No I don't know about some outstanding up and coming racer. I was scanning some of the newsletters from 1978. In reading the newsletters I was remembering just how good Greg Lemond was. In 78 Lemond was a 16 year old junior who was using junior gears. Of course Greg was to good to bother with junior races so he raced in the Pro/1/2 category. His year started off with a second place finish in the Pinole TTT. Greg's partner was his farther and they came in second to the pair of George Mount and Mark Pringle, who were basically Pro riders at that time. The Lemonds were only 15 seconds behind the winners with the 3rd place team of Fisher/Bostick 20 seconds behind the Lemonds.

After Pinole Greg didn't lose a single Pro/1/2 race he entered in Nor Cal. He won the Camelia Fest stage race, The Tassajara RR, The Flying wheels Crit, The Laguna Seca RR, Butterfly Crit and the Vuelta de Bisbee races all by the end of April. Oh yea in order to qualify for the Junior worlds he had to go slumming in the Junior category down in S. Cal at the Acton Junior Olympic Development race, which he won. The end of Greg's 78 Nor Cal racing season came at Cat's Hill where Lemond broke away with Wayne Stetina, the Senior road champ at the time and of course Greg beat Stetina in the final sprint. After Cat's Hill that year Greg went back east to ride some of the Classic races back there then he went onto the Jr Worlds and then off to europe for a little late season racing in the big leagues. At the Junior Worlds in Washington DC Greg was part of the US TTT team which took 3rd. The other juniors on the team with Greg were Jeff Bradley, Greg Demgen and Ron Kiefel

The only place in Nor Cal where Lemond proved to be human that year was at the velodrome. Greg only placed 4th in the 3K pursuit with a time of 4:00.36. The winner of the Jr pursuit that day was Grant Handley who turned in a 3:52.00. This was at an event to help qualify for the Junior worlds track trials. Greg got back to his winning ways in the points race where he won with 17 points with chris Springer coming in second with 10 points, Mark Whitehead was 3rd with 9 points and Pat McDonough was 4th with 7 points.

So I guess that is just how good your results have to be if you really want to be considered the next Greg Lemond

This is too awesome!! Thanks for doing this Casey! I only have newsletters that go back to 1980 - glad to see some from the 70s - too cool!

OK so I have all of the 1975 and 76 newsletters scanned and available at http://idisk.mac.com/casey_k-Public?view=web

I like the photo of the finishline at Nevada City on the cover of the July 1st 76 newsletter. Quite the crowd packed in at the old finish line. In some of the later 76 newsletters you can see some kid by the name of Lemond is showing up in a few race results.

CPhipps wrote:

Area codes not necessary when most (all?) of nor-cal was 415

No, south of Los Altos was 408 but you could call from 408 to 415 (and probably 415 to 408) without dialing the area code.

Yes, the newsletters are neat.

Cool stuff, thanks!

Area codes not necessary when most (all?) of nor-cal was 415

The newsletter reflects the mindset of the 1980's by mentioning NCCA top finishers at Nationals and not a complete top three. For example, one of the Stetina brothers (not Joel, probably Dale) won the Senior RR at Bisbee and Southern California rising star, Shawn Storm, took third in the Junior RR. Interesting that some of those riders were still competing 25 years later, like Kent Bostick, whereas others have lost their form ( that includes Shawn Storm).

Midget was the youngest junior age group. JUniors were basically the same as 16-18 group for junior today. Intermediates were 13-15 age group and midgets were the youngest juniors. Yea the age groups for juniors were larger back then.

Pretty interesting. Hope to see some more.

these are great, Casey! funny how some things change but some things have stayed the same.......true with anything in life, I suppose.

one question, what was the "midget" class?