The Bike Whisperer

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mike neel in fort jones, ca. June 2012. Image: brian vernor

This article originally appeared in Procycling Magazine - November 2012.

Old enough to drive but not old enough to vote, the high school dropout ran away from his Oakland, California home with a friend and lived a hippie’s life in Mexico, where in 1968 $1 bought 8 pesos, enough to live on for a week. The drugs were cheap, and the teens spirited across the country on freight trains, their long hair flowing in the breeze without a care in the world. The dropout’s friend would later get hooked on heroin, and after seeing several friends die from overdoses or drug deals gone horribly wrong, the tall son of a self-made concrete millionaire left the seedy life of Haight-Ashbury and became a bike racer.

Mike Neel’s life story is full of supreme highs and gut-wrenching lows, a rollercoaster ride of emotion, heartache and success. He was destined to be a famous, pioneering American bike racer, but his personal light flamed out quickly after the 1976 world pro road race championship, weeks after turning professional for the Italian Magniflex team.

The 179-mile race, the longest since 1964, was held in Ostuni, Italy on September 5. On the last lap, on the backside of a big hill, the great Italian Felice Gimondi had two teammates pushing him. Neel rode alongside them, red faced from the effort. He didn’t get dropped, and after the downhill was working hard to get to the front. He intuitively followed the wheel of the Belgian Frans Verbeeck, as they raced toward the finish on the boulevard.

“I was making my way to the front of the chase group, trying to get on Eddy Merckx’s wheel,” Neel described in his northern California dining room nearly 36 years later. “Gimondi decided he wanted that wheel instead, and shoved me aside right before the sprint started. Verbeeck was leading Merckx, and I was out in the wind on the left, where the sea was, and where the wind was coming from. Suddenly a small figure comes sprinting by me, and it’s Bernard Hinault! I’m like ‘shit...’

“I’m out in the wind, no wheel to grab onto, passed by Hinault with 200 meters to go, and Jan Raas passes me,” Neel continues. “There were four up the road in the breakaway, so we were sprinting for fifth place. I finished fourth in the sprint, 10th in the Worlds. I was pissed because I thought I could’ve finished fifth if I’d gotten on Merckx’s wheel. I didn’t have the experience to know better.”

Neel has replayed that situation in his head hundreds of times since, winning the sprint. Neel’s Magniflex teammate Tino Conti finished third, behind Francesco Moser and Freddy Maertens, who earned the rainbow jersey with a winning time of 7:06:10, for an average speed of 25.19 mph. Merckx won the field sprint for fifth, 26 seconds back, ahead of Hinault, Gimondi, Raas, and Australian Donald John Allan. Among those Neel beat in Ostuni were Walter Godefroot, Hennie Kuiper, Raymond Poulidor, Walter Planckaert and Bernard Thévenet. Seventy-seven started the race, with 53 finishing.

“I kept my mouth shut about my two Gimondi experiences, because in Italy, you want to get invited to the criteriums, where the real money’s to be made. If I would’ve squawked about Gimondi, I wouldn’t have been invited to anything after the World’s. All the criteriums were orchestrated. I played along.”

This race sums up Mike Neel’s character: strong and gifted enough to duke it out with some of the greatest road racers in the history of sport, but naïve enough to let another racer push him off the all-important wheel during a crucial time in one of the biggest events on the calendar. His decision to not play along so easily from that day forward would provide both agony and ecstasy for the riders he would eventually direct in the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.

Self-sufficient runaway

Neel’s path to the Grand Tours began as a horse groom in Golden Gate Park, where he worked and lived after running away from home at 16 after getting kicked out of high school. Neel started off taking the horses on cool-down walks after their workouts.

“I took care of ten horses, and got $100 a month each,” the now 61-year-old explained. “I was a rich teenager! I never fit in with school; I wasn’t planning my future, especially during the San Francisco scene in the late `60s. There was turmoil and politics, so I did what I could: working the Oakland shipyards.”

By 1969, Neel, 18, was attending Laney Junior College in Oakland, a predominantly black school. The death of friends after his Mexico experience set him straight, and he was restarting his life. Someone left a note on his beat-up Schwinn road bike asking if he’d like to ride. Neel wore Levi’s shorts and tall basketball socks with tennis shoes, riding around Lake Chabot with the experienced group of riders.

Never much of an athlete as a child, the naturally gifted Neel dropped everyone on the ride, and they encouraged him to race.

“About a week after that first ride, I saw a Raleigh International bike with Campagnolo components and Weinmann brakes in the window of Velo-Sport Bicycle Shop in Berkeley,” Neel said. “The bike was $95. The owner, Peter Rich, said I could take the bike and pay him later. I paid him half, then rode it to Mendocino, about 170 miles up the coast. I broke into a cabin on the beach, and stayed the night. It was 2-1/2 days of adventure; I was a hippie without a care in the world at that point.”

Two weeks later Rich mentioned a handicap race around Lake Merced, with the novices going first. Neel took fourth, the same place he’d take against stiffer competition around the state capitol in Sacramento a few weeks later.

Neel’s winning ways were expanding, including victory in the 1971 Mt. Hamilton Classic, which included a 20-mile climb to the top of the 4,500-foot peak near San Jose. Monterey, California native Jonathan Boyer won the junior edition. Boyer would eventually race under Neel at 7-Eleven, after becoming the first American to race the Tour de France and working for Bernard Hinault in 1981.

“In the `70s we all had to fend for ourselves and had to be driven by our internal drives and our own determination,” Boyer explained from his base in Rwanda, where he’s coaching the national team. “It was never easy being the only ones from America in a foreign country; Mike was able to overcome incredible hardships and still perform as a top cyclist.”

Tour of California

Rich organized the first Tour of California in 1971, and included Neel on his Velo-Sport Berkeley team, which helped their leader finish fifth overall during the 10-stage race. Neel’s trajectory from hippie to bike racer was rising fast, and he moved to Europe. After politics with the American governing body for bike racing kept Neel off the 1972 Olympic team in Munich, he continued on his own.

Meeting Merckx, aiming for Montreal

In 1972, after quitting the Tour of Mexico, Neel and some fellow racers caught a bus to Mexico City to watch Eddy Merckx set the hour record on October 25, after he had raced a full road season winning the Tour, Giro and four classics. Merckx covered 49.431 km at high altitude in Mexico City. Neel witnessed the clinical preparation by Merckx and his team of mechanics and coaches, and was impressed. He also saw how excruciating the effort was for Merckx, and the suffering needed to break the record.

Neel made a meager living working in French bike shops, racing as much as possible, before moving to Chicago in 1973, where the American racing scene was strongest, and the money was better.

With the 1976 Olympics in his sights, Neel showed up at future 7-Eleven rider Tom Schuler’s parent’s house in Cadillac, Michigan, driving his customized 1965 El Camino. It was 1975, and they drove East to Florida, Mississippi, and New York State for the Olympic trials, winning races along the way. Neel’s clubmate George Mount also made the team, as did John Howard, a two-time Olympic participant. Schuler was an alternate.

The Olympics were held in Montreal on July 26. Neel was team captain, and told Mount when to make his move on the backside of the course, bridging up to the breakaway. Howard tried chasing down his compatriot, and Neel had to literally grab him to hold him back. Mount finished an incredible sixth, and credited Neel with helping him. The team captain crashed in the rain on the slick road right before the field sprint, after a rider in front of him slid out. Neel became a pro with Magniflex, and moved to Italy to prepare for worlds.

Neel’s professional stint lasted a year. Short-sighted directors, excessive doping and abysmal living conditions made the decision easy for Neel, who worked in the Magniflex mattress factory to make ends meet, barely keeping his finances above the poverty level.

Taking a leadership role

He returned to the States in 1978, and got an offer to coach at the national level, working with Mount again. He also started a bicycle distribution company with Lee Katz, whose Turin Bike Shop sponsored him in the early `70s. Life was good, and better than what Neel experienced as a short-term pro in Europe. In 1979 he was in charge of the four-man kilo team, when Polish immigrant Eddy Borysewicz led the U.S. national cycling program. Eddy B. started from nothing, opening an office in Squaw Valley, California in 1978.

In July 1979, Neel’s American team won the Pan Am Games time trial without Howard. One of Eddy B.’s first decisions was to focus on team effort, dispensing with Howard. Neel and Eddy B. subsequently bumped heads, prompting Neel -- then 28 -- to return to racing in 1980. Neel raced with Boyer, who won the Coors Classic and a few stages with the Grab-On team before finishing fifth at the world pro road race championship in Salanches, France, behind Hinault.

“I still had my Neel & Katz company, but my relationship with Lee wasn’t healthy, and neither was my behavior in Reno, Nevada. In 1981 we were selling Mercier bikes. I was planning on racing with the Miko-Mercier team, so I went to Europe with my young wife and stayed with LeMond and his in Brittany. I did one race for the team, and overdid my role as team helper, subsequently getting dropped after working hard for my leader. This didn’t sit well with my coach, who didn’t take me to the next race. So, I quit. I did some races in the States, worked at my business, then started coaching again. I coached the G.S. Mengoni team at the 1983 Coors Classic, which was Alexi Grewal’s coming-out race, where he finished third overall.” Grewal won the 1984 Olympic road race in Los Angeles.

7-Eleven comes calling

Neel lost his business after having a blowout with Katz, got out of coaching, and suffered through a real down time in his life, in early 1983. A fortuitous call came from Neel’s former Turin cycles teammate Jim Ochowicz after the `84 Los Angeles Olympics.

“I got an offer to run the 7-Eleven junior team, so I took it,” Neel said. “We won everything imaginable; I then got a call from Och, asking me if I’d consider going to Europe to direct the men’s team in 1985. I said yes; my first race directing was the Tour of Baja, which we won, then we went to the Giro d’Italia.

“I told the riders they could finish the stage and all go buy a plane ticket home, because I was so pissed at their performance early in the race. Ron Kiefel took it to heart, and got in a break on stage 15 with Gerrie Knetemann, a former world champion and multiple Tour stage winner. There was an uphill finish, which was Ron’s specialty.” Kiefel never looked back, becoming the first American to win a stage in a Grand Tour.

“What Mike brought to the table was his understanding of the American racer psyche; we thought differently, certainly not like the Europeans,” Kiefel told me from his bike shop in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. “We didn’t always take Mike’s advice to heart right away, and he knew that, so he worked to play up our strengths and get the best out of us. It’s hard to find a modern director to compare to Mike.”

This set the stage for another Neel victory on stage 20 with Andy Hampsten, on loan from the Levi’s-Raleigh domestic American team.

“I drove the course with Andy before the stage in Gran Paradiso,” Neel explained. “We talked about where he should attack on the short stage, which was steep. I told him to attack as hard as he could, with no looking back. He didn’t have enough confidence in himself, but he was always finishing in the lead group.” Hinault was in pink, and his teammate LeMond was working hard. Hampsten flew up the hill like a man possessed, winning the stage. 

“Andy went from being a $10,000-a-year rider to a $200,000-a-year rider almost overnight,” Neel added. The North Dakota native impressed Hinault so much that the Frenchman offered Hampsten a spot on his La Vie Claire team in 1986, snatching Neel’s protégé. Combined with Ochowicz’s business dealings and Neel’s European connections with race organizers, the young 7-Eleven cowboys were invited to race their first Tour de France the following June.

1986 Tour shocker

Team 7-Eleven’s 1986 Tour de France debut was auspicious. Clad in a then-unthinkable skinsuit for the first of a double-day stage race on July 5, Canadian Alex Stieda treated the 53-mile road race as a criterium, shooting off the front and staying out long enough to take every Tour jersey imaginable, including the leader’s yellow. He was the first North American to wear yellow, but it was fleeting. The day’s second stage, a team time trial, proved disastrous, where multiple crashes and flats, coupled with Stieda’s empty tank, returned the yellow jersey to prologue winner Thierry Marie. Regardless, Neel’s boys had taken France by storm, and got plenty of valued television exposure for their sponsors. 

Muscular sprinter Davis Phinney more than made up for 7-Eleven’s heart-breaking TTT by winning the next day’s stage, a 214km gallop from Levallois-Perret to Liévin. LeMond took over the lead after stage 16, and held off his overzealous teammate Hinault to win in Paris by 3:10. Hampsten finished an astounding fourth, 18:44 behind teammate LeMond. 

Neel’s team won three more stages of the Tour in 1987, with Phinney (stage 12), Dag Otto Lauritzen (stage 14) and Jeff Pierce, who took the final stage on the Champs-Élysées. Hampsten struggled to finish 16th, while his teammate Raúl Alcalá finished 9th, winning the white young rider’s jersey and placing 3rd in the final mountain climber’s classification, one place above 1988 Tour winner Pedro Delgado. 

“I remember the `87 Giro del Trentino, when the stage finished at Francesco Moser's home town of Predazzo,” Alcalá told me from his home in Mexico. “We had to climb 5km to the top with another 5km to the finish. Mike advised us to be prepared because Moser was the race favorite. I stuck with the Italian, and won the stage.

“Mike was a visionary, one that believed in me and gave me the chance to be a professional,” Alcalá added. “I consider him the man who taught me to be a smart racer, and most of all I consider him my friend.” Alcalá won the `87 Coors International Cycling Classic, plus two stages of the Tour de France, making history for Mexico.

The ascent: 1988 Giro d’Italia

Hampsten regrouped for the 1988 season, and like several of his 7-Eleven teammates who lived in Colorado in the off season, relied on Neel’s workhorse crossing training for conditioning, which pay off large dividends the following May and June in the Giro d’Italia.

“I’d write them out a training regimen to hang on their refrigerator,” Neel explained. “This included four hours of snowshoeing, three hours of cross-country skiing, two hours mountain biking, an hour of hiking, things like that; plenty of activity in the snow. We didn’t have the nice indoor trainers like they have today, so we improvised.”

Hampsten raced the `88 Giro with gusto, winning the hilly stage 12 before flexing his muscles during the historic stage 14 between Chiesa in Valmalenco and Bormio, which included the famous snow-swept Gavia Pass. Neel took notice of the weather forecast and took action.

“We had a pep talk before the stage, where I told the guys this was our big chance to get the leader’s jersey and win the race,” he explained. “All we have to do is prepare for the weather. I had all the guys rubbed down with vaseline, like English Channel swimmers did, to retain the body’s heat. We bought ski gloves and caps the night before. I handed Andy a wool hat early in the stage to stay warm.

“I made Andy put his raincoat on at the top of the Gavia Pass, and as soon as he did that, Panasonic’s Erik Breukink attacked, subsequently winning the stage ahead of Andy.” Breukink won the battle, but Hampsten won the war, taking the leader’s pink jersey with eight stages remaining. 

Hampsten won the stage 18 uphill time trial. Neel controlled the race beautifully through the end in Vittorio Veneto, where Hampsten beat Breukink by 1:43 overall, also taking the mountain climber’s classification jersey. He would win the 1992 Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour, finishing fourth to equal his Tour debut in 1986.

“I joined 7-Eleven in 1987,” Hampsten explained from his home in Tuscany. “I negotiated my joining the team to include Mike being the director. I made sure he would be directing the team because Mike knew European racing and American racers. 

“He treated his racers like thoroughbred horses. Mike would tell us how to rest and eat well so our overly tired bodies would recuperate from the riding. He explained what we could expect at the races we went to, and after we would be trounced he told us how to train for them. Of course he told us about that before the poor racing periods, but he knew we were going to listen better after poor results.”

The descent: car accident in France

Neel’s tenure with Ochowicz was tenuous at best. Their relationship unraveled in 1989.

“We started in 1985 with a group of Americans, and got results,” Neel said “Then there was the European factor, with Dag-Otto Lauritzen and Sean Yates, who weren’t always on my side. I caught a lot of flak for not controlling Andy after he won the `88 Giro; he was invited to several dinners and parties, and wasn’t able to properly recover enough for the Tour. I caught flak after we didn’t get results that year. I never really got along with corporate folks; that was always Och’s strength.

“My relationship with Och was slowly deteriorating, but we had good results in early 1989, and results made a difference with Och and I. At that point he was working to keep the team in the black, and I was handling things in Europe. Paris-Roubaix was a day and a half after the Tour of the Basque Country, where we did well with Andy winning a stage.

“We were in Biarritz, and Jeff Pierce forgot his plane ticket, so I gave him mine and decided to sleep in the back of the team car heading for Paris. A team director never does this, but I thought it was the right thing to do at the time.”

Team mechanic Michael Haney fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a truck, severely injuring himself and Neel, who was in a coma for several days. Neel doesn’t think he had the best advice on proper recovery afterwards, and his relationship with Ochowicz came to an end. He lost his job with 7-Eleven, and doesn’t think he’s been the same since.

Neel’s successes with 7-Eleven were noticed by Team Spago, and the 39-year-old took a job directing the young squad, beating 7-Eleven like he did with Och’s boys in 1985.

“Och offered me a job directing his Motorola team in 1991,” Neel said. “I turned it down, because I wouldn’t have done well with a more corporate set-up that was in place. I was better at directing American racers, so when 7-Eleven/Motorola morphed into a more European squad, it was time for me to move on. I never thought money could buy the strongest team; there’s more to it than that.” 

At peace

Today, Neel lives in Fort Jones, California, an hour south of the Oregon border, elevation 2,762 feet. Twice married and divorced, he works odd contracting jobs, living on little. He’s a popular resident of this town of just 839, which he’s called home for 40 years. He lives in a renovated schoolhouse purchased for $50 on auction 10 years ago, on 10 acres he bought when he was making nearly six figures with 7-Eleven in 1989. He rides a 7-year-old Ridley carbon Damacles road bike with worn Shimano Dura-Ace components every day. Several old trucks and other neglected vehicles dot his property.

“Looking back, my life would’ve been different if I would’ve flown to Paris in April 1989,” Neel said, looking down at the floor of his dining room. His frustration with the events of his life were apparent throughout our two days together, and he sometimes was quick to blame others. I point out that maybe his racing DNA, mixed with a healthy dose of naïveté and disdain for corporate direction, undercut his ability to stay employed. After a long pause, he agrees, quickly pointing out the one train wreck he adroitly avoided in 2008:  declining a fat contract to direct the ill-fated Rock Racing team of Michael Ball.

“Working with riders was similar to working with horses, but there are no politics working with horses,” he told me after a long pause as we walked along a new singletrack he carved a week before my visit. “I’m riding more, and would like to lose a few pounds like any other rider.”

It seems the runaway teenager from 1968 has found his true calling once again.