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Measured Redemption: The Life & Times Of Cyclist Jonathan Boyer

Next month will mark 25 years since Jonathan Swift Boyer became the first American to compete in the Tour de France. Four years later, with a national television network audience watching, the Carmel resident won the Race Across America (RAAM), the niche ultra-distance cycling event that takes riders coast-to-coast.

These two varied accomplishments mark definitive moments of Boyer's long and varied first cycling career that included nearly 125 career amateur and professional victories.

Beginning today, the 50-year-old Boyer, who runs a high-end bike shop in Marina, will challenge RAAM again. But this time, he'll do so with additional baggage.

It's been about four years since he pleaded guilty to multiple counts of child molestation. Boyer served nine months of a one-year sentence in Monterey County Jail in Salinas and is still completing a five-year probation.

The History Of Mountain Bikes: It Was Called The Stumpjumper

During the mid-1970s, Mike Sinyard, his friends and other carefree cyclists from California to Colorado began to negotiate winding dirt trails and careen down rocky hills.

They rode modified, fat-tired machines called clunkers and hoped for the best. They crashed their modified and renovated 1930s and 1940s Schwinn, B.F. Goodrich and Hawthorne bikes, wrecked their bodies, thrived on the thrill and returned for more.

Perhaps Sinyard landed on his head less often than others. And with a unique convergence of ingenuity, timing and risk-taking, the proprietor of a then seven-year-old road bicycle manufacturer and distributor in San Jose, took another uncharted leap.

Sinyard believed other thrill-seekers might want to get in on the fun. Soon enough, the Specialized Stumpjumper was born.


Floyd Landis: Pedaling In Monterey To Tour de France Tragedy

Four years ago this week, Floyd Landis began his comeback to professional cycling on the opening day of the Sea Otter Classic. The race was a disaster; Landis fared considerably better.

Race officials, seeking to expand the event outside of the Monterey Peninsula, began the 13th annual event in Redwood City. The race course wasn't secured properly and stage results were eventually nullified.

Three months earlier, Landis crashed while pedaling home from a health club workout near his Murietta, Calif., home and suffered a broken hip. The Sea Otter Classic as his first competition following weeks of rehabilitation. He walked with a prominent limp, but he completed the race.

As the 17th annual event begins today at Laguna Seca Raceway, Landis no longer limps. But since his Tour de France victory last July, his career has been disabled.

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