Hartford, 1978
The year before last, when we were on vacation at Lake Tahoe, we found my parents’ old slide projector in the closet at the house. There was a carousel in it filled with slides of bike races I rode back in 1978. Included were the big races in Hartford and Fitchburg on July 4th weekend, and also the races from Super Week in Milwaukee.
This year, Cathy took these slides to Ritz Camera and got them all scanned onto a DVD for me for Father’s Day. So I’ve been going through them and sorting them out. Today I put up the first set. This is from the Hartford Criterium in Hartford, CT. At the time, the race was sponsored by Travelers Insurance, and it had a very rich prize list. This race was very popular with racers on the east coast. They had a little sticker with the Travelers umbrella logo that they put on bikes when they passed pre-race inspection. Lots of racers kept this sticker on their bikes long after the race was over, even going so far as to glue it back on if it fell off.
Apparently, they are still doing this race now. It was on Memorial Day weekend this year.
The race is held on a short course around Bushnell Park in downtown Hartford. The Category 1/2 race was relatively short. My recollection is that it was something like 25 miles. There were only a couple of real corners on the course, so the race was very fast. I don’t remember much about it. I just stayed in the pack the whole way, and I didn’t place. But it was an exciting race, since it was a big pack on a fast course.
So here are my pictures from that day. It’s old-school racing at its best.
