Riding Style
Bahamontes was a talented climber but a poor descender, sometimes taking one foot off the pedal to take mountain bends like a speedway rider. He landed in a cactus bush descending the Montserra as an amateur and thereafter refused to descend mountains alone, once waiting at the top of a col in the Tour de France for other riders to arrive. He reached the top minutes before a chase group arrived, and famously passed the time eating ice cream by the side of the road.
He was also temperamental, throwing his bike down a ravine to stop any pressure to continue riding when he dropped out of the 1956 Tour de France on the col de Luitel. The following year he dropped out again when the retirement of his team-mate, Miguel Poblet, left him without support. He held on to his bike but took off his shoes.
Read more about this topic: Federico Bahamontes
Famous quotes containing the words riding and/or style:
“Commuter—one who spends his life
In riding to and from his wife;
A man who shaves and takes a train,
And then rides back to shave again.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)