicycles, they have no control over how the cyclists ride.

“So much of our work is pointless,” Noyes said. “So many things can go wrong on one of these tours, you think anyone can win.”

Point to Noyes. The 22 teams at the Tour use roughly the same kinds of bicycle frames, forks, spokes, tires, tubes, rims and gear shifters. Winning the Tour usually has more to do with human locomotion than aerodynamics.

PUTTING IT IN OVERDRIVE

They are bicycle mechanics, but sometimes they feel as if their lives revolve around cars. Neil Lacey, Noyes’ assistant, wonders about that.

“I hate driving,” he said.

Yet when they sit around after a stage, whether in Italy or France, their conversation eventually turns to autos.

In 1987, Noyes sent the team truck, then sponsored by 7-Eleven, to Italy for the off-season. The team truck, which holds bikes, refrigerated food, a washer and dryer and all the accessories needed to support a major race, bears the sponsor’s logo, so many motorists associate it with the Tour.

Because 7-Eleven did not have a European office, Noyes had either to store the truck for the winter or ship it to the United States at great expense. Noyes did not want to make the all-night trip to Italy after a season of driving, so he got someone to go.

But the driver was not experienced when it came crossing the French-Italian border. He was unaware of border officials who are best placated with team souvenirs. When Italian border guards asked for the usual cycling paraphernalia--T-shirts, caps or water bottles--he refused.

The guards confiscated the truck.

“They kept it three months and charged a huge fine to retrieve it,” Noyes said.

The truck needed to be stored anyway, so Noyes went to Chicago without worrying. When he got it before the season began in 1988, much of the material inside was missing.

“They even took our rubber boots,” Noyes said.

The lesson was well learned. Accessories are handed out like political flyers, particularly in Spain and Italy. Sometimes, picky border guards are not satisfied with a small handout. They want a tire, at $50 each, or a full cycling uniform. Other times, the truck is pulled over by local police who want a keepsake.

“They empty your truck if you don’t comply,” said Noyes, ready to make seven border crossings in the next 22 days.

If the authorities do not make a killing, thieves often do. The mechanics have tried to make their vehicles burglar-proof. At last year’s Tour de France, the special carbon-fiber bicycles used by Greg LeMond’s Z team were stolen during an early stage.

A few years ago, Hampsten was winning a tour in Colombia when all his bikes were stolen. The theft was a national embarrassment, and enough was made on television that the bikes mysteriously reappeared.

Noyes and Lacey watch for thieves wherever they park, which makes their work doubly difficult.

Still, Noyes prefers dealing with the public, rather than riding in a support vehicle behind the racers. A veteran of five Giros and three Tours, Noyes drives the team truck from hotel to hotel and prepares a workplace by the time the cyclists finish a stage. He rarely sees his bikes in action.

“Riding in the (support) car all day, you’re like a zombie,” Noyes said. “You’re breathing pollution all day (riding behind other support vehicles).”

Lacey, 33, a compact, quiet man who worked his way to Europe after starting in a Point Loma bicycle shop, enjoys riding the race route. The mechanic sits in the back seat while a team driver--usually the coach--drives the support vehicles.

The vehicle not only carries tools and extra bikes, but food and drink. Most of the time, the mechanics pass the water bottles to the team driver, who hands them to the cyclists. But when called into action, they must be pit-crew quick.

The most frequent problem is a flat tire. Sometimes, Lacey leans out the window of the car to make adjustments while the cyclist continues pedaling.

But his true worth is found during crashes. At the Tour, the cyclists ride more aggressively, and chances of crashes increase.

“The more you do it, the more you’ll have to deal with something ugly,” Lacey said.

Lacey already has handled some serious crashes this season.

At the Tour du Pont in May, Motorola’s Steve Bauer was challenging in a time trial when he blew a tire and took a spill after crossing railroad tracks. Instead of changing the tire, Lacey gave Bauer a new bike.

During the first week of the Giro , Jan Schurr of Germany ran into the mirror of a race official’s motorcycle while trying to avoid a crash. Even with a bloody face, Schurr wanted to continue. His bike needed major repairs, which would have to wait until Noyes got to it at the truck. Lacey gave him a new bike, then watched as an ambulance rode alongside Schurr, an attendant administering first aid for the next kilometer.

In those situations, Lacey has little time to diagnose the condition and decide what to do.

“It’s hard on your nerves,” Noyes said. “If you don’t change a wheel fast enough, you’re blamed.”

Hampsten had one of the strangest mishaps during the Fleche Wallonne spring classic in Belgium, when he was thrown from his bike after the frame split. Hampsten said the incident occurred 200 kilometers into the one-day race, when he had a funny sensation about the bike.

“I told myself, ‘It’s just your legs,’ ” Hampsten said.

He was in a sprint uphill when the bike simply buckled. The frame, made of experimental tubing, was too thin for Hampsten’s powerful legs.

Hampsten needed a month after the accident to regain his confidence, but came through relatively unscathed.

Noyes was another matter.

“The mechanics took it harder than me,” Hampsten said.