Andy Hampsten (2nd right) became the first US male rider to win a European national pro stage race when he won the Tour of Switzerland in 1986, just weeks before Greg LeMond won the Tour de France. Hampsten made his own grand tour history in 1988 when he won the Giro d’Italia. Fantastic results, especially when he came from somewhere far from US cycling hotspots.
“Yeah, North Dakota. The only people with road bikes near me were a group of 8 or 9 hippies. Some of them had European 10-speeds, and there was one bike shop, we’d hang around that,” Hampsten told Chris in an interview for the Cycling Legends Podcast.
“Those showed me useful things like how to sit on a wheel, but there were so few races, and you’d have to travel hundreds of miles to get to them. All I could do to discover what racing was about was listen to the guys translating French cycling magazines or, just occasionally, a copy of Cycling Weekly would turn up from England,” Hampsten says.
In the summer of 1977, when Hampsten was 15, he visited England. “My mum’s sister married an Englishman, and they lived in Cambridge with their two daughters, so once every five years we’d pack up the house and go over for the summer. In 1977 me and my elder brother Stephen, who was also into cycling, went over, and we joined the Cambridge Town and County Cycling Club. We spent all summer riding with them. It was heaven.”
“There was a 10-mile time trial on Thursday evenings, and three regular training rides a week. At weekends a guy called Robbie Parker would load us all up in his van and we’d go to races up and down the country. That was my introduction to European cycling. I didn’t win anything, I just enjoyed it,” Hampsten says.
He started racing in the US the following year. “I really enjoyed the lifestyle, meeting new people, travelling lots, sleeping on other people’s sofas. Cycling was a good way of doing the things independently. I was very shy at the time, but it gave me freedom, and some confidence.”
