CliffordK

Going through some photo archives.

Starting off with the 1975 Midget National Road Race in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

My brother is in the white striped T-Shirt, Green bike, and Orange Skid-Lid. I think at that time hair nets were legal, but the skid lid wasn't, so my parents came up with the bright idea of wearing the skid lid over the top of a hair net helmet.








Unfortunately the bike is long gone. It was a little green bike. Possibly a Gitane. 5 speed. At that time, all "Midgets" (up to 6th grade) were required to ride bikes with 24" wheels. The top riders trained a LOT.

I'll see if more photos show up.

repechage

Note the kid with the single speed? Smart Idea, the gear limit was so meager even that one sprinter’s hill was just not that much.

that year was a mess helmet wise. The Bell Biker was legal and some hockey helmets.the Bell was no doubt too big for the wee ones.
‘it was hot and humid, terrible penalty to wear two!
the hairnets were supposed to have ear pads over the aft straps, the front to back pads were to be sewn together, so no Cinelli floating midline pad. A few racers found a cleaners that did alterations.
the transverse webs were to be padded too…
most arrived without this to the venue.
a few lucky ones got acceptable helmets from shops like the Yellow Jersey.
I was racing the next class up, mine was a Banani - good to go save the ear protection.
the USCF had to give in, otherwise the fields would have been about a dozen racers.

our club was sent a notice on the helmet regs like a week before. bush league.

repechage

If I had started racing 6 months earlier, I would have had to use 24” wheels, I was 5’-7” would have been tough.
a year later our club had a young woman of 11 who wanted to race, she was 5’-4” a local made her a 52cm track bike. 24” wheels. I think she medaled at the track.
was a challenge as very difficult to race enough to really learn tactics. Was not till the Nationals did she experience smart riders competing against her.

in two years she was busting out all over, Ralph Therrio took an interest, then was horrified to learn her age. We chuckled.

TenGrainBread 

Didn't know you grew up in Milwaukee area?
At that time the Yellow Jersey was 4 years old, having started April 1 1971 according to the bidon I just picked up from the shop (now located in Arlington WI in an old bank building).

Erzulis Boat 

At the young ages, its so hard to know who has real potential. I was a late bloomer ( didn't stop growing until 27) so many times the little phenom gets run over when things start to even out maturity wise.
I remember one kid that had a mustache in junior high that was comparatively impressive in PE classes. Fast forward to perhaps a decade or so ago, and this little guy is giving me a haircut at the barbershop. I notice his name tag, and holy smokes it was him.

repechage

no, flew in for the Nationals that year.
could not do that today, went solo, things were easier back then, bought the ticket at a travel agency, show up for the flight, pay the bike extra baggage fee and done. No one asked my age.

CliffordK

A lot of things have changed over time. For us it was a family trip. We loaded the whole family up in the car and drove across the country. A stop at Yellowstone. A stop at Mt. Rushmore. A stop at the South Dakota Badlands. I also remember driving past the lakefront mansions in Milwaukee.

1975 means we probably were driving the Fiat 128. A tiny car for a family of 4 plus a bicycle by today's standards. No SUV.

I thought some more racing photos might pop up, but so far nothing. Perhaps a little more hunting.

repechage

I have very few photos of my racing. Photography cost of film, processing and print… I have two handed to me at races of prior events. At least I have an image of my first victory. That time I knew there was someone ready to take a picture. In storage now.

drpaddle

Wow. Seeing a Skid-Lid in 1975 was quite rare. Did your parents get it from Saxe Montgomery in San Diego? I think even I got my first Skid-Lid in '75, and I was Saxe's son.
Kevin Montgomery

USAZorro

How did your brother do?

CliffordK

I don't really know. I don't remember the finish order. He didn't win. I think I've heard that he finished in the top 10. But, based on the photos, there may have only been a dozen or so riders. For us, it was a long trip across the country, so there likely were quite a few state champions that didn't participate in the nationals.

Actually, the state championship was also rather low key, with less than a half dozen kids.

We attended an after race banquet where there was some discussion about different riders.

For us this was a rather shoestring budget endeavor. The bike (Gitane?) was reasonably good, but only a 5 speed. We found a pair of aluminum clincher rims, and double butted spokes, so we rebuilt the wheel set. And, there was work to get the perfect gearing.

From the discussions, some of the other riders apparently had 24" sewups. I'm not sure where they even found them. And the leaders had what seemed to me as a rather preposterous training schedule. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was certainly over 100 miles a week, perhaps a few hundred miles a week.

With our drive across the country, we kicked my brother out of the car from time to time to chase down the car on the road. But I don't remember the family ever having an organized training routine.

My father did some rather long bike commutes during that era (20 miles each way), but he wasn't a bike racer, and it seemed as if most of our riding was recreational.

Later my brother did try racing in the intermediates, but it was a whole new competitive world.

I also raced as a Midget, but alas, I was only second in the state, and we didn't do the nationals, and that was the end of my racing career.

I think the race was only about a dozen miles. However, during the era, we were doing bike-a-thons as long as 80 miles, and an annual 2-day family bike ride from Eugene to Riddle Oregon with about 50 miles a day.

CliffordK

I don't know where we got it. There was a local bike shop, Collins Bikes in Eugene that had some road bike stuff. We also had a catalog from Bike-Ecology, I think. Maybe another catalog.

I may still have the Skid Lid somewhere, but I'm not quite sure where it is at.

My parents did get a later model of Skid Lid. And there were many subtle differences between the early and late one. The early one had a leather strap and a plastic clip buckle. It also had plain plastic tubing. The later ones had a reinforced tubing, and I think the buckle was a nylon strap and a pair of rings. The later ones may have also had a chamois pad, while mine didn't. By the time I was in the late teens, the padding in mine was just wafer thin.

Ok, so I got the hand-me-down skid lid. My brother got the Bell with little scooped out ventilation holes.

As mentioned, the racing authority decided at least for the nationals that the skid lid had too big of holes. While for a lot of riding it might be OK, a big pile-up with a lot of pedals everywhere could penetrate the helmet.

CliffordK

Ok, I found the 1976 BikeCology catalog online.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/zbills...ith/2771384115





They do show the Bell that my brother got sometime after the race (and I got the Skid Lid). But, alas no Skid Lids.

DiabloScott

I remember the helmet rules for UCSF races back then were pretty vague - something like "can't be just leather straps - has to have some padding in there".

The Snell/ANSI sticker rule came out about 1984, and that's when SkidLids and hairnets were banned from the start line.

repechage

Giro? Gyro? Was the tolerable EPS helmet at first. Better than a hairnet. We all knew the hairnets were not much help, especially the Cinelli that all knew was just a placeholder that one had on a “helmet”.
my first in 1973 was a Lambertini, was OK, the Kucharik was… just bloated and ugly.
‘the Bell biker was worn by a few notables for a while, Ron Skarin among. Probably saved Joe Yoder’s life when he went over the fence at Encino.

Skarin later went back to a hairnet, the Bell was too hot to race in.

CliffordK

When did they come up with the concept of a fabric covered Styrofoam? Idea was that the foam would crumble in an accident, sacrificed for the life of the rider. It only lasted a couple of years before they started doing the molded thin plastic cover.