Happy new year to one and all who visit this site. It’s a veritable haven from many of the horrors of everyday life.

You can say that again. One of my goals for the year is to (try) and tune out all the stuff in my world that pisses me off and that I probably can’t change. I know there is plenty of truly bad stuff going on in the world right now and my life is pretty easy in comparison. But, one of my top goals is just to focus on doing my job well, riding my bike, reading good stuff, eating right, sleeping right, and just letting everything else go.

I don’t mind cycling or other sports in the cold, but I don’t understand how some guys ride without gloves in cold weather. Haussler does it all the time. I can handle cold ears, cold legs, even cold feet, but I need gloves well before it dips to freezing.

Oh, and last week I rode in a t-shirt and shorts (commuting, relax!) and this morning it was 0. What the hell is going on. Don’t mind cold, but I do mind wild fluctuations.

And Gianni knows aboot cold; he’s just too shy to let on.

Mendy

Happy new year to one and all who visit this site. It’s a veritable haven from many of the horrors of everyday life.

Also, I think that is the best I’ve ever seen Bob Roll look.

Pedantry aside, nice article. That era was truly a golden age of hardmanism.

@Haldy

Clever retort. May I remind you that both Heinrich and I have fantastic hair of the sort that doesn’t require gloves? I’m sure you don’t understand.

that makes 3 of us.

@Haldy

Clever retort. May I remind you that both Heinrich and I have fantastic hair of the sort that doesn’t require gloves? I’m sure you don’t understand.

Well…once upon a time I did.

Going up is easy when it’s cold. That descent must have really been awful. I’m amazed a skinny wee lad like Andy could keep his bike going straight on the downhill. Brrrrrr.

Clever retort. May I remind you that both Heinrich and I have fantastic hair of the sort that doesn’t require gloves? I’m sure you don’t understand.

@Haldy

I think you missed the obvious fact that as soon as he donned his casquette, he was perfectly warm for the descent…

Ah, of course! That wee cotton cap is what saved him, just like his mother told him it would!

After all..it protected Hinault as well-

Happily, rest days are freeform fermented malt absorption days, so a semblance of proper form was retained. VLVV

I think you missed the obvious fact that as soon as he donned his casquette, he was perfectly warm for the descent…

Ah, of course! That wee cotton cap is what saved him, just like his mother told him it would!

I had the pleasure of hearing Andy speak about that day and the ’86 tour when the Cascade Bike Club hosted him here in Seattle for a viewing of “Slaying the Badger” earlier this year. He joked that he doesn’t like to talk about that day…it still makes him cold thinking about it!

By the way it was snowing and the way the flakes were coming down, I figured the storm was coming from the north so I reckoned that the conditions would be much worse on the descent. Because of this, I didn’t fly over the top but held back to save some energy for the descent.

When Breukink caught me at the top, at first, I thought I would follow him on the descent but he was going so slowly when the descent started that I figured I should go in front and make my own mistakes. I learned later that Breukink never put on a jacket. Instead, his team manager, Peter Post followed him down the descent and kept him alert by yelling and cursing at him.

I only had one gear for the descent, all the others had iced up and I kept thinking that I must keep pedaling to keep that one gear free of ice. The road at the top of the descent was gravel. It was better for descending than asphalt as it did not ice up. I tested it a couple of times to see if it was solid and it was. The spectators on the descent did not know if the race had been cancelled so they were wandering all over the road. On one turn, I almost hit a Carerra team mechanic holding a spare pair of wheels and walking down the middle of the road. I remember he was wearing this beautiful gore-tex full body suit and I really wanted to have it on me!

As I descended, I got colder and colder. I tried to shut out the cold and concentrate on the road ahead. It was asphalt now, but luckily it was not icy. I tried not to break too hard. When I used the brakes, first I had to break the ice from the rims, then scrape the water off before I got any stopping power.

I was concerned about hypothermia and just how much colder I could get before I was no longer able to pedal the bike. My arms were basically locked up from the start of the descent, I just tried to keep pedaling to keep my legs moving. At one point, I looked down at my legs and through a layer of ice and lanolin grease, I could see that they were bright red. After that, I didn’t look at my legs again.

About 10km into the descent, Mike Neel in the team car caught up with me. There wasn’t much he could do, the snow had turned to a cold rain, all I cared about was getting down to a place which was warm and I could stop.

At about 6km to go, Breukink caught me, but I was totally blocked and could not respond. Breukink had no rain jacket on, just a jersey, so he could descend faster on the long straight drop into Bormio. There was no bloody way I was going to take my jacket off. – Andy Hampsten

That Panasonic kit was the bomb. The jacket Breukink is wearing on the podium is ace.