Free Cyclopedia by William Fotheringham Page B

the mid-1980s the event had become the Argus Cycle Tour and the field was up to several thousand, passing 20,000 by 1994. In 2002 the event was stopped due to extreme heat, while the toughest climb on the course, Chapman’s, has been ruled out on occasion due to landslides. The 2009 event was run off in winds up to 60 mph.
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    (SEE AFRICA TO READ ABOUT CYCLING IN OTHER PARTS OF THE CONTINENT)
    CARPENTER, Connie (b. Madison, Wisconsin, 1957)
    Winner of the first Olympic Games road race gold medal for women in 1984, Carpenter was one of a group of US cycling team members who sparked the revival in the sport in the early 1980s and is arguably the greatest US women’s bike racer to date. The former speed skater is also one of a rare breed: an athlete who
has competed at both Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Carpenter was one of a bunch of US athletes who excelled at both speed skating and cycling (see the UNITED STATES entry for more on these), finishing seventh in the 1,500 m at the 1972 Winter Games at the age of 14. Carpenter moved to cycling after an ankle injury cut short her skating career in 1976; the following year she raced to a silver medal in the world road race championships. She became a multiple US champion on road and track and in 1978 and 1979 competed prominently in varsity rowing for the University of California. In 1983 she became the world 3 km track pursuit champion, following that up in 1984 with the road world title and the Olympic road title in a two-up sprint with her fellow American Rebecca Twigg. Carpenter retired two days later. She had earlier married her fellow Olympian Davis Phinney, who was to win a stage of the Tour de France in 1987. Their son Taylor Phinney is a strong time triallist and track racer, was world pursuit champion in 2009 and 2010, and turned professional in 2011 for the BMC team run by JIM OCHOWICZ.
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    CARTOONISTS There is a rich vein of cycling cartoons, dating back to the pioneering era, when cycling was just another social phenomenon lampooned affectionately in the pages of magazines such as Punch . That tradition is maintained today by a string of cartoonists of whom the best known is probably Frenchman Jean-Jacques Sempé, whose beautifully detailed and frequently poignant work has appeared on the cover of the New Yorker magazine since 1978, and has also been regularly featured in Paris-Match and l’Equipe magazines. Bikes are prominent subjects in Sempé’s cartoons of French life, such as the couple on a bike that forms the cover for his collection Displays of Affection . While Sempé’s best-known creation is Le Petit Nicolas , among
his work is the graphic novel Raoul Taburin Keeps a Secret (published in France in 1995 as Raoul Taburin: une bicyclette à propos de son père ), the story of the great Ralph Sprockett, an expert bike mechanic who knows all there is to know about bikes apart from how to ride one. Four volumes of his work are available in English, and there is also a range of stationery based on his collection A Simple Question of Balance . The US cycling scene has produced its own cartoonists, with Patrick O’Grady being one of the leaders. An avid cyclist himself who has been writing as well as drawing for VeloNews magazine since 1989, O’Grady regularly pokes subversive, merciless fun at his fellows. His work includes the collection The Season Starts When? (1999, Velopress). Bikes are also important subjects, if in more surreal style, in the work of US illustrator Neal Skorpen, and, frequently with an environmental slant, in the drawings of the British illustrator Brick.
    Further back, the best-known European cycle racing cartoonist was the Swiss-domiciled French artist Pellos, who enjoys a similar place in French cycling culture to the writer Antoine Blondin. Both were key parts of the sport’s heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. His caricatures of the greats appeared in French magazines such as Match, Miroir