”Breaking Away” was Bob Mathis` favorite movie. Now it`s his favorite move.
Mathis, a 24-year-old bicycle racer from Wheaton, executed a perfect break to win Sunday`s Illinois Criterium Championship feature race along the lakefront. Criterium races are run on closed-course loops of less than 1 mile. Mathis broke away about two-thirds of the way into the 42-lap, 25-mile race that paid no prize money and featured only Illinoians. His time was 59:03, and he won by 44 seconds. Tim Tokar of Naperville edged Dixon`s Mark O`Banion for second place.
Mathis, who rides for Team 7-Eleven, admits that seeing ”Breaking Away”–a 1979 film in which a Bloomington, Ind., student becomes infatuated with Italian bicycle racing and sees it as a way to better his lifestyle–got his mind and legs in motion.
”I like to stay fit, and racing is a good way to do it,” said Mathis.
”I started riding with other people and just got good at it.”
Mathis is so good that he was the lone Senior I rider in Sunday`s feature race, which also included divisions II and III. Senior I is riders of national caliber, those capable of Olympic racing. Senior II`s are top regional racers, and the Senior III division includes riders who have won a few races.
There is also a Senior IV division for racers in their first year of cycling; junior division for 16- and 17-year-old riders; veterans` division for riders 35 and over; and a women`s division. Jennifer Oler-Kastler of Chicago won Sunday`s women`s race.
Bill McGinty, 39, of Naperville took the veterans` crown. The junior race was won by Nelson Repenning of Kenilworth; Rick Park of Normal, Ill., took the Senior IV race.
Mathis, a former student at the College of Du Page and DeVry Institute before turning to cycling for a living, had a good strategy for the sometimes- bumpy Grant Park course.
”I had to be careful because I knew people would be with me early,” he said. ”I was just hoping to stay in front a while and have a couple guys get away, and I would catch them later.”
The scenario turned out as Mathis scripted it. Now he hopes the future of his sport will do likewise.
”Bicycling is growing,” he said. ”There have been more and more races over the past few years. The sport in the U.S. would grow even faster if there were more money in it, more sponsorship. I think we can get more people racing in the future. Anyone can do it.”
A car almost ruined Sunday`s feature race. With five laps left, an automobile somehow got through police barriers and almost wiped out the pack, long before it could get by the Buckingham Fountain start-finish line.
”Figures,” said a spectator. ”Cars are always trying to do it to us.”
