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the twilight then and now
G ene Dixon founded the Athens Twilight
Criterium in 1980 and continues to run it for
the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce. Here are
excerpts from the recollections he shared with Pete
McCommons about 25 years of the Criterium.
How the Twilight Criterium got started... We
wanted to do a bike race, and we wanted to put it
downtown, so it sort of evolved. We did it in July,
so we put it at night, because it was hot Plus, it
just seemed like a lot more fun at night
His own background in cycling... Forever. Ever
since I was 15.1 was living in New Jersey, and the
biggest race in the country at that time was in
Somerville, NJ. It was like the only race that made
it through from the 70s and the heyday of
cycling. Somerville was the one race that made it.
and I raced it a couple of times. Actually, I got
started riding a bike... I had a horse, and it was
15 miles from our house. So, I'd ride out to ride
the horse. I didn't have a driver's license, of
course, at 14. And 30 miles a day, day in and day
out, so I turned it into a race.
On the first Criterium... Well there were some
good racers. Getting Danny Clark here was a pretty
big deal. I mean, he was a world champion...'-but
there weren't very many—40 guys—a lot of them
just field fodder, because we needed more guys.
Highlights from the races... Oh yeah, there were
some great races. The second race Danny Clark
won was a really good race. With 10 to go, he just
came flying out of the back, down the finish
stretch—could have done it on the back stretch,
but the guy is such a showman, and he leaves
everybody. That was pretty fun. And then the
most notable thing in recent years is Gord Fraser.
Gord won like four stages in the Tour de Georgia
last year. Before that he won the Twilight twice,
and he would have won again, but he got caught
grabbing somebody's jersey on the last turn. I
mean, that's crazy. You're doing 40 miles an hour
in the turn and you grab somebody. He missed his
leadout guy. When that guy jumped, he missed
the jump, so he was trying to get back on his
wheel. So he lost that year, and then he came
back and won it the next year—and he'll be back
this year, so that'll be fun to watch. He is an
incredible, incredible bike rider.
On strategy... It's really some classic racing...
They really have to have a plan if they're going to
win this race. Like (the Jittery Joe's-Kalahari
team]: they have a plan, but it's going to be so
hard for them to pull it off, because there's only
that one guy—there are two guys who can pos
sibly win the race. One has to win it on his own,
by himself or which guy can get out and sprint,
and Tim Johnson is not known as a sprinter. He's
as strong as anybody out there, but he's just not a
sprinter. So, if they get the wrong mix in a break,
there's no way they can win. And if they can get
(Jeff] Hopkins in the front at the leadout. they
can win the race, but the chances of them pulling
that off with all those other teams with whole dif
ferent sets of strategies will be pretty hard. That's
the sort of thing I like to watch.
down, and they've got the horsepower to chase it
down and now another team would have to go
chase it down. Between those guys in back and
Health Net and those guys in front, they're not
going to get in the way of the break, but a chase
has to be organized... you've got to pull off;
somebody else has got to pull through, then
somebody else has got to pull through and some
body else has got to pull through, and it's got to
rotate real fast at the front. So, Health Net will
stick people at the front, and when it comes their
time to pull through, if they don't pull through,
the break just kind of fells apart and has to reor
ganize again.
More tactics... You're probably not going to get
away really early, because everybody's fresh. So
unless it's kind of pre-planned to send somebody
down the road and kind of disrupt and chase from
the beginning, it's not going to happen, because
there's always guys who can come around and
bridge that gap. So as it gets harder and harder,
like after lap 10 or 15, that gap becomes harder
and harder to bridge. Once this guy back here hits
that wind, he can't make it He can't cross over...
so that's how the breaks develop, as the level of
the race becomes more intense, as people get
more and more tired, that's when the bieaks start
happening.
The team to watch... The team to watch is Health
Net. They will never miss a major break. You won't
see anything happening without one of those guys
being in the mix. Just watch the race develop,
and if something happens and they're not in it—if
there are no green and black jerseys—somebody's
got to go to the front and pull it back. And Jittery
Joe's will be in that position as welL The
dynamics of the break is what is fun to watch. It
may not be a break that makes any sense for a
group like Jittery Joe's. If they're going to win the
race, they've got to have Tim Johnson who can
stay away from all those other guys or they've got
to have Hopkins up there who can outsprint them.
Jeff Hopkins, given the right set of circumstances,
can outsprint anybody in that field. But that
doesn't mean he's going to win.
The course... This course is just
■ hard enough; the corners are just
tight enough and there's a little
hill on the backstretch, and it's
just hard enough to allow a break
to work. A lot of courses don't
work because it's too flat or the
comers are too fast. A group of
six guys can go through a comer
just a little bit fester than a
whole pack. And if they get to
working together, they'll stay
away. But if the dynamics of that group are not
right... If there are two guys in that group who
say that's not the way we want it, they won't do
their share of work, and it will disrupt that break.
They just sort of happen, but after they happen
there's this whole communication thing going on
within the race, like does tnis work for us? The
teams are going, does this work? If it doesn't
work for them, they'll try to get that break back.
The tactics... The main teams like Heath Net,
Jittery Joe's, Endeavor are sitting there going,
this break works because we've got two guys in
that break and there are six guys up the road, and
we think our guys are fester than their guys and
they can put it together and the/U kind of let
that break go, and they're not going to chase it
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14 FLAGPOLE.COM • APRIL 27, 2005