Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From the Super Bowl to the World Series, from the World Cup to golf’s U.S. Open, Wimbledon and the Olympics, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, major tennis, NBA and a little NHL, aquatics and quite a bit more, the sparkling little city that sits around halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10 has its share of sports connections. Redlands is a top-flight stop for this world’s greatest female cyclists. – Obrey Brown
REDLANDS – Just take a glance at past female champions at a top event that actually began in 1985. It started at that Redlands Bicycle Classic without a single women’s race. Truth is, it took a few years of male racing before landing women for on-the-road showdowns.
Mara Abbott and Kristin Armstrong. Genevieve Jeanson and Lyne Bessette. Judith Arndt and Ino Yono Teutenberg. Don’t forget Amber Neben, Mari Holden or Ruth Winder, either. European legend Jeanne Longo was here, too.
It’s not 40 years for women at Redlands, by the way. It wasn’t until the 1990s that female cyclists hooked up in Redlands’ event. That glance at the overall Redlands Bicycle Classic championship lineup is a Hall of Fame list, a stunning one, to say the least.
Lining up against Team Kahlua’s Linda Brenneman included Inga Thompson, Julie Young, along with eventual greats Petra Rossner of East Germany and Hughes (Canada). Throw in Rebecca Twigg, a double Olympic medal winner, plus longtime medalist Eve Stephenson.
Brenneman? She won both stages, a circuit and a criterium, while male cyclists were racing in a prologue and four stages.
Name any of those racers and, chances are excellent she’s raced at Redlands.
Holden, along with Jeanson and Bessette, a pair of Canadians, are just part of that list. Multiple Olympic gold medalist Armstrong signed off on a brilliant career by winning the 2016 Redlands Classic a few months earlier.
Throw in Neben and Abbott – great climbers, racers and mountain cyclists.
One could start with Jeanne Golay, who proved superior in a variety of events. Golay was a Redlands champion in 1994, winning national titles in criterium title, time trial, plus a three-time national road racing champion – with plenty of overseas success.
Until 2018, women’s purses weren’t equal to male racers at Redlands. Is it shorter races, perhaps? Ultimately, those numbers came up even.
Some of racing’s most powerful female cyclists have shown up to beat that Redlands Classic field.
Some, like Jeanson, were caught doping – and penalized. She was never disqualified from Redlands, however.
Since Redlands officials did not erase its own histories – no one seemed to test positive locally – Jeanson went down as a two-time champion. In 2001, Jeanson won four stages, beating Kimberly Bruckner with four-time Olympic gold medalist Jeanne Longo in that year’s field. A year later, German legend Judith Arndt beat the sensational Jeanson by over 10 minutes in a 1-2 finish.
Jeanson returned a year later to edge Bessette, a Canadian, by over 12 minutes. One year later, Bessette rode through that 2004 field to beat Jeanson in a 1-2 finish.
Back to French champion, Longo.
Perhaps past her prime in showing up at Redlands, or maybe she just wasn’t on form, the remarkable Longo was a multiple world champion in both road racing and time trials. She won a few national titles as well.
As for the Olympics – second in 1996 Atlanta time trials, third at Sydney 2000, 10th in the Athens 2004 road race, fourth in the Beijing 2008 time trials – Longo had no podium finishes at Redlands.
That other European, Teutenberg, deserves prominent Redlands Bicycle Classic mention.
A two-time Olympian, who retired in 2013, racked up more than 200 triumphs over 15 racing seasons. Count Redlands, in 2009, among those victories, beating multiple Redlands champion Neben by one second.
It was that close.
Teutenberg raced for the dominant Saturn Cycling Team, from 2001 to 2003, where she and her teammates – Arndt, Petra Rossner, Bessette and Bruckner, among others, rode together to some fairly legendary results.
As for Olympics, Redlands paid a huge price to host U.S. Olympic Trials in 2004. On that day, eventual 2005 Redlands champion Christine Thorburn won her way to Athens.
Ruth Winder, Redlands’ 2017 champion, was just 23. She was bound for European classics with a new team, Sunweb. Winder had yet scratched the surface of her cycling future.
As new cyclists head off to promising careers, older cyclists have wound down at, of all places, Redlands.
Armstrong – no relation to Lance, incidentally – for instance.
There were a few Redlands podium spots for Armstrong, the USA Olympian who won gold medals for time trials in 2008 Beijing, 2012 London and in the 2016 Brazil games.
Third overall to Bessette and Jeanson in 2008, Armstrong came to Redlands in 2016 in preparation for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Her lone Redlands stage victory turned out to be at Highland. Chasing her all the way to the end was Neben, a three-time Redlands champion, along with the remarkable Abbott.
Armstrong beat an injured Abbott, operating in that year’s race with a broken collarbone, by 32 seconds.
A few months later in Brazil, Armstrong won her third Olympic gold medal.
That women’s Redlands participation list went on and on and on ever since.
